Equity LifeStyle at BofA Conference: Resilient MH Sector Insights

On Wednesday, 10 September 2025, Equity LifeStyle Properties (NYSE:ELS) presented at the BofA Securities 2025 Global Real Estate Conference, highlighting its robust performance in the manufactured housing (MH) sector. The company showcased its resilience through economic cycles, emphasizing both positive growth prospects and challenges, such as regulatory impacts and weather-related disruptions in the RV and marina segments.

Key Takeaways

• ELS’s revenue is predominantly from annual sources, ensuring stability.
• Rent growth of 5.5% in the MH portfolio, with occupancy at 94.3%.
• RV and marina segments faced minor setbacks due to weather and permitting delays.
• ELS sees significant opportunities for acquisitions in the MH and RV sectors.
• The company is optimistic about future prospects, with strategic investments in AI.

Financial Results

• 91% of ELS’s revenue comes from annual sources, underscoring stability.
• The company has achieved a 14% annual return since its IPO 30 years ago.
• Long-term NOI growth stands at 4.4%, with FFO per share growth at 8.4%.
• Interest coverage is 5.6%, with 18% of debt fully amortizing and an eight-year term to maturity.
• Core MH portfolio rent growth was 5.5% for the two-month period ending August.
• RV and marina rents were down 10 basis points compared to the previous year.

Operational Updates

Manufactured Housing (MH)

• ELS offers MH homes costing between $100,000 and $150,000, significantly lower than the U.S. average new home cost of $500,000.
• Monthly costs for MH residents are below $1,000, compared to $2,500 for single-family homes.
• The company is replenishing 300 sites lost to hurricane damage and normalizing new home sales to 500-600 per year.

RV and Marina

• Labor Day revenues were slightly down but exceeded expectations.
• Marina operations were hindered by permitting delays for dock reconstruction, expected to complete by mid-2026.
• Seasonal trends are at the low end of guidance, with a 25% decline in Canadian customer reservations.
• Thousand Trails camp pass sales have increased significantly to 19,000-20,000 per year.

Regulatory and Strategic

• New HUD standards allow MH homes to be built without a chassis, opening multi-story options.
• NIMBYism presents challenges for new MH community development.

Future Outlook

• Consistent demand in the MH market, with a focus on 2026 budget and rent processes.
• RV sales are projected to rise in 2025, with campaigns targeting Canadian visitors to Florida.
• ELS anticipates a decrease in long-term debt rates when the Fed cuts rates.
• Increased investment in AI initiatives is planned for the next year.

Q&A Highlights

MH Strength

• The MH market’s strength is driven by occupancy growth and consistent demand, with strong mark-to-market gains.

Florida Market

• Despite single-family home price moderation, demand for ELS properties remains strong due to lifestyle offerings.

Transaction Market

• ELS sees opportunities to acquire more MH and RV assets, with little change in the transaction landscape.

All-Age vs. Age-Restricted

• The focus remains on age-restricted communities for revenue stability, as all-age properties face more volatility.

"We’ve had a 4.4% long-term NOI growth," said CEO Marguerite Nader, emphasizing the company’s focus on translating this into FFO growth. President and COO Patrick Waite highlighted the affordability of ELS’s MH homes compared to the national average.

For a detailed understanding, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - BofA Securities 2025 Global Real Estate Conference:

Yana Gallen, Residential REITs Analyst, Bank of America: Afternoon, Roundtable Sessions. Welcome to Bank of America’s 2025 Global Real Estate Conference. I’m Yana Gallen, and I cover the residential REITs at Bank of America. We’re very pleased to have Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.’s CEO, Marguerite Nader, EVP and CFO, Paul Seavey, and President and COO, Patrick Waite. I’ll turn it over to Marguerite to share some opening remarks, and then happy to jump into Q&A and want this to be interactive.

Marguerite Nader, CEO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Wonderful. Thank you very much, Yana. Appreciate the opportunity to present today. What I’d like to start with is a couple of pages from our investor presentation, and Paul will walk through, give a little bit of an operational update, and Patrick will talk a little bit about ELS through the economic cycles. On page two of our investor presentation, we’re just highlighting the fact that 91% of our revenue comes from annual sources, which is an important component to consider when thinking about the full-year results for ELS. The other thing we’re pointing out is that our return since IPO 30 years ago has been 14% per year. Turning to page three, we wanted to focus on our strong performance over that time period.

We’ve had a 4.4% long-term NOI growth, and that has translated, and we’re really focused on translating NOI growth into FFO growth, and we’ve translated that into 8.4% FFO per share growth. The next thing to point out is just the REIT leading balance sheet with a 5.6% interest coverage, and something that’s unique about ELS, 18% of our debt is fully amortizing, so no refinance risk inside of that 18%, and our term to maturity is eight years, certainly on the longer end with limited headwinds with respect to refinancing in the next few years. With that, I will turn it over to Paul to give a little bit of an operational update that we’ve been discussing during the conference.

Paul Seavey, EVP and CFO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Thanks, Marguerite. Excuse me, with respect to rent in the MH portfolio and the RV and marina for the two-month period ending August, our performance in the core MH portfolio showed growth of 5.5% over last year, the same period, and we provided a reference point in our update showing that for the quarter, our guidance was a range of 5% to 5.6%. Occupancy is holding steady at 94.3% as of the end of August in that core portfolio. The RV and marina rent was down 10 basis points compared to the same period last year, and the range that we provided for guidance was down 10 basis points to up 50 basis points. As we think about rent broadly, we see an offset, essentially the performance of the MH offsetting what we saw in the RV space.

Marguerite Nader, CEO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Patrick?

Patrick Waite, President and COO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Sure, and I’m going to touch on page 14, which goes over the value proposition in our manufactured housing portfolio, the largest part of our business. Today, a single-family home in the U.S. average cost for new home is about $500,000. Our typical customer purchases a manufactured home in our community for between $100,000 and $150,000. They typically pay cash, and their monthly costs are typically less than $1,000. That compares to the monthly cost of carrying a $500,000 or a single-family home, roughly $2,500. That value proposition is very stark. One thing we offer above and beyond the value is the lifestyle that our residents are seeking. That MH business has contributed to durability on our top-line revenue stream throughout our history, and that has contributed to outperformance in NOI. Over the last 25 years, NOI growth has outpaced inflation by 200 bps. That’s all I had.

Yana Gallen, Residential REITs Analyst, Bank of America: Great, thank you. Maybe starting with MH and kind of the strength there that you’re seeing year to date, heading a little bit above where you guys had guided, and then maybe talking to that a little bit, like where the upside surprises have come from, and then as we think about the comments you made on in excess of inflation when we see kind of the COLA adjustments, kind of how do you think about where you’re setting rents for next year?

Marguerite Nader, CEO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Sure, and I think Patrick can cover that. Yana, I think we appreciate you leading off with a question on MH because that’s not always the case. We really appreciate it because it is the core of our business, so we love to talk about it. Patrick can walk through and also maybe focus in a little bit on our rate increases for this year.

Patrick Waite, President and COO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Yeah, so the results in the update are really just based on a mix of occupancy over recent periods. Some more occupancy growth in communities that had higher rents. That will fluctuate over time, and nothing really fundamental in that outcome other than the consistent demand that we see across the portfolio. Something we’ve been talking about in the conference has been the rent increases for 2026, and we’re in the early process of our budget for 2026. As part of that process, I get together with my operating team, Vice Presidents, and Regional Managers. Our typical Regional Manager oversees 10 to 15 properties.

That’s typically a mixed-use portfolio, including MH, and we go property by property through the submarkets, compared against the direct comps for MH, but also reviewing trends in the single-family market and the multifamily market, directionally how that informs demand for the properties in their individual housing submarkets. We’re working through that process. I would say that it’s going very much as it has in recent years. It tends to be very consistent, and again, we continue to see consistent demand. Some of that just came through in the results in our update.

Marguerite Nader, CEO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Yana, we talk often on our earnings calls about our mark-to-market within our MH portfolio, and we continue to see strong gains inside the mark-to-market on new residents.

Yana Gallen, Residential REITs Analyst, Bank of America: I think kind of the start to the year, maybe occupancy was a little bit lower than expected from some of the hurricane damage. Maybe if you could just kind of talk to that in terms of whether occupancy is coming back the way you anticipated or a little bit stronger, and any trends also on the home sales.

Patrick Waite, President and COO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Sure. Yeah, first I’ll touch on occupancy, and the impact from last season’s hurricanes is basically 300 total sites where we lost home inventory, and we’re going to be replenishing that home inventory. Just as a reminder, I try to put them in context that those 300 sites are across a portfolio of 70,000 sites, where across the portfolio, we’re investing in new home inventory and maintaining growing occupancy. In Florida, we continue to see consistent demand, and in those properties that were impacted, we continue to see consistent demand. We feel like we’re in a good position with respect to the demand for our properties and occupancy growth. With respect to new home sales, the last few quarters have been around 120 new home sales in the quarter, annualized around 500.

Five to 600 new home sales for a full year would have been considered to be a reasonable or good year pre-COVID. We went through a period of higher demand, which elevated home sales. I’d say that’s normalized, and we continue to see consistent demand across the MH portfolio.

Yana Gallen, Residential REITs Analyst, Bank of America: Do you have kind of like a rough number of what kind of churn or new homes you’d like to see just to keep the average age of communities, kind of like the curb appeal of them?

Patrick Waite, President and COO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Yeah, I don’t know that I would frame it that way. I mean, typically we’re investing somewhere between 400 to 600 new homes across the portfolio over the course of a year. That can ebb and flow just based on the timing of inventory coming into the properties. We can impose a calendar over the run rate.

Marguerite Nader, CEO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: What we tend to see, just like you see in single-family neighborhoods, where there is a new home that’s brought into the street inside of our manufactured home communities, all of a sudden you see there’s a person next door that says they will want a new home, and the street starts to change. You see a lot of that, and sometimes we’ll start that mission, and then we’ll see other people, other customers, finishing off the street that way.

Yana Gallen, Residential REITs Analyst, Bank of America: I guess kind of some of the regulatory federal efforts to improve affordable housing, there’s been some changes at HUD in terms of the requirements for manufactured homes. I don’t know if you see this kind of really bringing down price, or is that a potential benefit to the sector?

Marguerite Nader, CEO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Yes, the road to housing, there’s been some conversations about manufactured housing that hadn’t been there in the past. Patrick can walk through some of the changes that really the manufacturers have done a really good job of working with the regulators and coming to some things that I think are going to be positive for the MH industry. Patrick, maybe you could walk through the chassis requirements.

Patrick Waite, President and COO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Yeah, so a significant component of the bill for the MH space is the option to complete a HUD home to HUD standards without a chassis. Basically, what that means is in the manufacturing process today, the first step is having a steel chassis that flooring is laid down on. That then moves to several further steps. It’s like a Model T being manufactured. You have interior walls and fixtures, you work away to the exterior, and eventually roof trusses in the roof. When that home leaves the factory, it is on the steel chassis, and the steel chassis is embedded in the structure of the home itself. That’s the way the home is eventually delivered and sent to wherever its final location is.

The flexibility to remove the chassis is going to provide for particularly the manufacturers to access some other components of the housing market that have been a challenge. One, they’ll be able to do multi-story. Two-story is something that is very difficult, if not impossible, to do when you have a chassis. That’s going to be an advantage in higher density uses. Also, a broader acceptance of a home without a chassis that has an elevation that’s aesthetically much more like a single-family home, anticipating that will provide access to infill vacant sites in urban locations and denser suburban locations as well. It’ll open up some additional avenues for the manufacturers. I think broadly that’s good for the industry, and it’ll provide some flexibility for land lease communities like this.

Yana Gallen, Residential REITs Analyst, Bank of America: Great, and then maybe just on Florida specifically, because we are hearing of kind of single-family home prices coming down a bit in various markets there. Do you see that product kind of competing with yours?

Patrick Waite, President and COO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: I get that question a lot about competing directly against manufactured housing. I appreciate it from a value proposition. The value proposition that I referenced earlier is really substantial. Some moderation in the competing single-family market, I don’t think significantly impacts demand for our properties. We offer something much more broad than a single-family neighborhood. Our properties have grassroots activities and groups that just occur in that active lifestyle environment. I explain to investors frequently, when I’m in our communities, particularly in the Sun Belt, the level of activity in common areas, in the conference rooms, pickleball courts, tennis courts, all of which happens grassroots, and we’re not a core component of those people coming together. They’re doing it on their own accord. That’s just embedded in the community. The value proposition is a huge driver.

Even if you were inclined to move up to a more moderately priced house that still is substantially more expensive, you lack that community engagement.

Unidentified speaker: We’re still in a very limited supply. We’re in a pretty serious investment system for us to be able to do pretty supportable housing. You, as an investor, we didn’t really struggle to acquire the new sites until we could fill our empty, our availability. How has that sort of been a decisive push? The regulatory pressure has been moving towards you in the three weeks.

Marguerite Nader, CEO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Yeah, I mean, this push just happened. This is very, very new. This is not. The issue that has long been in the industry with respect to new development on the MH side of the business is local city council members not wanting these manufactured home communities built in their backyard. NIMBYism has been an issue. What we’re talking about here doesn’t solve for that. This is a federal regulation. We still need to have conversations at the local level, and that’s where the change needs to take place. We haven’t seen very much movement on that side. We have been successful over the last few years in getting entitlement rights for development for our properties, so expansions of our properties. We’ve built MH sites and RV sites, but ground-up development has been much more difficult.

Unidentified speaker: I think federal government rights could show that goal easier.

Marguerite Nader, CEO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Right, at this point, there isn’t. It’s really difficult to tell. You’re talking about so many different local municipalities, and what their agenda is differs by county. Do they really, is there a real desire to engage in the affordable housing discussion, or is it just words on a page?

Yana Gallen, Residential REITs Analyst, Bank of America: Any other MH questions before we flip to RV? All right. I guess maybe if we could talk a little bit just how the summer played out on the transient side, Labor Day weekend, any color around that, and just kind of where you are relative to pre-COVID and kind of this more active hybrid work, and now we’re really seeing people called back into the office.

Paul Seavey, EVP and CFO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Sure, sure. In terms of a little bit more color around the performance update, our seasonal and transient rents essentially are in line with our expectations. Labor Day specifically was down a bit from last year, but a bit better than we expected. The annual line item, the marina properties in the core portfolio, we have three properties, two of which Patrick talked about on the earnings call in July, and another that had some slips that were damaged in prior storms. The restoration of those slips and the recovery, there’s some permitting issues and so forth that are taking longer, and as a result, occupancy was lower. It’s really those marina locations that were impacting the results in the quarter-to-date period.

Marguerite Nader, CEO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: In the transient business in general, we’re just seeing kind of a reverting back to pre-COVID dynamics, just from a standpoint of the availability of time for what people have. They are now coming out on the Friday night as opposed to a Thursday night during COVID and unable to stay on the Sunday night because they have to be at work in the office, as you point out, Yana, on Monday.

Yana Gallen, Residential REITs Analyst, Bank of America: Maybe just going back to the marina component of it, is there any kind of outlook in terms of the timing of the permits? On top of that, how long for the work to be done to be able to make it functional again?

Patrick Waite, President and COO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Yeah, the marina, there really was the change from the Q2 earnings call. It’s Gulf Coast of Florida. It’s in a very good location. It’s a very strong marina. We’ll be building back those docks to be completed. It looks like mid-2026. It’s a high-demand location. I don’t foresee much of a challenge in recapturing the occupancy headwind that we had during construction.

Yana Gallen, Residential REITs Analyst, Bank of America: Historically, is there a certain level of whether it be kind of hurricane damage or when you would actually take something out of same-store? How do you think about just the reporting around these events?

Paul Seavey, EVP and CFO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Yeah, we look at that. We have internal criteria that we use to make that decision, and it is very much focused around a property. There’s a significant disruption or a ceasing of operations as the property recovers. In the case of the properties that we’re discussing at the moment, the disruption is less significant than that, and we have not gone so far as to remove them from the core portfolio.

Yana Gallen, Residential REITs Analyst, Bank of America: I guess just in terms of kind of the seasonality, it sounds like trending kind of at the low end of the guide quarter to date, it’s kind of more due to this timing issue, or is there also, I guess, how should we think about the seasonality of transient? I guess it picks up in 4Q.

Paul Seavey, EVP and CFO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: The largest quarter for transient is the third quarter. We’re coming out of that and heading into the fourth quarter and then the first quarter where the seasonal rent is a more significant contributor.

Yana Gallen, Residential REITs Analyst, Bank of America: Maybe just kind of how you’re thinking about seasonal year over year.

Paul Seavey, EVP and CFO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Yeah, the primary focus on the seasonal, we talked about it on, I think, the first and the second quarter earnings calls, and that relates to the impact of the Canadian customers. They do represent a component of that, and we had mentioned previously that the reservation pace on the early reservations that were made was down about 25% compared to prior year. We also noted that we didn’t really expect that to change after the Canadian snowbirds left in March and April. Didn’t expect that to change until later into the fall, closer to winter, when they would normally make reservations for the coming season. That kind of played out as expected, and we’re beginning our marketing efforts now to remind them that it’s going to be cold in the winter, and they should go ahead and book to be warm in Florida.

Yana Gallen, Residential REITs Analyst, Bank of America: I guess kind of on that, like shorter booking windows that the industry is experiencing because of just volatility and weather, and that’s both for seasonal and transient, or the seasonal because it is longer, it’s more of like a commitment they’ll know in advance?

Marguerite Nader, CEO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: The booking window that we talk about is really on that transient side. The seasonal customer generally commits to us after they leave for the prior year. When they’re leaving in March and April, they’re really focused on getting the particular site that they want. They want to be around the group of people that they tend to travel with, and that’s an important piece for them. That’s a longer booking window.

Yana Gallen, Residential REITs Analyst, Bank of America: For this coming season, when they left March, April, that’s where that 25%?

Marguerite Nader, CEO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: That’s true.

Yana Gallen, Residential REITs Analyst, Bank of America: Okay, now you’re starting kind of the campaign to remind everyone.

Marguerite Nader, CEO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Right, and this is what we would normally do, although we just have a bigger gap where we would focus right now. It’s getting to be a little bit colder. I think the temperature needs to go down a little bit more before there’s a realization that it’s going to get really cold soon. We would pick up those efforts in, you know, we’re starting them now, but pick up the pace in October and November, and encourage our Canadian friends to come down and visit Florida.

Yana Gallen, Residential REITs Analyst, Bank of America: In your various products and different pricing tiers with Thousand Trails and Encore, are there any changes that you guys are thinking of doing or adding or taking away different levels just to kind of like spur a little bit more demand?

Marguerite Nader, CEO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: No, I mean, as it relates to the Canadians, it’s really the Canadian traffic and our Canadian customer. It’s really about just making sure that Canadians feel comfortable coming across the border and coming to Florida, and I think that’s what we are focused on. On the Thousand Trails side, what we’ve seen is an increase in RV dealer leads, and that is, as I think you remember, Yana, those are leads that come to us. Through RV dealers, someone buys an RV, they get a Thousand Trails membership, and they have the ability to camp for a year, and then the following year they pay. It’s camp for free for a year, and then they have the ability to then become a full-time member.

We’re seeing an increase in that activity, which we view as a positive, and RV sales are up, and they are intended to be up for 2025 for the full year. What we’ve seen on the, we have our Thousand Trails camp passes, and probably 12 years ago we were selling about 4,000 of those. We now sell every year about 19,000, 20,000 passes. There’s been considerable movement on that front within the Thousand Trails platform. Also, this year we introduced a new upgrade product, which was a dues-based product that I mentioned on the last earnings call, and we have had success in launching that product this year. It’s just a matter of our customers wanting to spend a longer time with us, a longer booking window, and being able to go from property to property. That has been a successful endeavor for us.

Yana Gallen, Residential REITs Analyst, Bank of America: Great. Can you remind us on the annual RV, what’s the average kind of like tenure of residents?

Marguerite Nader, CEO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Sure. It’s similar to what it is in our MH portfolio, about 10+ years. So a very sticky customer base on both the MH and the RV annual.

Unidentified speaker: Should we have the other CFS this year? The different funds will start on November, right? How are you going to measure out its period for each year? To keep it at 10 and to go into the golden month, how are you going to measure the stability of the bottom? It’s really every time the whole challenge.

Marguerite Nader, CEO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Yeah, I think the challenge that we face on the transient side of the business, we talk about it very often, is the weather challenges. It’s not the big weather events. It’s a stormy Saturday or stormy Friday weekend, and the customer knows that in advance, a 10-day advance window, and is saying, you know, I’m not going to camp this weekend. There is just, you just see cancellations coming through as a result of weather. That’s not any different than what we’ve experienced in the past. It’s really that on the transient side. On the annual side, I think on the annual RV side, there’s really high demand for our product offering because it is a really affordable way to have a second home in a location that can be relatively close to your home.

So 60, 90 miles away, and you develop a whole new friend set at this property. We see high demand for people signing up on our website to try to engage with us and book an annual stay.

Yana Gallen, Residential REITs Analyst, Bank of America: Maybe turning over to the transaction market. I know it’s not very active, but this year one of your peers announced a couple of assets that they put on the market. They also announced that they then had capital to buy a lot of assets. Curious if that just kind of increased a little bit of people shopping their portfolios.

Marguerite Nader, CEO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Yeah, I think some of those transactions, you know, the state of those, whether or not they’re when they’re closing or not, but certainly we haven’t seen much of a change from a transaction standpoint. I think there are a lot of owners who appreciated the cap rates of two or three years ago and appreciated the interest rates of two or three years ago and are waiting on the sidelines for those to come back. As a reminder, just in terms of the space, within the manufactured housing space, there are about what we would consider 3,000 investable assets. We own 200 of those. There is a real opportunity to buy more inside of the MH space. In the RV space, there’s about 16,000 RV parks across the country, 8,000 of which are private, 8,000 are public.

The 8,000 that are private, we would consider about 1,200 of those to be investable, and we own roughly 200 of those. There are a lot of opportunities out there for us to further expand our portfolio. It’s just a matter of continuing to work with interested sellers to complete a transaction.

Yana Gallen, Residential REITs Analyst, Bank of America: Could you just help us understand some of the criteria that whittles that down, that on the MH side, you look for a low number of rental units, or how do you?

Marguerite Nader, CEO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Sure. It’s actually interesting. The MH space has 50,000 that we whittle down to 3,000. Going from 50,000 to 3,000 is mainly driven by just the number of sites. There are a lot of properties that are inside of the 47,000 that are 2,550 site properties. First, it’s primarily a number of sites driven, and then we further bifurcate it between age-qualified, all-age location, and that type of thing. The biggest amount comes out when you deal with the number of sites and just the size of the property.

Yana Gallen, Residential REITs Analyst, Bank of America: Any questions?

Unidentified speaker: Is there a larger investment?

Yana Gallen, Residential REITs Analyst, Bank of America: Mm-hmm.

Unidentified speaker: It’s all about, if you think about this all-age, all the MH, because they discipline over time, over a stakeholder. They do for long periods. Not very recent, but they choose to come back frequently because of the affordability to them. They start without a care.

Marguerite Nader, CEO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Right. When we became a public company in 1992, we had some all-age assets. We sat down, we tried to figure out what should ELS become? At the time, it was MHC. What should we be when we grow up? As we looked at it, we looked at the opportunity to expand in the age-qualified space. What we were seeing in all-age was that volatility, kind of what we talk about on the transient side, that volatility that somebody who owns ELS is not looking for. We saw on the all-age side where you could have an impact to the local community, whether or not a factory closes down or some other employment issue, and you see a large vacancy rate that happens inside of the community. What we did is really focus on growing our age-restricted portfolio.

What we found is that that has represented a very stable revenue source for us. There are a lot of things that when you buy all-age property that you need to consider, you know, between what’s happening in the school districts, what’s happening in the employment, what’s happening with the neighborhood in general. As compared to what you look at on the age-restricted side, it’s really about what’s happening inside your local community. You’re much more in control. We found that the age-restricted provides a much more stable base for us.

Yana Gallen, Residential REITs Analyst, Bank of America: I think there may be a couple of larger portfolios on the market now. I think maybe those are a mix of all-age. I don’t know if you have any comments or views on those.

Marguerite Nader, CEO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Sure. Maybe Patrick could weigh in a little bit on these because some of the portfolios that are for sale, Patrick operated during a time when he left ELS for a brief moment. The portfolios that are for sale are primarily all-age assets. They do have some age-restricted assets, but there’s a desire, I believe, to sell them all together as opposed to cherry pick. Maybe Patrick, you could talk a little bit about your experience.

Patrick Waite, President and COO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Yeah, so those properties, Marguerite touched on a little bit earlier, they are typical all-age properties where generally you have people looking for an entry-level home. Frequently, young families would want to be in a good school district. They want a property that’s professionally managed. It’s very helpful to have clubhouse facilities so that kids have a place to participate in study groups and other activities. Generally, that portfolio, which is spread around to various larger owners at this point, was in Texas, some in Florida, throughout the upper Midwest, Iowa, Michigan. As was touched on just a little bit earlier, the volatility that occurs if you have an economic disruption. We happen to own and operate that portfolio going into the Great Recession, which was significantly disruptive. That just led to a transition when people need to reorganize and typically are relocating relative to their next employment opportunity.

As the economy started to recover, the portfolio recovered, and I think long-term, you know, performed relatively well. It does introduce that greater volatility that’s compared to the experience of ELS through that period. The stability of the occupancy and the revenue stream was much, much more noticeable.

Yana Gallen, Residential REITs Analyst, Bank of America: I think we have time for one more question before a rapid-fire round.

Unidentified speaker: What do you think about the fact that when two supplemental firms is that a Cadillac would have a different?

Marguerite Nader, CEO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Yeah, certainly. Over the years, our rental program has been lower, and it’s grown. I think probably 15 years ago it was about 3%. It was at a high point about 9%. Now it’s sub 3% of our occupancy. It is certainly a tool that we can use to increase occupancy. It’s much better to do that when you’re at 3% versus when you’re at 9%. That flexibility, we’re in that place right now where we have that flexibility to be able to do that. It’s certainly a good return on our investment.

Yana Gallen, Residential REITs Analyst, Bank of America: Now, these are three questions we’re asking all our REITs presenting at the conference. When the Fed starts to cut, do you expect rates for long-term debt to decline, stay flat, or rise?

Marguerite Nader, CEO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Decline.

Yana Gallen, Residential REITs Analyst, Bank of America: Last year, the majority of companies stated they’re ramping up spending on AI initiatives. How would you characterize your plans over the next year? Spend more, flat, or less?

Marguerite Nader, CEO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: More.

Yana Gallen, Residential REITs Analyst, Bank of America: Do you believe same-store NOI for your sector will be higher, lower, or the same next year?

Marguerite Nader, CEO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: I’d say the same.

Yana Gallen, Residential REITs Analyst, Bank of America: Thank you.

Marguerite Nader, CEO, Equity LifeStyle Properties, Inc.: Thank you very much.

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