Sean J. Breslin
Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets.
Karin, just in terms of recent performance, to make a few comments there, and then if Tim wants to chime in on the investment side, that's fine as well. But we have been, probably, as our peers have been, somewhat disappointed in the job growth numbers that have been coming out of Southern California in general. You mentioned L.A. and Orange County specifically, trailing 6 months job growth has been less than 50 basis points, like 24%. The forecast is for it to tick back up in the second half of '12 and end the year closer to about 1%. L.A. pretty broad, broadly diversified economy, driven heavily by the ports, which is really a retail trade activity. And so we need to see some acceleration in some of those demand drivers before we can get better apartment demand, of course. I mean, what has been helpful there is on the supply side, has been close to 0 for the most part. There is a couple little pockets where there is some supply but it's been at very, very low levels. And in terms of portfolio performance, that's helped offset some of the softness in demand. I mean, a good thing is turnover numbers are not terribly different in those markets from where they were. We are seeing a little bit of an uplift in home sales in Orange County as they burn through some of the inventory, and single-family inventories are pretty low levels now. So we're starting to get to a point we're starting to see some price movements. So for example, in Orange County, home sales are up about 20%. And in our areas of Orange County, the submarkets we're in specifically, there tends to be even less inventory than the county on average. So that's going to continue to put some pressure, I think, and start to see escalation in pricing in those submarkets. So we're starting to see signs that things are working in our direction, bad debt coming down, et cetera. But just we need more of a broader economic recovery for it to sort of kick in. So all the signs are there, the green shoots as people sometimes say. And hopefully, we can see it come around. I mean, we did get some good news out of San Diego in the second quarter with 2 carriers came in, which is about 6,000 people in San Diego, which is a pretty big number. One of those was originally from Washington State and will be permanently parked in San Diego now, which is helpful. So we're starting to see some signs. It's just the whole picture hasn't come quite together just yet.