John Kilroy
Analyst · Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.
Steve, I can't – I mean, obviously, we don't have a crystal ball, Justin Smart and his group follow this thing about as closely as they do anything. And I was talking with him at length the other day, and he says, "Look, steel is the issue that is the most prevalent. And the implications on cost are somewhere in the neighborhood of 2% to 3% when it rattles through the building because the building is not all made of steel." And we've been experiencing, depending upon our markets, San Francisco, Seattle and so forth, sort of anywhere from 3% to 6% increases on certain commodities over the course of the last several years. So we baked all that into the pro formas. And as we have seen by the deliveries we've done and by our comments today with regard to that, which is it's under construction, we've adequately provided for potential cost increases. Will it be a little bit more tricky, depending on what happens with tariffs and so forth? Probably. So what are the impacts? Yield-wise, we've seen sort of around that high 7, low 8 on average return – unlevered return on the office properties. Could that impact it by 10, 20 basis points? Sure. But I don't have any reason to believe it will or it won't, but we've also seen rental rate increases, so – that have sort of outpaced that increase in construction cost. I do think this, that the bigger issue, the question – if I was on your side of the fence, the question I'd be asking is, what's the premium for quality properties in more modern properties versus the older properties that are less desirable? And I think what will happen is the tenants, I believe, the modern, particularly tech, entertainment-type tenant, is going to be a little insensitive to the parallel increases in rent because they're going to go for the right kind of product versus existing product if it doesn't meet their physical criteria. But this is going to play out over time. I think we're in a good shape with regard to the very extensive contingencies and cost structuring that we do in our pro formas.