Canadian Apartment Properties Real Estate Investment Trust

TSX:CAR.UN

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q3

[Operator]

Hello, everyone, and a warm welcome to the Canadian Apartment Properties REIT Third Quarter 2021 Results Conference Call. My name is Simone, and I'll be coordinating your call today. [Operator Instructions] With that, I have the pleasure of handing over to your host, David Mills. Please go ahead, Mr. Mills.

[David Mills]

Thank you, Simone. I'm hardly the host. But thank you for this. Before we begin, let me remind everyone that the following discussion, we include comments that constitute forward-looking statements about expected future events and the financial and operating results of CAPREIT.Our actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements as such statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties. Discussions concerning these risk factors, the forward-looking statements and the factors and assumptions on which they are based can be found in CAPREIT's regulatory filings, including our annual information form and MD&A, which can be attained at sedar.com. I'll now turn things over to Mark Kenney, President and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

[Mark Kenney, CEO, President & Trustee]

Thanks, David. Good morning, and thank you for joining us. Scott Cryer, our Chief Financial Officer, is also with me this morning. Let's get started. As you can see on Slide 4, we continue to generate solid quarterly performance this year and look for increased gains in our key metrics going forward as we work our way out of the COVID pandemic. Revenues were up, driven by the contribution from our acquisitions, increased monthly rents and continuing high occupancies. Stabilized NOI increased again. As did our NFFO, all while maintaining a very strong payout ratio of 58.8%. Our growth also remains accretive to unitholders with NFFO per unit up 3.6% in the quarter. Turning to Slide 5. We look forward to another record year in 2021 as our performance through the first 9 months show solid gains. All of our key benchmarks were up over last year, including revenues, NOI and NFFO, with NFFO per unit rising over 3%. We continue to generate solid and accretive growth for our unitholders. It is also important to note that we have experienced very few collection issues through the pandemic. To date, we have collected over 99% of our rents as we work with our residents to understand their issues and to ensure that we collect on a timely basis. Looking ahead, we expect to see further increases in occupancies, accelerated growth and much improved operating performance as we gradually return to more normal markets and operations. From an operating perspective, our ability to generate solid performance in both good and bad times is clearly demonstrated by the results of our stabilized portfolio, as you can see on Slide 6. Occupancies improved again in the third quarter, while net average monthly rents continue to increase. Our track record of organic growth also continues, with same-property NOI up a solid 2.1%, while maintaining a strong NOI margin of over 66.1%. We believe we are turning a corner with the successful vaccine rollout and a return to more normal markets. Our leasing and marketing programs continue to generate increasing occupancies, as you can see on Slide 7. After almost 2 years of operating under significant pandemic restrictions, our occupancy has remained highly stable, rising to just under 98% at September 30. You can also see that our bad debt as a percentage of total revenues have remained low throughout the pandemic at under 1%. We expect occupancies will steadily improve through the balance of this year and as the pandemic eases. We are already seeing an increased interest in in-person and online potential resident visits. With strong and accelerated demand for our affordable, high-quality, and spacious suites. Another positive sign is the rent increase we are seeing on suite turnovers and increased churn that we've experienced over the last 2 quarters. As you can see on Slide 8, rents were up 6% on turnover in the third quarter on higher churn rates, continuing the positive trend since we bottomed out at the height of the pandemic in Q1. Looking ahead, we are experiencing more in person and online visits, and we expect we will start to see more higher mark-to-mark rent increases in the quarters ahead, moving us toward the higher levels of increases we generated prior to when the pandemic set in. As we have stated before, our renewal increases continue to be affected by rent freezes implemented last April to help our residents work through the pandemic. Looking ahead, however, rent guideline increases of 1.2% in Ontario and 1.5% in BC are good signs. Importantly, we will be implementing these increases in both markets effective January 1, 2022, capturing a full year of these guideline increases in both provinces, currently represents about 55% of our total NOI. It's a positive sign. Turning to Slide 9. We continue to increase the size and scale of our property portfolio. In 2020, we added 3,262 suites in sites for $820 million. So far this year, we have acquired 3,122 suites and sites, the majority in our key GTA and BC markets. Our acquisition pipeline remains strong and robust. And despite some cap rate compression that we expect to generate further accretive growth in the quarters ahead. In September, we also sold 87 noncore suites for $52.5 million, and we continue to evaluate our total portfolio to assess whether recycling certain capital will contribute to more accretive growth. I'll now turn things over to Scott for his financial review.

[Scott Cryer, Chief Financial Officer]

Thanks, Mark. As you can see on Slide 11, our balance sheet and financial position continue to strengthen through the third quarter with a conservative debt to gross book value and continuing high liquidity. Our over $1.2 billion in Canadian unencumbered properties provide additional liquidity should it be needed. And in addition, we had $243 million available through our credit facilities and $138 million in cash at quarter end. In total, if we were to access all these sources of capital, we have available liquidity of over $1.3 billion. And even if we did this, our leverage ratio would still remain a very conservative 41%. Looking at our financing through the first 9 months of the year, we locked in very low interest rate of under 2.2% on our refinancing and top-ups and extended our term to maturity. We expect we will continue to benefit from the current low interest rate environment for some time and expect to finance a total of approximately $1.3 billion in mortgages in 2021. And at quarter end, over 99% of our mortgages incurred a fixed interest rate. We were also pleased to see another significant increase in the fair value of our property portfolio, increasing $722 million so far this year, following a $750 million increase in 2020, excluding the impact of net acquisitions, operating lease buyouts and foreign exchange. As you can see on Slide 12, we continue to capitalize on the current low interest rate environment, reducing interest cost in Canada and extending the term to maturity. The ability to capture strong spreads and low interest costs in the Netherlands is also contributing to our lower overall interest cost and extending the term. Further to our strong and flexible financial position, looking back over the last few years, you can see on Slide 13 that we have met our goal of maintaining very conservative debt and coverage ratios even through the pandemic. This conservative approach underpins the stability and resilience of our business and the sustainability of our monthly cash distributions to unitholders. This focus on maintaining one of the strongest balance sheets in our business will continue going forward. Our mortgage core portfolio remains well balanced, as shown on Slide 14. As you can see, in any given year, no more than 13% of our total mortgages come due, thereby reducing risk in a rising interest rate environment. Looking ahead, our current ability to top off renewing mortgages through 2036 will provide further significant liquidity. You can also see that we have considerable opportunity to reduce our long-term interest costs in today's attractive interest rate environment. The current 5-year and 10-year estimated rates of approximately 2.3% and 2.6% are well below expiring mortgage rates of between 2.6% and 3.4% over the next 3 or 4 years. I'll turn things back to Mark to wrap up.

[Mark Kenney, CEO, President & Trustee]

Thanks, Scott. Looking ahead, we see a number of very positive value drivers that we are confident will generate strong and growing returns for our unitholders over both the short and the long term. Turning to Slide 16. You can see several of these key drivers of value that will take place and hold in the months and years ahead. Our accretive portfolio growth will continue based on our proven and successful asset allocation strategy. We are experiencing a strong pipeline of acquisition opportunities in our targeted value-add apartment and MHC space where we continue to focus on Canada's 3 largest cities, Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. Importantly, the low interest rate environment provides significant opportunities to acquire properties with strong cap rate spreads to reduce interest costs on our refinancing initiatives. Our industry-leading balance sheet, leverage, and liquidity also position us for growth going forward. We believe that we will also benefit from a number of market trends as the pandemic eases in the months ahead, including increased immigration, a return to the office and in person learning. An increasingly affordable alternative of our high-quality rental portfolio offering as compared to the significantly higher cost of owning a home. In addition, our ongoing investments in our properties and our operating platform are enhancing the attractiveness and value of our portfolio, improving efficiency, driving revenue gains, reducing costs, and helping us meet our ESG goals. In summary, we remain very excited about our future. Our focus on the mid-tier sector meets increasing demand for affordable, high-quality homes. Our predominantly suburban locations outside of Downtown Cores and our larger-sized suites, town homes and manufactured housing sites are meeting the needs for renters that are seeking more space. We're experiencing a strong pipeline of accretive acquisition opportunities and expect to see solid portfolio growth in the quarters ahead. The continuing low interest rate environment provides significant opportunities to acquire properties with strong cap rate spreads to reduce our interest cost and refinancing initiatives. In closing, I want to once again thank everyone at CAPREIT for their hard work and dedication and to our residents for their patience during these challenging clients. Looking ahead, we are confident we are gradually returning to more normal market conditions and will continue our 25-year track record of growth, strong operating performance and delivering enhanced value to our unitholders. Thank you for your time this morning, and we would now be pleased to take any questions that you may have.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Jonathan Kelcher of TD Securities.

[Jonathan Kelcher, Analyst]

First question, Mark. You talked about -- it sounds like a pretty good acquisition pipeline. You are selling some assets. How should we think about capital recycling with regards to funding your pipeline?

[Mark Kenney, CEO, President & Trustee]

Yes. So the acquisitions that we -- sorry, the dispositions, I should say. We're seeing cap rates that start with a 1, really mid-1 cap yield. And they're not -- these buildings aren't trading because of their income value or cap rate value, they're trading because of development potential. And the several trades that we have done, we're in a great position there because we haven't even started the development process ourselves, the entitlement process, but they were land assemblies, where our buildings just happened to be in great locations. So the reality is, if we can continue to sell cap rates in the 1s and buy cap rates in the mid-3s, we'll just keep doing that.

[Jonathan Kelcher, Analyst]

And then how should we think about your own development program that -- there's just an enough to go around, I guess?

[Mark Kenney, CEO, President & Trustee]

Well, there's lots there, but we're going to continue to do the work. We're inching towards entitlement on several sites. But I'm cautious right now. The pricing environment, what we're learning is it's difficult to get cost commitments on development that are more than 90 days out. There are supply chain issues, things -- the cost of things are moving around.So as we're penning pro formas, they're really uncertain right now. Until the supply chain settles down, I'd be very cautious about proceeding on the opportunities that we have. But that being said, if we continue to find a way of recognizing the land value in some of our buildings with cap rates trading in the ones, we'll continue to look at that.

[Jonathan Kelcher, Analyst]

Okay. And then just switching gears to operations. Both the Toronto and Montreal markets had a negative same-property NOI this quarter. Can you maybe give a little bit of color on what's happening in each of those 2 markets?

[Mark Kenney, CEO, President & Trustee]

Well, I think it's what we had predicted. Q3, we were all hoping to see perhaps more of a hockey stick return, but the trend is extremely positive. Like it seems to be almost daily now what we're seeing upticks in traffic and those upticks in traffic can obviously allow us to price our product properly.But the trend of occupancy, you can see in the portfolio, we're now down to almost under 2%. And that allows us to just have confidence with our pricing power going forward. So I think we can look forward to seeing the trend continue into Q4. It's not slowing down. If anything, it's escalating.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Brad Sturges of Raymond James.

[Bradley Sturges, MD & Equity Research Analyst]

Just to follow-on to the commentary there. Is that more of the kind of the key under 30 demographic you're seeing in terms of improving traffic? Or do you see maybe some other demand drivers starting to come back a bit more like foreign immigration or even international students?

[Mark Kenney, CEO, President & Trustee]

So I'd characterize the market this way. It's now an issue of back to work mandating. So those under 30s, it's really going to now track very closely the appetite that employers have to mandate back to work. Many employers still haven't done that, but it's starting to happen, and we're seeing the direct results of that.As generally speaking, in cities where back to work is being mandated or hybrid work or whatever the case may be, we're seeing people return to the market. Secondly, on the student phenomenon, this is speculation completely, but we're very optimistic that there will be in-class learning in post-secondary institutions that don't currently have in-class learning. And what that might result in, if we're being optimistic, is enrollments in the second semester that you wouldn't normally see. So kids that chose to not go to post-secondary are continuing their education because it was online and they're staying at home. There might be an unusual uptick in activity if there's confidence of in-class learning in Q2. On the immigration front, I wouldn't say the wave has really started yet, but it's got to be reflected in these applications getting processed and the traffic uptick that we're now seeing. So it's all the factors that I talked about during the presentation, but they're all moving into positive momentum now.

[Bradley Sturges, MD & Equity Research Analyst]

That's good color. In terms of acquisitions, as you said, active pipeline focused on the big 3 cities. What would be your appetite for, let's say, Alberta, Calgary, or Edmonton, perhaps? Is that more on the radar today or still kind of more of the focus on the cities that you've already alluded to?

[Mark Kenney, CEO, President & Trustee]

I think the good operators in those markets are doing really well. I think that the story for those 3 markets, well, just, let's say, Edmonton, Calgary, if you want me to comment on those. The worst of the pandemic is over and the worst of the oil and gas movements are over.I think there's a sense of optimism in those cities because the oil extraction regions that are active are going to stay active. It's highly unlikely infrastructure dollars will go into drilling more oil. Looking at what's happening with the price of oil, it's got to be positive there as well. The issue that I think good multifamily operators are trying to overcome is there is still a lot of new construction product, and the quality is quite jaw dropping. But I would say, in general, where there's attractive cap rates, the upside is likely moving in a positive direction there.

[Bradley Sturges, MD & Equity Research Analyst]

And I guess last question, in terms of funding future acquisitions. You did a deal on Sinclair West with the vendor taking back stock. Is that going to be a component of future deals more so than what we've seen in the past? Or is there more appetite from vendors to take back stock as part of acquisitions?

[Mark Kenney, CEO, President & Trustee]

Yes. There's definitely more private vendors in the market now, as we've talked about. The appetite to take cap REIT stock and running an apartment building in a challenging environment has been enough for some vendors to say, we like your currency. I'm very open to doing deals where I'm striking a deal at above NAV and avoiding discounting of the stock and dilution to our existing unitholders and the cost of underwriting charges, so fees.So effectively, at Sinclair, we did a private placement when you think of it, without the need to move to the capital markets and having discounting, and the cost of issuing equity. So we're open to that. There's a limitation to what we can do in that regard in our own way of thinking. But with something -- the strategy that we're open to if it's going to circumvent a market process and give us access to a deal at attractive values that we may not be competitive in the open market on.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Joanna Chen of BMO Financial Group.

[J. Chen, Director of Equity Research]

Maybe just jumping back to the previous question on some of --on the softness on SCLI in Toronto, Montreal. It looks like some of the expenses in those 2 markets jumped up quite a bit. Could you maybe provide a little bit more color? Obviously, I guess, on the top line, things are trending the right direction. But maybe just on the expense side of things, are you seeing something different there causing some of that pressure?

[Mark Kenney, CEO, President & Trustee]

You can see a mild uptick, that's correct. As we come out of the pandemic, we're clearly doing a degree of catch-up of work that was not being done. Residents weren't comfortable to a large extent, having work done in the common areas or even in their units during the pandemic.So as tensions there have eased, we have seen an uptick in residents wanting to give access and residents being comfortable with seeing us do work in the common areas. We also rolled out our portal early in the pandemic, which really gives people the ability to put in a service request order, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And our mobile crews that work 24 hours, 7 days a week, are able to respond to those. So it's really just a matter of are people comfortable with us coming in and a bit of catch-up. I don't think there's any alarming trend there.

[J. Chen, Director of Equity Research]

That's good to hear. And I guess, thus far, how has the leasing trended in October and thus far in November? Has it kind of kept pace with what we saw in Q3?

[Mark Kenney, CEO, President & Trustee]

I think what we're saying is all the trends are positive. We're seeing an uptick in all markets. And I would just point to all of the drivers of demand that we talked about in the presentation are all very positive.

[J. Chen, Director of Equity Research]

And maybe just switching gears back on the acquisition side of things. You mentioned kind of given how competitive the current pricing environment is, do you say most of kind of the targets of what you guys are applying. You mentioned earlier around the 3ish cap range. Would that be fair? Or are you finding that continuing to compress?

[Mark Kenney, CEO, President & Trustee]

Well, we're always trying to price in a perfect world and we move around these metrics. 150 basis points of spread between the cost of 10-year money cap rate, where we see with confidence, 5% bottom line growth. And we will move around that target if we think there's more bottom line growth, and we'll want to increase that spread if we think there's less.But that is truly the discipline that we're using. When we leverage cap rate debt levels on acquisitions, we don't try to buy acquisitions with leverage. We want accretive assets day 1. And it's just that discipline. And really, it's a game of numbers. The acquisition group this year has again surpassed the underwriting of over 300 deals that we have found of interest. And our success rate is around under 5%, but it's resulting in some very, very large, high-quality acquisitions in terms of overall value. So we're just highly disciplined.

[J. Chen, Director of Equity Research]

That's helpful. And maybe just one last one for me. Switching to maybe on the regulatory side of things. With the upcoming election next year in Ontario, are you guys thinking potentially that it could mean any changes? What is your thinking around potential changes on the regulatory front with that election? Or is that [indiscernible] right now?

[Mark Kenney, CEO, President & Trustee]

I think that the narrative is truly becoming a narrative of supply. And I think the predominant housing dialogue is around homeownership affordability. And I think that that will definitely drive political attention. But if interest rates are rising, and we're seeing some softening of the markets, and they're not overheating the way that they were, we will hopefully find ourself in a more balanced housing market.I'm optimistic there. But our view is that our engagement with government, which is generally positive, is around being part of the supply equation. So that's all I can really say. The political thinking appears to be around supply, which is positive.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Matt Logan of RBC Capital Markets.

[Matt Logan, Analyst]

Mark, you talked about occupancy, potentially having some room to increase further, despite having very little vacancy in the portfolio already. When you look ahead, what needs to happen in CAPREIT's portfolio and perhaps the broader market before the business is back to delivering mid single-digit organic growth and you're seeing mid-teens spreads on new leases?

[Mark Kenney, CEO, President & Trustee]

I think it's back to those drivers of demand again. The under 30s coming back from home, whether it be to go to school or mandated back to work. Immigration we've talked about. All the drivers around affordability. The impairments to being able to buy a home.All of these things have got to do with how comfortable people are out shopping for an apartment and living in core cities again. The suburban portfolio has been relatively unaffected. It's really core Montreal, core Toronto that have been the most impacted, okay? So the trend on all those drivers is positive. And what we've said so many times in the past, there was a housing supply crisis before the pandemic hit and there's a housing supply crisis that's even more exaggerated today, not just because there's more people, but because a lot of the supply has left the market. And when we're talking about core Toronto, core Montreal, to some extent, core Vancouver, those units that were being rented individually, condo units, Airbnb units. A lot of the owners that suffered vacancy there sold their units into end user hands. So it's our assertion that the rental pool has actually gotten smaller during the pandemic. And as those units have moved into end user hands, it's only exaggerated the going forward demand for apartments. But again, it's really driven by those key drivers that we talked about in the presentation.

[Matt Logan, Analyst]

It's an interesting comment on the condo transition. When you think about those core markets of Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, like where would they be relative to pre-pandemic levels in terms of demand? Are we kind of 80% there, 90% there? How are we kind of tracking towards a recovery?

[Mark Kenney, CEO, President & Trustee]

I would -- if we're just using anecdotal numbers, I would characterize Montreal as 80% there. Toronto, arguably 90% there, 85% there, somewhere in there. And Vancouver, 95% to 100% there. We saw people come back the most quickly to work. But it's Montreal, definitely that's returning last and Toronto, we're seeing again, daily improvements in our traffic.

[Matt Logan, Analyst]

Maybe just changing gears here for a moment. You talked about kind of peeling off individual assets with some density potential. And certainly, selling at a 1.5% cap. It sounds like a pretty good idea to me. How big could that disposition program be? And kind of what's your outlook for maybe selling some of that density over the next couple of years?

[Mark Kenney, CEO, President & Trustee]

I would, at this stage, characterize it as opportunistic. In markets where we've been fortunate enough to have locations that are part of land assemblies, and that has happened to us now a couple of times in Toronto, we are comfortable recognizing that value for unitholders. There are perhaps assets that are no longer strategic because the value-add program is highly evolved. And if there are cap rates in those markets that we believe are disconnected from value, where we can recycle that capital into more accretive, higher upside real estate investments, we're going to do so.But I think the point on our dispositions is just that the value that we've claimed is there, is there. It's there on the development front, how we recognize that value in the current state, I think it's just sensible to take those extremely low cap rates and recycle them in the marketplace where we think it's appropriate. But I would not characterize this at all as a strategic change. At this stage, I think we would just call it opportunistic, good real estate decision-making.

[Matt Logan, Analyst]

And in terms of that development potential, like how much of that is reflected in cap REITS, IFRS NAV? I mean there's 10,000 units across the portfolio that you could build, but maybe just wondering how much you baked in.

[Mark Kenney, CEO, President & Trustee]

In our case, it's very difficult to truly recognize the value until the entitlement has happened. So when we're talking about developing on our own lands, there is clearly cap rate compression just through the general opportunity. When you're in the acquisition market and there's deemed to be development opportunity on some of these transactions that we're seeing, it's baked into the cap rate, okay? You might get a lower cap rate, you won't necessarily get attribution for full value.So in CAPREIT's case, we're not recognizing the full value until such time that we get clear entitlement. Otherwise, it's an unfair way to approach things. So it's consistent with how our appraisers look at our properties. We take the same general approach. But the exciting thing about the last couple of dispositions is it's clearly demonstrated that we were achieving values far beyond our IFRS attribution, and that's just a very positive sign. So to answer your question specifically, it's not really until we get to the stage of getting defined entitlement.

[Matt Logan, Analyst]

And maybe one last one for me, Mark. When you say you're trading some of these assets above your IFRS values, how much higher would those asset sales be relative to where you're carrying them?

[Mark Kenney, CEO, President & Trustee]

Well, again, very cautious about how I say this because we only have a couple, but we were certainly compelled because we were approached, and there was a significant spread in those 2 cases. But it's hardly a portfolio review. Again, we were not actively marketing those properties. We are identifying properties that are perhaps nonstrategic at this point. But we were approached in both cases on those, and it was just too compelling to not do.And I've got to add that the developers that assemble the land, were able to get far more density with adding our properties than we would have been able to get on a stand-alone basis. So I became very, very comfortable that I wasn't giving up any value because a land assembly that we have not done doesn't give us the same density and development opportunity that we could have on our own. So again, it's a great testimony to good asset making good asset allocation. Both the deals that we've -- well, the one deal we've announced as an operating lease, and we're seeing that our operating leases that we have made freehold do have significant value.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Matt Kornack of National Bank Financial.

[Matt Kornack, Analyst]

With regards to incentive usage maybe in your portfolio and then in the broader market, you were able to maintain high occupancy. So I'd assume you're maybe using less incentives at this point. But are you seeing peers who are trying to fill up more aggressively, use them at least now? And what do you see in terms of trajectory on that front?

[Mark Kenney, CEO, President & Trustee]

Great question. It's a hard one to answer. I think that I would characterize our use of incentives as having been wise in looking back. The net financial effect of our incentives, I think we've generally correlated to be about the equivalent of 1% annualized vacancy loss. Scott did those numbers and can provide you more detail.But the problem is in certain core markets, and really, Montreal would be a standout here, competitors are all offering incentives though. We track that very closely. Like where we're able to taper off is buildings that we've achieved full occupancy on. And regardless of what's happening in the marketplace, we are not using incentives. But where there's a wide use of incentives, and we're trying to improve those vacancies, we're still using them. But I would characterize incentives as tapering at this point, but with us as we amortize them over a 1-year period. So they're with us into 2022, but will be bleeding off in, hopefully, Q4, Q3 2022.

[Matt Kornack, Analyst]

And then judging from your commentary more broadly, I guess, as the demand drivers come back in Montreal, Toronto, those should go to 0 and turn into rent growth.

[Mark Kenney, CEO, President & Trustee]

We're achieving both right now. Like if you look at -- Scott, you may want to talk about this, but when you look at what we're doing, actually look at the quarters, and you can see that rent growth on mark-to-market is definitely there. And somebody tried to get me to give more color on that. I think I gave positive momentum. But yes, we're very confident. The drivers are returning.And I believe, and it's just through feedback that we've had from real estate brokerage on the private ownership side that a lot of condos went into end-use her hands. And when you look at condo new developments and condo trades in places like Toronto and Vancouver, in particular, and to a certain extent, Montreal, they're not being bought by investors anymore. $1,300 a foot, you can't make viable rental work en masse. When we were in the $500 a foot condo acquisition market, you could make $2,500 to $3,500 rents work. We're in a very different environment now. So as those investors have made the exit, I believe we've got a smaller pool of rental out there. I certainly know we don't have a larger one. Any new purpose-built has not kept pace with the required housing needs.

[Matt Kornack, Analyst]

It makes sense. And I can draw my line here from 3% at Q1 6% to wherever.

[Scott Cryer, Chief Financial Officer]

October as a trend here is still consistent with that. And I think Ontario and actually Halifax is a huge driver, which would have been not necessarily always the case going back 3 or 5 years. BC is kind of following. But actions positive pretty much across the country.

[Matt Kornack, Analyst]

I guess, maybe a last one for me. I mean some of what's come out of this pandemic may be permanent. What are your thoughts in terms of, again, markets like Halifax or you've gone into Kelowna, Victoria, where there's going to be some retirement community in place. What are your thoughts? Like is there some permanence to what we're seeing? And does that impact how you deploy capital going forward?

[Mark Kenney, CEO, President & Trustee]

Again, we have to wait for the data to support what I'm saying, but anecdotally and instinct wise, I think the pandemic, it wasn't just served that it's created this labor shortage, which is really a real thing. I think it was early retirement to a great extent.A lot of people that had contemplated retirement in the next 5 years escalated those plans to now, okay? So that bodes well for retirement communities like Kelowna, like Victoria BC, Quebec City, et cetera, okay? On the domestic university front, Canadian kids are definitely wanting to get back-to-school. And when the tidal wave of international students returns, and it is significant, those markets are going to come under even more pressure, okay? And then the last theme that I don't see changing in the CAPREIT portfolio is the suit to do well because people want more space. So we emphasize the space offering at CAPREIT through our townhouses, through our manufactured homes, and through our predominantly suburban portfolio. And there's not negativity in the market at this stage.

[Operator]

Thank you, Matt. Your final question.

[Matt Kornack, Analyst]

Your confidence in the outlook, which is, I think, abundantly clear in your comments. Have you, at some point, given reconsideration to cap REIT strategy with respect, just given the drivers you're seeing? Or is affordability still the most pressing issue for you going forward?

[Mark Kenney, CEO, President & Trustee]

Well, I know you can handicap me for my enthusiasm in that because I think most people I know [indiscernible] enthusiasm. So handicap that, but I am optimistic. I think that it's a part of our business plan. The difficulty a lot of apartment owners, not just CAPREIT, but a lot of apartment owners have had. During the pandemic and now as we come out of it, is really doing those renovations, practically speaking, getting them actually done.So in a market that hasn't returned to full force, where we are still competing for residents, it's only sensible that that program slows. But as we come out of things, the demand drivers return, clearly, that program was sensible. And even with our renovations and the mark-to-market rents that we hope to achieve, it's still affordable living. It's highly affordable living in great locations and great quality. So I'd just say, at the end of the day, CAPREIT has not deviated at all from our business plan of focusing on quality homes for people to live in.

[Matt Kornack, Analyst]

And I guess just asked maybe differently, relative to the amount of [ ITV ] you were doing, let's say, pre-pandemic and let's say, next year or the year after, we're getting back to that level, depending on how things play out. Just given the returns that you can get, do you see that as being something you want to amp up further, both from a number of units or spend perspective? Or is it something that would just remain consistent with historical?

[Mark Kenney, CEO, President & Trustee]

I think we'd return to historical. A lot's going to have to do with the labor shortage situation. A lot is going to have to do with those demand drivers coming full back. But there's no deviation, I would say, from our pre-pandemic business plan of providing high-quality homes.So a lot of it has to do with our ability to execute, not just the conviction of spending the dollars. But in my mind, has turned to no change in strategy here.

[Operator]

This concludes today's Q&A. So I would like to hand you back to Mark Kenney for any closing remarks.

[Mark Kenney, CEO, President & Trustee]

Thank you very much. Thank you to all that took the time to show interest in CAPREIT. We appreciate the support. We appreciate the interest. Any questions, I would direct you to reach out to either Scott or I for clarification. And wishing you all a very nice day and a happy Remembrance Day to come. Thank you.

[Operator]

This concludes the Canadian Apartment Properties REIT Third Quarter 2021 Results Conference Call. Thank you for joining. We hope you have a great rest of your day. You may now disconnect your lines.