Thank you, Shannon. It's never good when someone says, "Stop, you have something on their back." Good morning. It's 11:00 A.M. We will now call the meeting to order. My name is Vicky Schiff, and I am the Chair of the board of Dream Residential REIT. Welcome to our inaugural annual meeting. I will act as the Chair of the meeting. Robert Hughes will act as the Secretary of the meeting. With the consent of the meeting, I appoint Daniel Munoz and Jamie Bassett of Computershare Trust Company of Canada as Scrutineers for the meeting. We will first proceed with our formal business. To expedite the formal part of the meeting, I will move, and Shannon Macri, a Unitholder, will second all motions. After our formal business is concluded, our management team will make a brief presentation, and there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please hold all questions that do not relate to the formal business of the meeting until that time. I have an affidavit from Computershare as to the mailing of the notice of availability of proxy materials and the form of proxy. Our circular and other meeting materials were made available through the notice and access system. I would ask the secretary to place the affidavit before the meeting and to keep the affidavit with the REIT's records. The scrutineers will advise that there are at least two individuals present who are unitholders or who represent, by proxy, unitholders who own at least 10%. As a result, we have a requisite quorum of unitholders present, and I declare the meeting to be properly constituted for the transaction of business. The first item of business is the presentation of the REIT's 2022 annual report, which contains the REIT's audited financial statements for the period from February 24th, 2022, when the REIT was formed, to December 31st, 2022, and the report of auditors therein. I note that the secretary has placed before the meeting a copy of the 2022 annual report. The next item of business is the election of the trustees. As stated in our circular, 5 trustees are to be elected at the meeting and five nominees are named. They are Leonard Abramsky, P. Jane Gavan, Fahad Khan, Brian Pauls, and myself. Shannon, will you please nominate the nominees? I nominate the individuals listed in the Management Information Circular, dated April 21st, 2023, for election as trustees of the REIT to hold office for the upcoming term. Thank you. As the REIT did not previously receive timely notice of any further nominations for persons for election as trustees in accordance with the declaration of trust, I declare the nominations closed. Are there any questions on the motion? Seeing none, based on the proxies received, I would mention that each of the five nominees received the majority of votes cast in favor of their election as trustee. After the meeting, we will issue a press release with the detailed voting results. Given the proxies received and the number of persons nominated for elections as a trustee is equal to the number of trustees to be elected, I propose, with the consent of the meeting, not to take a formal vote on the election of the trustees. Therefore, I confirm that the motion has been carried, and the five persons who were nominated have been elected as trustees by acclamation. The next item of business is the appointment of the auditors. The audit committee and the board have recommended reappointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers, Chartered Professional Accountant, as auditors. I move that PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP be appointed auditors of the REIT until the next annual meeting of unitholders and the board of trustees be authorized to fix their remuneration. May I have a seconder? I second the motion. Are there any questions on the motion? Seeing none, the meeting will now vote on the motion. I propose to take a vote by show of hands. I would ask those unitholders and their proxy holders who are in favor of the motion to please raise your hand. Any votes withheld? The motion is carried. PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP have been reappointed at audit, as auditors, and the board authorized to fix their remuneration. The formal items of business, as set out in the notice of meetings, have now been dealt with. There is no further business to come before this meeting. I declare the formal part of the meeting to be concluded. I now invite the management team to make a short presentation, and after the presentation, we'll have some time for question and answers. Thank you. Thank you, Vicky, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us here today for Dream Residential REIT's inaugural AGM. Before we get started, I just want to say how incredibly excited I am to be part of the DRR management team. We're in for an exciting journey, and I also want to thank Jane Gavan once again for skillfully launching the IPO of this REIT and navigating through kind of some choppy waters through our inaugural year and just skillfully managing the company. Jane, it's exciting to work with you again and be a part of DRR's future. I'm very proud of our accomplishments over the first year of operations, and I'm excited to work with the team and lead the REIT as we continue to pursue growth initiatives and value creation for our unitholders. Our portfolio was assembled over many years and is comprised of 16 garden-style properties located in the Midwest and Sunbelt U.S. markets. As an overview, DRR has 3,432 suites. We sit at 94% occupied. We have a current yield of 5.3%. We have a low 30% leverage. Our strategy is very focused and has proven effective. We are centered on the following four pillars of growth. A professional, on-the-ground, in-house operations team, supported by the latest property management technology to drive rents and maximize NOI. We allocate capital to markets which have strong renter base and attractive market fundamentals to benefit from growth over the long term. Our in-house value-add program is an additional key driver of rental rate growth. We will also grow by accretive acquisitions when opportunities arise in our target markets. I'd like now to turn it over to Scott Schoeman, our Chief Operating Officer, to provide an overview on our markets and our properties. Scott? Thank you, Brian. It's a pleasure to be here today for our first general meeting and to begin working with you as CEO of Dream Residential. I'm excited about our performance this year, how we delivered on what we said we would deliver, and how we are positioned for our future. DRR, as Brian mentioned, is composed of 16 suburban garden-style apartment communities, concentrated within three primary growth markets across the Midwest and the Sun Belt, including Greater Cincinnati, Greater Oklahoma City, and Greater Dallas-Fort Worth. We refer to these markets as our operating hubs because DRR has full, vertically integrated, boots-on-the-ground, property management, construction management, and regional leadership teams physically located in each of these three markets. The 3,400 suites consist of individually leased one, two, and three-bedroom walk-up floor plans that average around 900 sq ft per home and rent for $1.25 per sq ft or about $1,100 per month. Suburban garden-style apartment living blends the open space, independence, and neighborhood feel of single family with the amenities, access, and community bonds found in urban areas. Our garden-style apartment homes are located in desirable suburban neighborhoods, accessible to jobs and everyday living essentials. Often spread over 10 acres-20 acres with low-rise pitch roof buildings, these community-centric assets share common amenities such as outdoor pools, patios, fitness areas, and clubhouses. They also provide open, less dense, more private living areas, larger floor plans, and green space for pets and outdoor recreation. We are diversified across markets, with each of the three existing markets strategically hand-selected with favorable demographic and employment growth characteristics, pro-business, low regulation, government dynamics, and no rent control. There is no rent control in any area of our operation, and the fundamentals in each of our markets are attractive. 8 million people call the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area home. Dream Residential is in North Texas and the Sun Belt because it attracts business, it attracts new people, and it does not burden them with excessive taxes or regulation. Population migration, new companies, and corporate relocations continue to drive the ever-increasing labor force that makes Dallas-Fort Worth our center of gravity as a strategic operating hub. Many of the assets held within DRR have been owned by our Dream Plus Partnership for years. We began acquiring multi-residential communities in the Greater Oklahoma City in 2017 for the same reason that we entered Dallas-Fort Worth: Sun Belt, attractive business environment, and low cost of living. Oklahoma has diversified far beyond its initial energy-only days. Logistics, bioscience, and information system services are rooted and flourishing. Today, one of the fastest-growing and most technologically advanced HR platforms in the world is based in Oklahoma City, and Oklahoma is ranked first in the nation, leading drone innovations across the entire aerospace industry. It has been ranked the number one state for business tax climate and boasts the lowest cost of doing business in the entire country. Oklahoma led most of the nation with one of the strongest rebounds post-pandemic, and more recently, has been ranked top 10 in rent growth amongst the largest 100 markets nationwide. Like Dallas-Fort Worth and Oklahoma City, Cincinnati continues to benefit from corporate investment, population migration, and strong, sustained rent growth. Companies and people have been leaving high-tax, high-cost markets and relocating to markets like Cincinnati. Cincinnati ranked ninth nationally last year in the well-known U-Haul Relocation Growth Index that tracks customer one-way relocation moves. It had one of the largest net gains in the nation and jumped 15 spots from 2021. With seven Fortune 500 companies investing in Cincinnati's future, this market continues to outperform nationally and within our portfolio. The U.S. multi-residential sector is deep and segmented. It is estimated that 50 million American households are renters, and that there are more than 20 million rental properties, the vast majority of which, around 75%, are still owned by individuals and not institutions. Canada has five markets with populations greater than 1.5 million people. In the United States, there are almost 50 markets of that same magnitude or greater. Dream Residential is just getting started in three of those 50 markets. Our asset class is defensive and resilient. While rents in the luxury segment and coastal markets experienced negative rent reversion during the pandemic, and even more recently as the economy slowed, Dream Residential's middle-income communities sustained positive rent growth throughout that duration, and consistently surpassed national benchmarks in operations performance, such as occupancy and lease trade-outs, as well as with rent and income growth. 12-month leases provide inflation protection, and yet our residents are sticky, and renewals are strong. For-sale housing affordability is the worst it's ever been in the United States, and, pardon me, and housing availability for median income households is practically scarce. Our experience is this: When times are good, people move up into our communities, and when times are tough, people move from the high-end luxury segment down into our attainable communities. In either case, no matter the macro uncertainty, people need safe, inclusive, reasonably affordable communities in good areas to call home. Apartment rents in the expensive coastal and dense urban markets can push many Americans into a cost-burdened financial condition, where their basic housing expenses exceed 30% of their take-home income. The cost of living in our markets provides for a healthy margin, where annual rent accounts for about 19% of household growth, well below the 26% national average, as well as the cost burden range of 30%. With rent levels measuring only 19% of income per month, Dream Residential provides middle market, naturally occurring, attainable housing for residents in good neighborhoods and strong submarkets. Our residents are first responders, they're teachers, they're manufacturers, and other essential labor workforce, labor force citizens. They do not want to pay $1,000 more per month for new supply or luxury units within our local markets. Our business consists of assets that are attainable for most Americans, in demand in each of our markets, and largely irreplaceable due to entitlement issues, construction cost, and replacement cost. The attributes of our communities are in short supply, they're in high demand, and they're, practically speaking, irreplaceable. That's why we like to say it's good to be in the middle of the middle. We have learned from our middle-market residents that they value a modern living experience. We have also learned how to provide that experience to our residents in a manner that is strongly accretive to our business. Economics do not allow tenants to pay cost-burden rents. Economics do accommodate residents paying a $200 premium in exchange for upgraded in-suite renovations. Dream Residential, upon IPO, launched the value-add program to provide just that experience for our residents. Our vertically integrated in-house construction teams can renovate interior suites for thousands of dollars less per unit than third parties. Our redevelopment leaders deep select turnover suites 60 days- 90 days in advance of lease expiration in order to take measurements, to order long lead time appliances, and to pre-stage standardized kits. Immediately upon vacancy, our field managers invest $17,000 in a construction program spanning 20 days-25 days, that renews a classic dated rental into a modern, open-concept apartment home. It is a reasonably priced upgrade for our resident demographic. It provides a handsome mid-teen rate of return that makes it appealing for us to reinvest in our assets. Rochelle Plaza in Irving, Texas, provides a good picture of what we do on a daily basis across seven communities in two different markets. On the right side here, you can see how we transformed the vintage interior into a modern, open-air living space. Upgrades include luxury vinyl plank flooring, stone countertops, energy-efficient stainless steel appliances, and contemporary hardware. The program has caught on across our portfolio. During the first quarter of this year, almost 10% of our move-outs ended up signing new leases and moving back into a different but newly upgraded apartment within the same community. In this Rochelle example, the new lease resulted in a $440 spread, a 34% premium on a $14,000 investment. These successes are not limited to Texas. At our Winchester Run community in Oklahoma City, we renovated this one-bedroom box into a sweeping space that rented 41% above the expiring lease. In the short IPO year of 2022, our in-house teams renovated 226 interior suites. This year, we expect to value-add over 400 suites. When we pull out organic rent growth and mark-to-market leases, we are conservatively seeing double-digit returns on invested capital, attributed directly to this renovation program. During good times, a 14% return is good. During uncertain economic times, a 14% return on capital is exceptional. Growth markets, high demand sector, strong-boned assets, safe, middle-of-the-middle resident base, attractive value-add reinvestment returns, sustained benchmark-beating income growth. Dream Residential delivers. Our positive impact will extend to the wallet, but also to the community and to the world. We are committed to net zero by 2050, and we have partnered with globally respected organizations to better our communities through ESG initiatives as well as sustainability and community programs. We are signatory to the UN Principles for Responsible Investment and an official participating supporter of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures. It's been a privilege for me to share our operating business with you. I will now hand the stage to Derrick Lau, our Chief Financial Officer. Thank you, Scott. Good morning. Scott has gone over our markets and assets. I will now provide an overview of our balance sheet and our financials. In an uncertain economic environments, our conservative balance sheet provides safety and security. We are focused on maintaining a strong and flexible balance sheet, which will allow us to execute on our strategic initiatives. Our leverage sits at 30%, which is well below our target range and compares favorably to the broader Canadian REIT sector. We have ample liquidity totaling over $80 million. This will allow us to scale in our target markets when appropriate, as well as execute on our value-add program to drive rental rate growth and enhance the overall quality of our portfolio. Taking a closer look at our debt profile, we currently have no exposure to variable rate debt. Our average term to maturity is six years, with no maturities until 2025. Our average interest rate is 4%, which compares favorably in the current debt rate environments. Additionally, most of our debt is interest rate only. Together, these all provide an additional layer of safety. We began operations in May 2022. At that time, we prepared an ambitious IPO forecast. Despite the macroeconomic uncertainty over the last year, our portfolio has performed extremely well. Through our first full three quarters, we have delivered on our forecast, demonstrating the resiliency of our portfolio, the benefits of our value-add renovations, and the capabilities of our in-house property management team, who work day in and day out to ensure our business is operating at its highest potential. Over our IPO forecast, we are expecting 14% annualized NOI growth and an FFO payout ratio of 65%, resulting in a distribution that is well covered and safe. With a strong operations team and financial flexibility to execute on our stated strategies, we are well positioned to grow the business and generate returns for our unitholders. With that, I'll turn it back to Brian and the team, and we'd be happy to answer your questions. Thank you, Derrick. On behalf of the management team and the board, we really want to thank you for your attendance today and your support of Dream Residential REIT. We're very excited about the future. I'd be happy to open it up to any questions you might have. Yes, sir, in the back. Hey, in media, there are obviously some types of companies that are losing their head office, those getting come back to Texas and Florida is a part of that attraction. In fact, states like New York and New Jersey are the cities of the coast. My question is this, you are in Texas. What about Florida? Are you afraid of hurricanes or something? Paul, it's nice to see you again. We are in the markets you identified. They've been good markets for us. We've got a number of target markets. We've looked at Florida. Florida has its own challenges, particularly around insurance. Certainly, casualty losses that you mentioned are an impact to property values and to how they perform. I would say I wouldn't say never, but it's not really our highest target markets, our first tier target markets. It's performed well, but, you know, we're growing in the markets that we're currently in, as well as some kind of low-hanging fruit in other markets that we'd like to expand in. Well, the reason for and, you know, trying to see is the right people who want to get into families to go. Two-thirds made Duluth, the senior population in Florida. I'm not sure. Yeah, no, we have, as Scott mentioned, we have a lot of workforce workers, nurses, doctors, teachers, first responders, all of those in a lot of our communities. Some are seniors, some aren't. Scott, you may want to comment on just our the profile of our tenancy. Sure. Our profile, as Brian mentioned, is very focused on what we would call the essential workforce. These are, you know, people that are doing the essential things each day. Many of our residents work at hospitals or healthcare centers. Many of them work at, for example, GE Engineering, Aerospace, building aerospace engines, and Fortune 500 companies or industrial companies like Amazon and whatnot. We certainly have some, what you called senior citizens in our communities, and many of them have been enduring long-term residents, but we have a good blend. Any other questions? No. Yes. Yes, sir, in the back. Sorry. After rent for the last build for the data showing that, very hard to there is a good Trevor, it's a good question. I think one of the key points that Scott made in his presentation was, there's a lot of the United States population that is rent burdened, meaning that their rent is more than 30% of their income, where we fall into a different class, more of a healthy class from a financial standpoint. We have, and Scott can comment a little bit about our collections and how our properties have performed. What we have seen is that tenants, they embrace the value-add program that we had. They're prepared and able to pay additional rent for higher quality finishes, and that hasn't disrupted our rent collections or our occupancy. Scott, you can comment further just on if we've seen any rise in delinquencies or bad debt because of consumer spending or consumer credit deterioration. Sure. Thank you, Trevor. The trend in our portfolio has been opposite of that. It has been improving. So we're, you know, 96%, 97% collected each month, I think, this entire calendar year. We did see, to your point, during the pandemic, where the government intervened with some rent, you know, rent incentives and how that was distributed through local governments or local municipalities, was a challenging environment, and weaning off of that was a little bit challenging, but that was in 2021 and early part of 2022. This portfolio is flourishing right now in collections. Great. Great. Well, we want to thank you again for attending today. We appreciate your support of Dream Residential. Take care.
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