Good morning. Welcome to the InterRent REIT fourth quarter and year-end 2020 financial results conference call and webcast. After the presentation, we will open the call for questions. Instructions will be provided at that time. If you require further assistance during this call, please press star zero for operator assistance at any time. Please note that today's call is being recorded Monday, March 15th, 2021, at 10:00 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time. I'd now like to turn the call over to your host for today's call, Mike McGahan, Chief Executive Officer, Brad Cutsey, President, and Curt Millar, Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Millar, please go ahead. Before we begin, I want to remind listeners that certain statements about future events made on this conference call are forward-looking in nature. Any such information is subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to the cautionary statements on forward-looking information in the REIT's news release and MD&A, dated March 15th, 2021 for more information. During the call, management will also refer to certain non-IFRS measures. Although the REIT believes these measures provide useful supplemental information about its financial performance, they are not recognized measures and do not have standardized meanings under IFRS. Please see the REIT's MD&A for additional information regarding non-IFRS financial measures, including reconciliations to the nearest IFRS measures. Thank you. Welcome, everyone. I appreciate everybody taking their time out of their day. This is our first call that we've had. I've been the CEO for 11 years. I think this is maybe the 44th or the 45th Q. Couldn't think of a better time to have our first call. Obviously, it has been a challenging year, 2020, and I think this is just the appropriate time. First off, again, want to say I'm really proud of our whole team. Our whole team has done tremendous here in dealing with COVID and all the issues with it and making sure that our residents have been safe. They've been really up to the challenge. As we know and as you've looked at our results, again, it was a tough Q and been a tough year. We've had a bit of a pause on demand. We know that all comes from the lack of students out there, foreign and the domestic. Immigration has also been hit, international students. We've seen a little bit of acceleration, obviously, in homeownership with interest rates going down to record lows. This has all really made the amount of demand that we've had much tougher. What we decided to do was we wanted to hold our rents. We knew by holding our rents, it would be a better strategy in the long term, and it would provide a little bit of bumpiness in the short term. We think we should hopefully get through this by the end of the first half of the year, and we'll start hopefully with optimism with the vaccines coming out, and that we'll be in a much stronger position for the second half of the year and our strategy will be proved to be correct. As you also know, our multifamily class has proven to be very resilient during these times. Our collections are at records that, I guess, versus the other classes, we really haven't seen any bump in our bad debts to anything of any magnitude. The bid for our class is very strong. Regarding deal flow, we have seen increased deal flow that I've never seen in my 35 years of being involved in real estate, that we can attribute that to two factors. One of them being that the private owners are really, really tired with the whole COVID fatigue, that gets attributed to the extra cost of PPE, all the extra cleaning, the online applications. Some of them are not set up for online applications. The second item is a big thing that's pending is taxation on capital gains, which is a real big concern that I think a lot of people are seeing as a big potential impediment to sell their properties in the future. We've also, as we've gone forward here, we've still been working on our development deals, and I'm going to highlight four current developments that we have. I want to say that there is a lot of product that we're seeing come out of the ground. It really comes down to location, and I would say our locations here are preeminent. I think we're going to be in very, very good condition as we go forward. Our first joint venture, which we have with Brookfield, is at the Burlington GO Station. At this point right now, we've applied for site application. We were expecting some comments coming back from the city from our latest submission. We should get it back within a few weeks here. We're currently applying for 2,400 residential suites and approximately 40,000 sq ft of commercial space. Our next joint venture partnership we have is at 900 Albert. At 900 Albert, we're continually working on our detailed design plans and working with our consultants and our partners to make sure that we have the best product that's going to stand the test of time. We have an approved site plan application right now for over 1,200 apartments and 400,000 square feet of office space and 80,000 square feet of retail space. Our third project is at 473 Albert Street in Ottawa. Here we are going to be converting it to 158 residential suites. We are anticipating by the end of Q1 2021 that we will have our buildings permit, hopefully in hand. We are expecting construction activities to begin in late spring 2021. Our fourth and final development site is at Richmond and Churchill, which is a fantastic location in Ottawa. It's in the heart of Westboro, and here we've submitted for zoning bylaw amendment and site plan application. We expect to have our subsequent submissions to the city by the end of the second quarter of 2021. This site is contemplating right now 184 residential suites and approximately 20,000 square feet of commercial space. You can see on both levels that we've got some great development sites going and we're still very much looking at some deal flow. We've done a lot of purchases in the last year and we think we should be fairly active as we go through here 2021, especially since we've built ourself to have what I would consider one of the best balance sheets in the business. I'm going to pass you over to Brad Cutsey, the President of the company right now. Thanks, Mike. I'm just going to start off with a little bit of an operational update. As you highlighted in your opening remarks, 2020 was a year like no other one, and I hope we don't ever have to repeat. That said, I believe the multifamily asset class has proved why it's so coveted and revered as one of the best risk-adjusted returns amongst real estate asset classes. From an operational standpoint, we saw operating revenue for the quarter increase by CAD 2.7 million to CAD 41.9 million, an increase of 6.8% over Q4 2019. Operating revenue for the year ended 2020 increased by CAD 14.7 million to CAD 160 million. The increase was mainly due to the contribution from CAD 227 million worth of property acquisitions completed in the year, which was comprised of a total of 880 suites. On the same property portfolio basis, our operating revenue felt the effect of the second wave of the pandemic on the quarter and decreased by half a million to CAD 34.9 million, a decrease of 1.5% over Q4 2019. Operating revenue for the year ended 2020 increased by 3% year-over-year to CAD 4.2 million to CAD 141 million. As of December 31st, 2020, our same property portfolio consisted of 8,953 suites, which represent 81% of our portfolio. The year-over-year increase in same property operating revenues were due to a 5.3% increase in average rents to CAD 1,354. Occupancy for the same property portfolio at the end of the year was down 430 basis points to 92.4% from the comparable period last year. As Mike alluded to in his opening remarks, our effort to hold rents has resulted in an increased vacancy. This pandemic, from a real estate viewpoint, really has been the tale of two cities, as evident in our operating results. Our Montreal same store vacancy was up year-over-year by 610 basis points to 14.6%, and our Ottawa same store vacancy was up year-over-year by 920 basis points to 11%. This comes as no surprise, as the majority of our Montreal and Ottawa properties are located in the urban core, which we peg in around 70%. We have felt the biggest impact of COVID in our urban core, where there's been a lack of rental demand due to the borders closing, universities and colleges switching the classes to online from in-class, young professionals moving back home with their parents or taking advantage, as Mike commented, low interest rates and making the foray into home ownership. We believe the deterioration in rental demand is a temporary phenomenon and that the housing needs that existed pre-COVID will continue to outstrip housing supply. Same property NOI for the quarter decreased by 6.3% or CAD 1.5 million - CAD 22.4 million compared to Q4 2019. Same property NOI for the year ended December 31st, 2020, was CAD 91.3 million and an increase of CAD 0.6 million or 0.7 percentage points compared to the same period last year. The NOI margin for the year ended was 64.7%, a decrease of 160 basis points compared to 2019. However, same property NOI for the year included CAD 1.6 million of COVID-19 related operating expenses. Excluding these COVID related expenses and assuming a more normalized occupancy, something similar to 2019, our same store NOI would have grown by 5.5% for the full year and an NOI margin of 66.6%. We have long been known for our commitment to the reduction of energy consumption and supporting our broader communities, both through charitable contributions and time, and the time and energy of many of our team members. In 2020, we participated in the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark rating. GRESB is a well-known global ESG benchmark for real estate assets, which measures performance against sustainability benchmarks. We are pleased with our initial submission. Based on the results, we have continued to make improvements around measuring and presenting many of these measures we've had in place but were not made public, as well as pursuing improvements in areas that we have not yet covered internally. We anticipate sharing more information in regards to our initiatives on this front in the second half of 2021. Also in 2020, we completed a comprehensive employee engagement survey measuring the engagement level of our team across all of our regions. The benchmark for comparison purposes was companies of similar size and included over 60,000 respondents in 101 companies across various industries. We were very pleased to have a participation rate of 80% across our organization. We were also very pleased not only with the responses overall as compared to the benchmarks across many dimensions such as safety, diversity, and inclusion, and work environment. One of the most important aspects of the survey is that it provided us with critical feedback that we can use to engage our team and work together in order to continue to improve and create value for all of our stakeholders. Last but not least, Mike touched on some of this in his opening comments, is we truly believe we're embarking on a generational opportunity as we see a transformation in the ownership group of multifamily properties. Historically, this asset class has been highly fragmented and dominated by the private sector. We have started to see a significant increase in deal velocity, these groups struggle to come with terms of operating fatigue, potential changes to tax policies, and the recent change in CMHC underwriting. We believe the next couple of years will continue to present numerous opportunities for the REIT to execute on its value add strategy. This is probably an appropriate time to turn the call over to our CFO, Curt Millar, for a financial overview. Thanks, Brad. Through 2020, we have continued to invest in our technology infrastructure with a focus on sharing and collaboration tools, which we were fortunate enough to have started pre-pandemic. We continued further automation of our leasing processes and virtual property tours and the second generation of both our BI and CRM platforms. We believe that these investments in technology will help us to continue improving the service we provide to our customers, as well as provide even more scalability as we continue to grow. Our funds from operations or FFO for the quarter increased by CAD 241,000, or 1.5%, and for the year increased by CAD 6.2 million or 10.9%. On a per weighted average unit diluted basis, FFO was down CAD 0.014 for the quarter or 11.1%, and for the year was down CAD 0.017 or 3.5%. As Brad mentioned earlier, the increase in vacancy and rebates for the quarter and the year compared to 2019 impacted NOI and therefore FFO. This impact was approximately CAD 2.4 million for the quarter and CAD 4.5 million for the year. COVID related costs for the quarter and the year compared to 2019 impacted NOI and therefore FFO by CAD 164,000 in the quarter and CAD 1.89 million for the year. The combined impact from vacancy and COVID on FFO per unit was CAD 0.018 for the quarter and CAD 0.047 for the year on a per weighted average unit diluted basis. Despite these impacts, for the three and 12 months ended December 31st, 2020, adjusted cash flow from operations exceeded distributions declared by CAD 8.8 million and CAD 20.7 million, respectively. Distributions for 2020 were CAD 0.31 per unit, which was an increase of 6.6% over 2019. Distributions declared were 67% of FFO and 76% of AFFO for 2020. Over the last few years, the InterRent team has worked diligently at not only growing but also strengthening our balance sheet. We commenced 2020 with CAD 2.7 billion in investment properties, acquired properties for approximately CAD 230 million during the year, invested a further CAD 55 million into our portfolio, and recognized a fair market value gain of CAD 70 million to end the year with a portfolio valued at CAD 3.1 billion. Our debt to GBV at December 31st was 31.1%. The increase in value of our portfolio, combined with the CAD 230 million in net proceeds from an equity raise in June of 2020, has positioned the REIT well to be able to stick with its rent growth strategy, which should lead to strong NOI growth as we emerge from the pandemic. Real estate is a very capital-intensive industry, and the REIT works closely with its capital providers in planning for its future capital requirements. The REIT had CAD 1 billion in mortgages at December 31st at a weighted average interest rate of 2.56% and an average life to maturity of 5.2 years. 81% of InterRent's mortgages are insured by CMHC, which provides for favorable interest rates given the reduction in refinancing risk for lenders. At the end of 2020, InterRent had CAD 344 million of available liquidity. The REIT had a further CAD 370 million in unencumbered assets at year-end, which remain unencumbered at this time. Thank you very much, and I will hand it back over to Mike. Thanks, Curt and Brad. I appreciate your comments. Again, we know it's been a trying year on a lot of different levels for a lot of people. I'm really, again, going back, I'm very proud of our team, how they've reacted, and taken care of our very valued residents. Just everybody just pulling together as one consolidated group to achieve what we've achieved. I do believe with a lot of conviction that as we go forward, we've left ourself in a great position, and I think it'll bear the fruit, and we're hoping in the back half of 2021 and early 2022, we'll start seeing some good results. Thank you, everybody. I'm going to hand you back right now to the operator, and they'll be open for any questions that you may have. Thank you. Certainly. At this time, analysts may press star one to ask a question. Please limit yourself to two questions to allow everyone an opportunity. We'll pause for a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Michael Markidis with Desjardins, your line is open. Thanks. Maybe just before I begin, just want to commend you guys on moving to the conference call format. I think it's much appreciated, at least on our end, so thank you for that. Curt, they put you last, so I'm going to start with you first. The 2021 mortgage maturities that you have coming due, I think it's a pretty healthy number. How much capital do you think you can take out of that as you refi those mortgages this year? The mortgages we have for 2021, quite a bit of those are on some of the newer properties that we've bought and are in the repositioning phase. There's some definite upside there. The loan-to-value on those is sitting in and around the low 40% range. There is some value that can be extracted, whether we do it right now or, as you know, typically, in our repositioning portfolio, we'll wait a year to three years depending on where it's at. We could either pull the equity out of it this year or push it out one more year into next year, depending on what's going on with the rates and what access to capital we need at the time. Okay. Thanks for that. Would the composition of the unencumbered pool be similar? Would it be more of the properties that were recently acquired and still in the repositioning phase? No, there's actually a mix. There's a pretty healthy mix of both properties we've owned for a while that are fully repositioned and some that aren't. I'd say, off the top of my head, I can't give you a percentage of which, but it's a pretty healthy mix of both. Okay, great. Thank you for that. Maybe just shifting over to 473 Albert, just given that it looks like that's going to be the first thing that you guys start on. Could you remind us of your cost base with that property, and then what the expected spend would be to execute on the conversion and what type of returns you were targeting? Thank you. Yeah. We haven't usually put that out in public, Michael, I bought it around CAD 20 million. It's something right up our alley, to be quite frank with you. It's almost like a mini LIV for that matter. When we're kind of looking at it, we'll have a double-digit IRR, we feel very positive about it. Yeah. Just to add to Mike's comment, I think you also asked about on the cost base, and I believe if my memory serves me correctly, it's at around CAD 24 million. Cost to date. Okay. Cost to date. Okay, great. I just have one more before I'll turn it back. You guys do a great job showing economic vacancy for the quarter as opposed to just a percentage of suites occupied. Really appreciate that disclosure. If we look at the increase in that figure over the past several quarters, I likely know the answer. I just want to get a sense from you guys. How much of that would be an actual increase in vacancy versus an increase in incentives? Just given that we would expect that, I guess that would take 12 months to burn off in some instances, how we should think about the evolution of that line initially as we start to recover fundamentally. Sorry, Michael, I just want to make sure I'm clear on the question. Are you talking about the vacancy and rebates and the percentage that would be rebates versus? Yes. We haven't typically broken that out. I think we could maybe take that away and look at breaking it out in the future. We haven't broken out in this report or previous reports. I think I'd have to come back to you on that one. Okay. I guess just high level, would it be mostly direct vacancy as opposed to incentives? Would that be fair to say? Yeah. I think on a directional basis, that's correct, Michael. It's obviously on the vacancy has increased, I'm sure we'll get into it with some other questions, it's increased essentially in our cores, right? It's no different than what we've kind of recorded over the last couple of quarters, we continue to see that trend, specifically in our urban core in Ottawa, which is roughly around 70%. Our Montreal believe it or not, roughly around 70% as well. That's urban core. Now, the good news is we're starting to see, as you saw in the disclosure documents, we're starting to see on a quarter-over-quarter basis some improvement in our Montreal, we're going to continue to be excited at what we see, still early days. Yes, it is more on the direct vacancy than on the setups. Okay, great. Thanks. That's it for me. I'll turn it back. Mario Saric with Scotiabank, your line is open. Hi, good morning, guys. My two questions, I just wanted to focus on operations and the second one just on your IFRS Fair Value and acquisition pipeline. Just on the operational side, how would you characterize the quarter, relative to internal expectations, let's say three to four months ago, in terms of the same property NOI and occupancy erosion? Were there any surprises, either to the upside or downside, relative to internal expectations? We were a little bit more hopeful, Mario. We basically decided to hold our ground here as far as what we were doing as far as rentals and that. I don't think it was anything drastic. I guess we were all hoping that we'd be a little bit further along the way in some of what's going on here. Again, we've got a lot of conviction of where we're going. We really believe that it's going to be a second half of this year situation. We're really going to look at September as being a telltale point for us. Hopefully we'll see some good results here into next year. We didn't want to give away just for now. We thought it's better to be ride it out a little bit. Are we happy with it? No, I guess that's partly the reason why that we're having this conference call. I'd rather just take the calls, to be frank with you. Got it. Okay, maybe just as a follow-up to that, and consistent with Brad's comments on Montreal occupancy, I noted that as well, improving quarter-over-quarter this quarter. Did the leasing strategy in Montreal change at all in Q4? Broadly speaking, what are the key leading operating indicators that you look at internally in terms of what would explain why Montreal occupancy went up quarter-over-quarter, notwithstanding the schools remaining online and immigration essentially frozen? How would you describe the improvement in Montreal? We've actually just seen some good traffic flow in Montreal, and we were probably a little too hesitant in giving away incentives there. We've started giving a little bit more in Montreal, and it's really in the core. Again, we have some buildings that are right around Concordia and McGill. There's a few there that are very close to the universities. They've been really the ones that have been hit the most. We do believe with hopefully everything going back to normal. Again, we've seen a lot of positive announcements. McGill's going back full time. We're seeing a lot of the schools at least announcing that they're going to be 30%-50% in-person classes. We're feeling much better right now where we're heading in here to September. We'll think that what we've done here has proved to be the right strategy. Got it. Okay, maybe a question for Curt. Your IFRS cap rate came down seven basis points versus Q3, but you also noted the expectation of continued cap rate compression. It looks like most of your portfolio was externally appraised at year-end. How much further cap rate compression do you see in the portfolio based on the extremely elevated transaction activity that you're seeing in the market today? How much of an impact on the quarter-over-quarter change in cap rate would have the Hamilton portfolio acquisition during the quarter had? Good question, Mario. We do these at a point in time. On December 31st, we went with the info we had and the appraisers had in their books. The discussions have been that they have continued to compress here in the beginning of the year. We don't provide guidance on that, but from discussions, it looks like it could be down to four or just sub four potentially as we go forward. That'll play out over Q1 and Q2, I believe, as these transactions firm up and the data's in the hands of our appraisers. If you look at a four cap on our current portfolio, that's going to add about CAD 120 million-CAD 125 million to the FMV, which means you're going to run that CAD 0.85 mark on a per unit basis. Got it. Then the Hamilton acquisition impact during the quarter, did that have any impact on the seven basis point decline quarter-over-quarter? Or is it negligible? Yeah, no, that was pretty negligible overall. It's just some of the markets where we've seen a lot of activity in the Hamilton, London markets and in and around there, so that definitely did come down. When I look at the overall portfolio, it was more or less across the board between sort of the Eastern Ontario and the Hamilton, Niagara region sort of leading the pack, if you will. It was across the board. Okay. Thanks, guys, for the time and the conference call format. Appreciate it. Fred Blondeau with iA Capital Markets, your line is open. Thank you. Good morning. Just looking again at occupancy, looks like you remain quite confident in terms of demand, but is there a threshold in occupancy where you could be tempted to change your strategy? We're watching it really carefully, Fred. It really hasn't come off a lot from the Q3. We believe we're in the trough from what we're seeing. We do feel that, again, we're watching it really closely. I think we're just going to stick to our guns most of the way through here, but I don't see it really coming off a lot out of here. If we do see anything that looks like it's going to be a change, you know what I mean, as far as this gets prolonged, we will look at it at that point of time. The only thing I would add to Mike's comments, Fred, is while we're not happy with the last couple of quarters where we've trended on the vacancy, we really do believe it's COVID related and it's a timing blip. As far as when does the rental demand come back, for some of the reasons that we highlighted in our opening remarks, I think we've communicated over the last couple of quarters that we're really not going to have a good idea until through this leasing cycle where that demand is. We're also very cognizant that immigration's not just going to come back right off the bat. While we know it's going to come back, it will have to get through applications. On the flip side of that, we have what we believe is a double cohort and things like that adding to the rental demand. We also believe, any rental demand we lost to home ownership has abated. I think a lot of that's been satisfied and pulled forward. Really the way we're approaching this, September is going to be a big month for us to see where we're at, because we really don't want to buy occupancy at this point, but we have that opportunity that lies ahead of us. That's totally fair. On that subject, it looks like you're sticking with seeing improvements in Q3, Q4 this year despite talks of a third wave of the pandemic. Is that fair to say? Yeah, I think so for sure. I'll tell you, going on with Brad's comments, I'll even use my own family situation. I have four kids that are home right now that probably wouldn't be at home. We love the fact that they're home. It's been fantastic. My wife is extremely happy. All these kids are already talking about they'd like to leave and get their own places. They wouldn't be at home if it wasn't for this situation. I know just talking to their friends, all these kids are really, and it's not just the students, it's the young professionals. A lot of the young professionals have come back home to live with their parents. I just look at the whole multiplier effect of where this could go. I just see that there's a lot of kids that will be leaving, getting their own apartments. Even if they're young professionals, you're going to have the domestic students coming back. You're going to have a double cohort of students effectively going. A lot of the kids that were supposedly going to university here at the start of this year, have only taken part-time courses. They don't want to lose that experience. You're going to see that domestically. Hopefully, we get to the point where it's international students come back in. Probably it's going to be the 2022 item, and then immigration. I just see that there's a lot of things that we see as a really positive going forward, and we built this thing for the long run. We're all fairly significant shareholders, so we think this is the best course of action for all of our shareholders and stakeholders. That's great. Thank you. That's it for me. Thank you. Jonathan Kelcher with TD Securities, your line is open. Thanks. Good morning. First question, just to sort of continue on the vacancy. Are you seeing demand down, like less showing, less inquiries, stuff like that, or are you noticing that you're losing units on a price basis? I think it's been pretty consistent from what we've seen as far as demand. Actually, it's up a little bit from where it was. In this Q, it seems like it's up a little bit, to be frank with you. We're seeing some good things. Again, we're really believing that there's a lot of people that are sitting in their parents' homes, and for a variety of reasons that they're itching to get out. I'm very lucky to have a good lens on that on a personal lens and seeing my own kids and their friends. We've actually found demand a little bit stronger. Okay. When you say this Q, do you mean Q1 versus Q4? Like how is this trend- Yes. Starting with Q4. Yeah. Sorry, not compared to this time last year, Jonathan. No, I know that. Q4 is hopefully the trough on occupancy. Would that be fair to say? I think it's going to be probably fairly similar. That's just my take on it without seeing it. Again, I'm thinking it's going to be a little bit bumpy here the first two quarters of this year, and hopefully we'll see some good improvements in Q3. Again, we're really sticking to our strategy. We could easily rent up, Jonathan. That's just not what we want to do. We don't want to buy occupancy. We think that in the long run, that is not a good strategy. Okay. That's helpful. Then I guess on acquisitions, you said it's the most you've seen in your career. Do you think there's enough supply coming or enough supply out there that cap rates might drift a little higher, or is demand that strong? I think demand is hugely strong. There's a wall of capital out there, and I'm amazed at some of the players that I've seen at the table that I did not know had the capability of taking down deals. There is a wall of capital out there. I think you've probably seen that even in the stock market. I'm amazed again by how many players there are at the table. Okay. Was it the Vancouver deal that you guys announced that closes in April, was that a marketed deal? Yes, it was. Okay. Thanks. I'll turn it back. Thanks, Jonathan. Brad Sturges with Raymond James, your line is open. Hi, guys. Maybe just to go back to the occupancy discussion a little bit, to start off with here, just so I understand it correctly, it sounds like perhaps the move-outs or the turnover rate that you're experiencing in Q1 so far, that's stabilized a little bit more compared to where you were at the back half of last year? Yeah. As far as the turnover, it's been pretty consistent, to be quite frank with you. From year-over-year, and even the quarters haven't changed really that much sequentially. As far as the demand, we're finding a little bit more demand this quarter. Okay. Maybe just on the discussion on the development side, maybe you're not giving specifics on specific properties or projects, but do you have general target returns that you're looking to achieve on an unlevered yield perspective relative to what you can buy in the market today? Have you put more analysis or thought into what the total portfolio intensification potential could be over time? First off, yeah, we're very mindful of our returns that we're looking for. We're obviously trying to beat by, I'd say, a good 150 basis points of what we can acquire out there. We're definitely looking at double-digit IRR returns. As far as the intensification, we know we have lots of capability. We haven't put that to paper to anybody, but we've been working our way through it. These are some of the projects that we've got. They're the early ones, and they're in various degrees of development, obviously. Getting through the entitlement process, we just wanted to feature those. Again, they're terrific locations. We really believe location always wins the day. Right now, if I look at our portfolio, and if I would've said, not even on the development, but on our assets, we have got great locations all the way through. Unfortunately, CORE has been hit okay. I think that's a temporary relocation. Truly, 100% believe it. We all believe it. Okay, great. I'll turn it back. Thank you. Matt Kornack with National Bank Financial, your line is open. Hi, guys. Sorry to beat a dead horse here. Just maybe on market-specific drivers, as we come out of this, would you anticipate that maybe Montreal would move faster than Ottawa because it's mostly student-related? Then maybe if you could, on an asset-by-asset basis, and you don't have to go into granular detail, but are you seeing severely heightened vacancy in those McGill and Concordia assets, but something more normal outside of the university realms? Yeah. On the latter part of your question, 100%. It's more heightened in Ottawa, too. That's around our properties around the universities and college, Algonquin and Ottawa U Carleton. We've definitely been hit around the schools for sure. Again, we really believe that with these schools opening up, that we're going to see some good take-up as far as those vacant apartments are. We feel pretty strong about it. All right. Just, I guess you don't expect a difference in the Ottawa versus Montreal repopulation? Actually, the one thing is that we're really expecting Montreal is going to see a good flow. Once we get immigration opened up again, we really strongly believe Montreal is a bit of a gem that people don't fully appreciate. I think Montreal is going to do extremely well. Yeah. A couple of comments I would just add to Mike's comments, Matt, is on Montreal, just given the number of post-secondary institutions in Montreal, and going back to what we were talking about with potentially, call it, for lack of a better term, a double cohort year. I think you're already seeing some of that excitement come into the marketplace. If you would talk to our marketing department, Montrealers do look for their apartments and want to secure it sooner than later. They will enter into something a little sooner than later. I would say in Ottawa, one of the differences in the sense that it's a government employee-based town, I don't think there was the same level of anxiety as far as job security in this city. That really lent itself well to anybody that thought that maybe they were going to purchase a home, call it in the next five years, really took advantage of the low interest rates. We've already seen it in both regions. We're already seeing pretty strong housing pricing in Ottawa, and we really believe a lot of that's been pulled forward and since been satisfied. Given that, it's probably Ottawa is a little behind Montreal in the cohort. Those trends have been notable on house prices. You've seen 20% increases in both Ottawa and Montreal, I believe, for housing. Do you have a sense as to what portion of the turnover would've been related to people moving out, or is the bigger component here ultimately young professionals that moved in with their parents and the international student component? Yeah. It's really a combination, Matt. It really is. Even in our own shop, I saw some younger kids that reached out to buy a home. They're pretty thankful that they did. I've had even people say to me how much money they've made by buying their home in the start of 2020 or not. Anyways, yeah, it's been a real combination. There's been a variety of factors. I would say by far Ottawa has been for home ownership just overall, just because of the government town and the steadiness of the jobs and that. That we've had a lot more in Ottawa for homes versus Montreal on the other side. Okay. No, fair enough. Thanks, guys. It's all on paper until you sell it, though. Matt, just to add something to that, because we keep talking about the double cohort piece, right? It's important on several fronts because it's both on the entry into the schooling, right? People that were first year September last year that ended up not moving out, and people that are going to be first year this year. It's also the double cohort of young professionals that graduated, right? The ones that graduated last year, the ones that are graduating this year. If you graduated last April, you probably weren't out looking for an apartment and anything. You were moving back home or doing whatever. There's sort of multiple branches of that double cohort. On the move-out piece, I agree 100% with Mike and Brad and what their comments were. You think through what the fact, if you pull home ownership ahead a couple of years in someone's plans because of what's going on in the market, it takes a while to save up and buy that first home. You pull that ahead, people stretch a little bit for a year or two years out . My expectation is that'll create a bit of a void coming in behind it because, A, those people didn't have enough time to save up. B, as you alluded to yourself, the 15%-20% increase in home prices we saw from end of 2019 to end of 2020. Yeah. No, that 100% makes sense to me. Thanks, guys. Joanne Chen with BMO Capital Markets, your line's open. Hi. Good morning, guys. Maybe just shifting back on the leasing front. We're already pretty much done with Q1. Just wondering if you could provide some color on with respect to what you guys were seeing in terms of turnover and occupancy and incentive use in terms of the trend so far in Q1. Okay. I didn't hear it 100% clearly, but I think you're just asking about the trend for Q4 versus Q1, if I'm right, Joanne? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Again, it's been pretty consistent. We're seeing just more traffic though right now than what we've seen before. Do I think that we're going to see everything return to normal for Q1? No. Do I think we'll see it in Q2? No. I think we'll be lucky. Again, we're looking at September of this year, and that's when we think we'll get back, hopefully, to normal. We'll be watching very carefully, and a lot of it's going to come down to how is our government dealing with the vaccinations and giving people confidence to go back out and back to school and that. We're going to have to watch it very carefully. Yeah. I'm sure we all have our opinions there. Maybe just switching gears, I guess you mentioned in terms of the deal flow. Could you maybe talk more specifically with your recent expansion into Vancouver? What are you seeing on the ground now in terms of opportunities in that market? We've seen a lot of different opportunities in Vancouver. Again, it's early stages for us. Got to know a lot of people by being out there myself, being on the ground with our team. We are very bullish on Vancouver. Again, we're building this again, as we've said, for the long run. We think there's going to be a good amount of people that'll be coming to Vancouver here as we get through this. We also know there's a huge population of students that go to the variety of institutions there in Vancouver. Their vacancy rate over the years have been ultra-low. We're looking at 1% for a lot of years. We really believe there's a lot of potential in Vancouver. Again, with the technology sector becoming more and more apparent, and more jobs coming to Vancouver. We just think there's a lot of great things about Vancouver. We're early stages. We're not putting all of our funds into Vancouver. We're watching it and being careful and mindful. The one thing I would just add to Mike's comment, Joanne, it's a little different of an inventory. It's a little more mid-rise. Typically, you don't get the same size building in Vancouver. When we had this opportunity to joint venture with Crestpoint, which we're super excited about as a capital partner. We saw the opportunity that we got some scale, which is extremely hard to do in Vancouver. It wouldn't have made sense from a one-off basis, but now we're going to be able to pick up and cherry-pick some smaller buildings in the other markets we probably wouldn't have done. It makes sense in this market because they're clustered together. While individually they look small, but from an operating standpoint, they're clustered and they're around the corners from each other. Was the add-on done, the add-on that's in April, is that done with Crestpoint or? These couple? Yeah. We've taken them down. They potentially will be with Crestpoint, too. These were off-market, whereas that's one of the things we've already started to build some relationships with people that we're getting to see some properties before they come to market. We're excited about it and we've got a great partner that knows that market very well in Crestpoint. We're very happy about that partnership. Got it. Okay. No, thanks. That's very helpful. I'll turn it back. Matt Logan with RBC Capital Markets, your line is open. Thank you, and good morning. Just wanted to follow up on Matt's question with regards to how concentrated the vacancy is in your portfolio. Could you give us a sense for, across the whole business, how many buildings really have above average vacancy that might be north of 10%? What percentage of the portfolio might be running more in the traditional 97+% occupancy band? It's really concentrated around our schools and in the cores. That's really where it is. As you know, Dean, 97 is not our typical operating. It might. It's not, sorry, Mike. It's not our typical operating model. We tend to be a little lower than that. 97 would be on the high end of that range to begin with, right? Suffice it to say, it's fairly concentrated in a handful of buildings in the core and around universities. Yes, 100%. That's why we feel we got a great opportunity here as we go forward. We think we're in a good position. We talked a lot about it. Obviously, a lot of it's going to be will unfold here as we get into September. We feel pretty good about where we're going. I guess if we think about the demand profile, if you were to lower rents, would there be sufficient demand that you could fill units? Or are these buildings where there's simply no students on campus and there's no demand no matter what the rate or incentives are? It would be a combination. There'd be some demand. It would be definitely not a student demand, per se, but there would be some demand. Again, we just think it's counterintuitive to where we want to go. Again, it's fairly concentrated again. No, I totally appreciate that. Matt, the one thing that I would just add to that, as you're quite aware, we like turnover, right? In those areas, we want to keep it consistent with the tenant profile that we've been leasing to historically as well, right? In terms of turnover and perhaps the mark-to-market potential in the portfolio, would you say that's diminished relative to where that would've been in, say, November at roughly 15%? Sorry, can you repeat that, Matt? In terms of the mark-to-market opportunity for the portfolio, would you say that's diminished materially since November when you reported Q3 results? I thought my microphone was on and it wasn't. No, it hasn't changed significantly. We've been looking at it consistently across on a property basis, on a city basis, and on a regional basis, and it's been fairly consistent across the board. Maybe last one from me before I turn it back. In terms of the NOI margins of the business this year, do you think we get back to the 65% range if we back out some of those COVID-related costs that we've seen in 2020? I think we do. It's just a matter of whether we get there in sort of 2021 or 2022, just given the timing like Mike was talking about of when that comes back. I think if things track well with the rollout of the vaccines and students, I think we could see the latter half of this year, like Q3 and Q4, be on track or in line with previous years. Q1 and Q2, I think we'll still see the impact of the increased vacancy. Yeah. Just to mention, the run rate we'd get back. Yeah. Appreciate it, guys. I'll turn the call back. Thank you very much. Dean Wilkinson with CIBC, your line is open. Thanks. Morning, guys. Mike, I'm going to take from your comments that I was extremely lucky that my kids did stay at school. My kids didn't have an option because they were closed down unfortunately. I'm assuming that your kids went to somewhere like Western or somewhere? They're out in Laurier, so they got to stay. Okay. Yeah. They didn't have. Thank God. No. I'm pretty happy to have them home, actually. It's been a great family experience that I think they've experienced now and would like to move on from. Happy to have them home, happy to have them leave. There's been a lot of talk on this call about the occupancy, but I'd like to talk just more on rental rates. You did acknowledge that the mark-to-market opportunity in the MD&A has kind of gone from a 25% - 20% move. How does that 20% mark compare against what you realize on suite turns? For the calendar year of 2020. Do you track the duration of those tenant move-outs? How long they've been there? Obviously, the longer they've been, the bigger that market. Are you seeing more of a shorter-term tenancy turn or a longer term? Just what should we be thinking of in the 300 or 400 basis point backfill in terms of that mark-to-market capture on the re-leasing going into the back half of the year? It's been pretty consistent about as far as our turnovers and that. We do believe, again, the back half of the year, we're going to see, hopefully a return to normal. Hopefully that our mark-to-market will move up a little bit on the back half of the year. We'll see how it goes, though. What was 2020's lift on the turns? Can you remind me of that? If you've got that handy. I don't think we've disclosed the lift on turnovers before. I don't think we're going to do that on this call. That's why I'm asking. I thought I'd try. I know it's an interesting question, which reminded me, but I was waking up, Dean. I had my second coffee, so I caught that one. I was hoping I'd catch you just after the first one. All right. Thanks, guys. That's it for me. Yash Sankpal with Laurentian Bank. Your line is open. Good morning. Good morning. Just wanted to understand the incentives being offered in your markets and if you could provide color on your incentive policy. We look at it case by case and building by building. We probably should've maybe did a little bit more earlier on. We didn't do that. We were very hopeful that we would get through this a little quicker than we did. We're doing it now, but it's really case by case, building by building. It'd be more elevated, whatever we're giving would be in core buildings. Right. How is the market in that area? Are your competitors offering a lot of incentives as compared to what you are offering? Any color there? Some of our competitors are offering more. I guess we were watching, being very mindful in that. Yeah, some of our competitors are offering more than what we're doing. I think we're being very specific and being very targeted on the buildings. We're also making sure that we don't change the profile of buildings. We've been very careful and been very mindful of what we're doing. How many months of free rent is being offered in general in your markets? It's been really targeted, depending on There'd be more around the students. If we can get our students right now, it could be one to two months. There's some that you're getting zero, and we're pushing our rents in our portfolio. Everything's really a huge disparity going on right now. In some of the properties that I'm shocked about how the demand is very strong and we're pushing rents. We're being very targeted. Okay. That's good. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about your repositioning program. Has that program been affected by the pandemic, or you continue to do what you were doing before? It's continuing on. Nothing's changing. We're being mindful of what we're in. We are continuing on with that whole repositioning, I guess, and trying to high grading the properties to an extent. We're continuing on. We're watching, again, the markets. We're going to be mindful of what we do. Again, we really believe this is the right course of action for all of our shareholders as we go through. We think this is the right course of action. Being mindful that some of this stuff is out of our. We can't really do too much about what goes on with the vaccine. We are very hopeful. We've seen a lot of positive news. We think we're doing the right moves. Okay. That's it for me. Thank you. Fred Blondeau with iA Capital Markets, your line is open. I apologize. I didn't mean to overextend the call. I realize it's still relatively early, but I was wondering if you could give us a bit more color on how's the Vancouver portfolio performing so far. More importantly, how should we be viewing the relative contribution of Vancouver this year and next? It's a smaller piece of our portfolio. It's something that hopefully over time will balance out some different areas. As far as contribution, it's really early. We're just going through doing some renovations right now. We are really trying to do a little bit of upgrading on that portfolio. You're not going to see heavy rentals right now. We're expecting we're going to start seeing heavy, I guess, more traffic. Actually, I'm kind of surprised because I'm hearing there is much more traffic than we thought there would be. We think we'll really see some good rentals come this summer. No, that's great. Thank you. Mario Saric with Scotiabank, your line is open. Hi, sorry, just a couple of quick other ones on my end. Really focusing on your student exposure. Across your entire portfolio, what's your best guess in terms of the percent of the portfolio that's leased to students, both domestic and international? I would say it's about 8% or so, 7%, 8%. The problem too is that when you look at it's also the young professionals too in the portfolio. It's a kind of a two-pronged effect. That's really where we're getting it. Those are people that usually want to be in the cores. You have kids that will graduate, they'll stay downtown because they want to be at the bars, the restaurants, the whole bit. Now, unfortunately, first off, you can't get into many, even depending on the zone you're living in. If you are in an area where the bars and restaurants are open, they're very hesitant. That whole experience is gone. We believe it'll come back, actually. I think it's going to come back in a much higher velocity than even before, personally, once we get through it. I think everybody's reasonably tired of sitting at home, especially the young ones, watching my own kids. I'm feeling very bullish of where we're going to be at the end of this. Just on that comment, Mike, even internally with some of our younger team members, when you engage with some of our younger future leaders, they're sitting there, they're young professionals, and some of them are just chomping at the bit to get out. I've asked them, how are you and your friends looking at it? Because you're kind of in the cohort that really matters in our urban core. Consistently, I would just say at least 75% are all saying it's just a matter of time. We'll be back. We all want to live in the core. It's just really when we have more visibility, when can things get back to normal? Right now they're looking at this as an opportunity to save a little cash and be able to fit out their place a little nicer once they do move out. Got it. Would you say that your exposure to the young working professional, for lack of a better description, is comparable to the 7%-8% student exposure? I would say yes, for sure. Again, where we're getting hit is in the core. That's basic. I would say definitely. Got it. Just maybe on the concentration. Absolutely sounds like you're being hit in the core, as you mentioned multiple times. One of your peers has noted that their vacancy in student-driven buildings is 30%-40% in the portfolio. Are you seeing that type of concentrated vacancy in your student buildings in your portfolio? Yes Is it much less than that? In certain buildings we are, yes. Got it. Okay. That would be very consistent. I think we'd all be fairly consistent. Got it. Based on your experience in Montreal, you mentioned McGill announced expectations for in-person classes in September. Typically, when would international students arrive in your buildings for a fall school year that starts in September? Are they typically 12-month leases? They would arrive in August typically, but I've seen some arrive later. I'll tell you though, I'm going to say everything to me this next year is like, it's changed. I don't think there's anything I'm going to go rule by thumb. I'm going to rule by day, rule by the hour. Everything's changed. You got to look at your stuff consistently all the time, being mindful of what's happening out there. Will these students arrive in October, November, and do their first part in online? Who knows, right? All I know is that the universities, a lot of them have some financial duress. We've seen that play out in one school in particular. I believe that they're really going to want to up their game as far as international students. I've been hearing the same from a couple of different sources. We'll see how it all plays out. Again, I don't think I would go rule of thumb on anything right now. I would say the good news, Mario, to that, of all the different education institutions that are kind of potential demand and feeder demand to us, over 50% of them have come out with some kind of intention of increasing their in-class exposure. What that translates into, who knows? We'll have to take a wait and see. That is definitely positive news and more visibility than we had three months ago. Each couple weeks, more and more institutions are trying to come out with what their intentions are come the fall program. We even seen some with the summer program. Directionally, it's going the right way. Great. Just on that point, Brad, McGill, I think, announced three weeks ago in terms of expectations for full in-person classes. Anecdotally, have you seen any impact on leads within your McGill focus? Yeah, we're starting to see a little bit of impact there. Usually the kids would all lease from May to April 30th. I think that we're seeing that this may change a little bit. Yeah, we are starting to see a little bit of impact. I'm very hopeful as we get through the spring here, we're going to see lots and lots of positive news. Okay. Thanks, guys. That's it for me. There are no further questions at this time. I'd now like to turn the call back over to Mike McGahan for closing comments. Thank you. I appreciate everybody joining us on our first call. Excellent questions from everybody. Again, this is obviously a very different times, very strange times, to say the least. We are feeling very bullish on our strategy. We think it's the right course of action. We think all of our shareholders will benefit from this in the long run. Again, have a sole belief in our team. Our team has done a tremendous job getting through this. Their engagement with our residents was unbelievable. Just checking on them for everything, from to make sure that they had groceries, any pharmaceuticals they needed. I really value our whole team members. As a company, I think we're all going into a very good time. We've learned a lot about ourselves during this. I think we've all learned a lot about ourselves on a business side and personally. I feel very fortunate to be part of this great team. We look forward to having some very good results as we get forward through at the end of this year and into 2022. Thank you again. I appreciate all the analysts and their coverage. I appreciate everybody joining us on this first call. Thank you very much. This concludes the InterRent REIT fourth quarter and year-end 2020 financial results conference call and webcast. Thank you for calling.