Good morning, and welcome to the InterRent REIT Q2 2021 financial results call. I'll now turn the call over to Sandy Rose, Director of Investor Relations and Sustainability. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining InterRent REIT's Q2 2021 earnings call. You can find the presentation to accompany today's call on the Investor Relations section of our website under Events and Presentations. We're pleased to have Mike McGahan, CEO, Brad Cutsey, President, and Curt Millar, CFO, on the line today. As usual, the team will present some prepared remarks, and then we'll open it up to questions. 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 August ninth, 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 measures, including reconciliations to the nearest IFRS measures. Mike, over to you. Thank you, Sandy. I hope everybody's doing very well. Things are much more positive than our last time that we talked. I think everybody's in a much better frame of mind. I can tell you that we are in a very good frame of mind. We see that a lot of the things that we were, I guess, contemplating and discussing over the last few Qs are kind of playing out to an extent, maybe not as rapidly as we'd like. We are seeing with the uptake of vaccinations and just the opening up of the economy, a lot more positivity out there. Post Q, we actually were starting to see it in the end of this last Q, we're seeing now heavy traffic and almost getting back to normal, and in some cases, in some properties, above normal, which we're really excited about because we know we haven't really got the full impact of obviously immigration, international students. Once we get those pieces behind us, boy, there'll be huge tailwinds here. We are happy to see that people are, I guess, kids are leaving their parents' houses, and they're back out trying to rent, and they're trying to obviously enjoy the personal and social engagement with their friends. You can see that the patios and restaurants and many areas are much busier. Traffic's very busy, just in general. A lot of positivity for where we're headed. We feel very optimistic about rental growth. We're seeing that too. We're happy with our whole strategy. Our strategy, we think from the get-go it's going to work out really well. It's going to work out great for our shareholders and all of us in the room here are shareholders, and we're all very excited, and we like what the future looks like. I guess I'll just touch on it quickly. I'll get into it later on where there's a lot of product out there right now, but there's a wall of capital chasing it, so it's very competitive. I think you'll see us continue to transact where we've been pretty nimble on some stuff. Some stuff has been off- market, which we're really happy to get it. Feel very good about where we're going. We also feel very good about, in particular, I was a little concerned a little bit about Ottawa, and I do see some better take-up coming in Ottawa, really post-quarter. Again, it's not fully happening and to the great degree that we'd like it to come. Still, we don't have the federal government really announcing what they're doing when they're getting back to work. What I have to say is I don't think everybody realizes they think that Ottawa is just a government town. We're very lucky. We have a lot of great tech companies, and they're kind of picking up the void, and we've got some great universities and colleges here, which it looks like they're growing too. It's all been very good news. In Vancouver, we're hitting some really top-end rents, and we were very excited about that transaction, what we did a couple of Qs ago. I know some people have asked about this, what's going on with the legislation in BC. It looks like it's going to be almost the same kind of formula that we have in Ontario with the above-guideline increases. It looks like it's going to be almost the same formula there. We are excited, too, hitting on Ontario, that they actually announced that we're going to have a guideline increase for 2022 of 1.2%. We see a lot of good things in the horizon here, and we're happy to say that we believe our trough that we hit was in really May, early June, and we're seeing very good signs right now. We're not perfect, but we see some really good sunny skies opening up. At this point, I'm going to pass it over to Brad, and Brad will run through some of the financial pieces with Curt. Thank you. Thanks, Mike. Good morning, everyone from my side as well. We thought it might be helpful for these calls to have a snapshot of our key metrics for the quarter off the top. That's what you'll find on slide seven. The top-left chart outlines the occupancy trend over the past year for our total portfolio in blue and on our same- property portfolio in green. You'll see that as of June last year, we were already feeling the pandemic-related pressures in our occupancy figures. As with the commentary from our last earnings call, our occupancy has stabilized, and we're confident that it will continue to climb back toward our historical 95%, 96% level as we move into 2022. If you move to the middle left-hand side of the slide, you'll see that external growth in the first half of the year has propelled double-digit revenue and NOI growth figures for our overall portfolio. We are also encouraged to be able to report positive same-store growth figures for Q2 and year-to-date now that we've seen vacancy start to decline, coupled with the continued increase in average monthly rent. The bottom left chart shows that due to the scale effects and cost disciplines, these top-line improvements are flowing straight to overall FFO and AFFO. We show strong year-over-year prints for both the quarter and year-to-date. Moving to the top right of the slide, a quick snapshot of our acquisition track record this year. We are delighted to have closed on the transactions this quarter valued at nearly CAD 134 million, of which our share is CAD 124 million, bringing our Q2 year-to-date total to nearly CAD 450 million, or just shy of CAD 293 million at our ownership interest. We have also announced a transaction post-quarter for a 94-suite property in Mississauga with our joint venture partners, Crestpoint. Offers some great synergies with our recent acquisitions down the road. In the bottom right, you can see that our balance sheet is in great shape, and we continue to have ample liquidity to take advantage of external growth opportunities that may arise. All in all, we are feeling positive about Q2 and certainly about the quarters ahead. Turning to slide 9, we use as a quick reference for our portfolio composition in the core regions. I'd like to point out that over 80% of our NOIs in our four core markets, which just happen to be Canada's top-ranked tech talent markets. Turning to slide 10, we wanted to put our current occupancy levels in context. As you know, we bucket our portfolio into repositioned suites and those which have been acquired after January 1, 2018, where we still have reposition work to do. As you can see by the black line, we typically carry higher vacancy in the latter category by design, but which is why you won't see us at 98%, even in normal times. As you know, we decided early on during COVID not to buy occupancy, and we continue to believe that was the right decision. All segments and regions of our portfolio have seen steady increases in average rents. We also hope that this chart helps illustrate the opportunity in a non-repositioned portfolio as we continue to execute on our CapEx plans. We continue to see a gap to market of at least 20% across our portfolio. Going back to some of Mike's commentary at the start of the call, we also expect to see market rents grow from here. On that note, let me turn things back to Mike to walk through our capital spend. Thank you, Brad. As you can see, I’m on slide, I believe it’s 14. I was talking about our CapEx and our whole repositioning program. As you can see, we have not stopped our repositioning program, and we still got quite a number of suites that were in the process. We keep adding to the amount that we’re doing, as we see a lot of, again, the take-up in the rentals and the potential rental growth we think is great. We have not slowed down the whole CapEx repositioning program. You can see that we bought a number of buildings. Very happy about where we’ve been adding to. Great. We’ll just keep adding to the same areas that we’ve been focused on in Vancouver. Just a couple of tuck-ins, same with St. Catharines. St. Catharines has been great for us. We've had a couple of properties we've had there for a while that have really seen some really nice uptake. Happy to buy in Oakville, Mississauga. We've also had, I guess, a further small JV with Crestpoint in Mississauga. That was just we were both chasing the same- property, and we found out and we said we might as well just work together. Very happy with our relationship there with Kevin and Elliot and the team. As you go forward, you can see that we'll still continue to be active, but there's a lot of capital out there chasing, and really, you got to be very nimble. On the development side, we've just started. We're just in the process of starting here our office refit to multifamily. Really like where we're going on that. I think we're going to see some good results there. As we've talked about from previously, we're in the midst, and we keep pushing through on the 900 Albert, Richmond and Churchill, our Burlington lands. I just want everyone to be, and I know the people that have traveled with us before, we have a number of sites that we have future densification prospects, and you may start seeing some of those coming as we complete or get through some of these other ones that we've been working on for a while. Lots of good prospects for as far as the development side and acquisition side, again, driven by really just deploying our capital properly. Again, even though we are doing development, we'll always be, I guess really, true to ourselves. We've always been a value-add creator, and we'll continue on doing that. Again, I see some very good signs, but it is a competitive market, and I think you're also seeing that on the private market transactions out there that I don't think they've been fully baked into not only our values, but any of our peers, to be frank with you. It's very competitive out there, but again, we have longstanding relationships, and I think we're on the ground and we know how to see value and create value. At this point, I'm going to pass it over to Curt, and Curt's going to talk about the balance sheet. Thanks, Mike, and good morning, everyone. As we all know, our investment properties make up the bulk of the value on the balance sheet, not only for us but for most real estate companies. On slide 19, we've provided some more color regarding our weighted average cap rate by region for our investment properties. For the second quarter of 2021, we recorded a fair value gain of CAD 59.5 million, driven by the NOI improvement in our same- property portfolio and further cap rate compression. Overall, the cap rate has decreased eight basis points from Q1. This reduction is a combination of including the Vancouver portfolio in the model, as well as a three basis point reduction in our cap rate overall across the other four regions relative to Q1. We currently sit at a weighted average portfolio cap rate of 3.98%. Given the current market environment and discussion with our external advisors, we believe there may be further cap rate compression in the back half of the year. On slide 20, you can see that the REIT is in a very healthy financial position. Our debt to GBV on the 30th of June was up slightly to 34.4%, owing to an increase in our mortgage debt following our Q2 acquisitions. At the end of the quarter, the REIT had mortgages of CAD 1.2 billion at an average term to maturity of 3.7 years and a weighted average interest rate of 2.41%, reflecting a further 6 basis point reduction in the interest rate from Q1. Two-thirds of our mortgages are CMHC insured, which provides favorable interest rates given the reduction in financing risk for lenders. At June 30th, the REIT had approximately CAD 260 million of available liquidity, which along with its current debt to GBV ratio of 34.4%, offers ample runway to finance future capital requirements. Before I turn things back over to Mike to wrap up, we wanted to highlight some of the work we've been doing on the ESG side of things. The main thing to take away from slide 22 is that we are approaching sustainability with the same long-term lens that we apply to everything we do. The slide shows some initiatives that bore fruit in Q2. It is important to note that many of these have been worked on for over a year or two now. We understand that in order to provide real sustained value, our initiatives need to be well thought out and woven into the fabric of our company. We'll have more to say during our Q3 earnings call, alongside with the release of our dedicated sustainability report. I'll leave it there for today. Mike, back to you for a few closing words. Thanks, Curt. Appreciate your input. As everybody knows, I guess already figured out that when we do these, I don't like to have a script. I kind of talk off the top of my head, and I'll try to keep it short because I know that in some cases I go on too long. First off, really happy with our team. Our team's done really great things, and they're all getting back to normality, which is terrific. I appreciate all the work that they've done, especially the people out in the field that keep the company going and looking out for all of our very valued residents and our shareholders. They've been fabulous. I think now, as we're all pretty happy of where things are heading. We're not going to say that we're really satisfied with this Q because we're far off from where we'd like to be. What we do see is there's some very encouraging signs going forward. We obviously will see some good uptake here in 2021, we believe in the back half, but we really look at what's coming in 2022. Just with the immigration, international students and we think we're going to just be in amazing shape, great tailwinds for not only us, but like multifamily in general for the next couple of years. We also know that as we've gone through this, that we've learned a lot and we've broadened our team. We've got a much deeper team along the way. We've embraced technology, and not all of it is even fully deployed yet, and that we've been spending a lot of time with it. I can just see some of the items that we're working on the analytics side and some of the customer relationship software that we have. We just think we're really going to put ourselves in an amazing position as on a go-forward basis. We also know that we've been very disciplined. We've kept our balance sheet nice and clean, and we're lowly levered, that we're in a really very great position as we go forward. You'll see us continually to transact, but we'll be mindful in what we do, and we'll always try to look to see how we can deploy our capital the best. Again, we really appreciate the analyst community and our Board and our shareholders and our valued team and most all, our residents through all the way through this. We do look forward. We see that we have some much better position going forward, and we feel very positive of the future. Again, not super satisfied where we're at today, that's for sure. We just see where things are going and the leasing momentum that we're seeing in the last little bit, we just think we're out of the trough, so to speak, and we're starting to climb up, and that's a great sign for everybody. Anyways, I will stop at that point. Thank you, everybody. I'm going to open the floor to some questions, and we'll do our best to give some answers. Thank you again. At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star then one on your telephone keypad. Our first question is from Mike Markidis with Desjardins. Your line is open. Good morning, everybody. Thanks very much for the data on the leads. That's very useful. We obviously see your occupancy trend, Q2 versus Q1. I'm actually wondering if you could comment on the conversion that you're seeing in July. We see the increase in the leads, and how's the conversion direction? Yeah. No, July's leads are obviously higher than what they were in June. We're seeing good conversion. It obviously varies by community. Not only just the city. We're extremely happy about what we're seeing in our conversions right now, in Vancouver and Ottawa, to be frank with you. It's kind of funny, as if you remember a couple of, I don't know if it was last quarter or the quarter before, that I was a little more concerned about those two areas there, and I said Well, I wasn't really ever concerned about Vancouver, to be frank with you. I was just more thinking that it'd get pushed a little longer down the road, but it's gone very well. Okay. Yeah. I'd just add to that. The only observation I would add to that, Mike just touched on it, is the fact that Montreal last quarter really picked up some steam and it continues to do well, as we mentioned last quarter. Finally, it seems like Ottawa is now trying to catch up to where Montreal was and whatnot. It is encouraging, Mike. Okay, great. Thank you. Just with regards to Crestpoint and the 50/50 on the new property in Mississauga, are you guys exploring vending in any existing assets in anywhere in the portfolio into further JVs with Crestpoint, or is it purely going to be on new product going forward? Right now, we haven't had any discussions at all about vending anything in. It's on new product, and we have had discussions about other properties and to be frank with you, we've offered on other properties. We'll see how that all evolves as we go forward. No, definitely not vending anything at this moment in time. Okay, great. Last one from me before I turn it back just on 473 Albert. You guys are making good progress there. Sounds like the projected IRR is really healthy. Curious if this is a one-off or if you guys are seeing any other opportunities to take down a vacant office building and reconvert to resi in the near term. We have looked at some other ones, and we'll continue to look at anything that we think we can create value. All pencils through. I think right now, there's such a wall of capital out there, Mike, that we've got to be creative at times and seeing what can we do to hopefully maybe outmaneuver or put ourself in a really good spot that we can create the kind of value that we're used to. We'll definitely look at that. We'll look at anything, to be quite frank with you, that makes financial sense. Okay, great. It's good to hear all the positive. The next question is from Mark Rothschild with Canaccord. Your line is open. Thanks, good morning, everyone. Clearly, the tone is very positive in regards to values of assets. Are there any thoughts to maybe sell additional partial interest in properties or even to sell outright assets considering how hot the market is? Is your view on fundamental strengthening more important? Well, I do feel that the fundamentals are going to continue to strengthen. Saying that, we've never been afraid to sell off some assets. There could be some assets sold here over the second half of the year. We're going to analyze each one. I don't think I'm far from saying before that we've looked at potentially selling Trenton at one point. We've looked at potentially even Aylmer at one point. Saying that they've both done incredibly well during this whole COVID, I guess we got a little bit lucky on those two aspects. We'll look at anything. Again, we're always looking to try to derive the best value for our shareholders. We'll look at all properties as we go forward, so. We do feel very, very positive of where the market's going, and I think you're going to see a couple of pretty good years coming here in the multifamily sector. Saying that we're positive, we're positive coming off a very low spot, too. I'm not going to say that we're not where we would have been in 2019. We do see 2022, I think it could very well upend the 2019. Okay, great. On fundamentals, clearly you sound positive on leasing. To what extent is that based on the return of university students and maybe international students? Or is it more just general trends you're seeing? I think it's university students. I also think it's young professionals moving back out of their parents' places. I think I've mentioned that I've had the same. I'm going to use my own home as a litmus test. That's happening. I think it's just, we have not seen the full brunt of, I'll tell you right now, immigration, obviously. I think almost all the immigration numbers that we're seeing were already people that were here on the ground, and that's getting baked into the current immigration numbers. Really, we have some international students, but not to the same extent that we've had before. We're hopeful we'll see more and more arrive here at the end of August. I don't think that's going to be fully baked until 2022. That's just my take. I don't have a crystal ball, but that's just what we're seeing right now. Okay, great. Thanks so much. The next question is from Jonathan Kelcher with TD Securities. Your line is open. Thanks. Good morning. Just going back to Mike's question, I guess related. You said in the commentary that you're seeing heavy traffic and some properties were above normal. What regions would you say are strongest for you? Which regions are above normal, and which ones are strongest for you right now? I think Mike alluded to it. I think for this quarter, we're seeing really strong traffic in Vancouver, and we're seeing really strong traffic here in the National Capital Region. I just want to also be clear, though. That said, we're also seeing some robust activity in our two other regions as well. Like we've mentioned, at the risk of sounding boring, in Q1, all trends are pointing to the right direction. I think a lot of that rental demand is domestic rental demand. For the most part, we are anecdotally seeing some new Canadians coming to Canada. For the most part, it's been domestic. One way you can look at that, it's quite encouraging in the sense that we are seeing people wanting to get back to life as normal, no different than people wanting to get into sporting events and sit in a stadium. People want to leave their homes with their parents. As much as they love them, they want to start their life. I think that is playing out, and that's really starting to come to fruition. I think Montreal had a head start, and I think they were a little ahead of the opening up. I don't think that should really come as a surprise. We're really encouraged for 2022, Jonathan, because I think the domestic demand has really driven the increase in traffic. If you believe in everything you're reading and the government opening it up in this last week, is just really the start of the government really kind of opening up to newcomers. I think 2022 is starting to be set up as a very attractive year from a fundamentals perspective. Okay. Just, I guess sticking with 2022 for Ontario, you get the guideline increase. Roughly what% of your portfolio do you think you'll be able to put that guideline increase through on January one? We don't have everybody kind of coming due, and it's all through different months of the year. A lot of it is more in the summertime, Jonathan, and that's been done more on, I guess we've contemplated always to do that. That's the best time, and that's why we see a lot more leasing activity in the summertime. Again, it's staggered through the whole year. What portion do we think we'll be able to put through for the whole year? I would think 100%, to be frank with you. I don't see any pushbacks at all. Okay. Just last question for Curt. You guys have CAD 250 million of mortgages maturing in the back half of this year. What are your plans on that in terms of short-term? How much will be short-term, and how much maybe you can put long-term debt on? Thanks, Jonathan. We look at that continuously. Our plan, as you know, historically, has been to stay relatively short on the repositioning portfolio. Once it's repositioned, we push that out into longer-term CMHC-insured financing. What we're seeing right now in the market is that there's actually some good competition on the long-term side. There's people offering product that competes very effectively with CMHC-insured mortgages. Similar rates. You can get longer terms. They'll look at the properties coming in, even if you're not fully repositioned yet, a little differently. It's attractive. There's lots of long-term capital out there for the stuff when we are ready to flip it in, and we just keep watching the market, and where we're at with our repositioning. We're happy that the rates have come back down a little bit in the last 30, 60 days. Like I said, we keep a close eye on it, and the stuff that is short-term doesn't get locked for short-term. It's very open to early removal from those pools so that we can take it and throw it into the long term if we see any movement on rates. Okay. Thanks. I'll turn it back. The next question is from Matt Logan with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open. Thank you, and good morning. Can you guys talk a little bit about. Morning, Matt. Thanks. Could you talk a little bit about the rental incentives that are reflected in your cash flow statement, and how that increase in incentive squares off with the increase in leasing demand? Yeah. We obviously baked in some rental incentives specific around certain property where a lot of those incentives are coming off now. The good thing is they'll burn right off in 2022. We, again, did not want to get ourself without the value creation going down the road. A lot of that is getting muted and going down. In terms of the improving macro environment, how should we be thinking about that economic vacancy rate over the next two or three quarters? Sorry, can you repeat that question? Just wondering if you guys have any sense for where the committed occupancy could trend to in September, and more looking at it on an economic basis, if you have those figures handy? You know that we never really try to push our rents. We've never tried to really push on trying to get fully occupied. I don't know if we'll get to the levels of, say, the 96%. We'll hopefully get in the 95 or so, in that range. Maybe 90%, we'll see. That might be in the back half, in the last quarter. We do think it's going to be extended leasing cycle, and we're really mindful of what kind of the rents we are. We do believe we will be in some really, the way things are going and trending, when immigration and international students come fully back, it will be very positive in the marketplace. We're being very mindful of watching as far as our lease rates and that stuff as we go forward. We roll everything up, how should we be thinking about potential same- property NOI growth in the back half of this year? I don't think it's something that we usually like to put out there, personally. I'm looking around the room. Well, I'll answer it this way, Matt. Oh, he's going to put on- I'll answer it this way and not to try to get too cute. At the end of the day, you just saw what we posted for same- store revenue growth right now. We do think we're trending in the right direction, so we do believe that's going to get stronger. If you assume as we do that, and we continue to convert some of the repositionings, you'll get a better margin. You can see where NOI growth can go up to, right? It's not rocket science, so I don't want to peg it at it, but we are encouraged that the driver is that top- line, and we saw a return to that growth as is, and we believe that we'll continue to improve on that. Maybe I'll approach this a little bit differently and say, your comments with respect to 2022 potentially exceeding 2019 levels, would that imply that same- property NOI growth next year could be well into the double-digit range? I'm not going to answer that well into the double-digit range, but there is a scenario if the foreign newcomers are back and we see the kind of rental pressure that we believe that we're going to see, given that there's not enough supply out there is definitely potential for high- single, double-digit NOI growth. Appreciate the commentary. Maybe just changing gears in terms of your cap rate. You mentioned that there's only a 3 basis point change if we exclude the impact of the Vancouver portfolio. How much of what you're seeing in the private market is baked in, and how much further could that cap rate go over the next couple of quarters? I'll tell you, I think that, just what we see in recent sales, things that we've bid on and all that, I think there's a wall of capital. I think there's a good possibility you'll see much further cap rate compression. As you know, Matt, we've talked about this before. Go ahead, Curt The big piece on that is the private market tends to lead the appraisal reports and everything else, right? A lot of the deals we know and see and we've either been active on or at least taken a look at, I agree with Mike. It looks like there's going to be further cap rate compression. We've always been a little conservative on this side, and probably will tend to stay a little conservative on this side. Everything we've seen in the market as far as activity goes and deals that are getting done, some of the stuff just isn't reported yet, so it's not in the appraisal reports, but it looks like further cap rate compression is coming at us. Appreciate the color, guys. I'll turn the call back. Thank you. The next question is from Mario Saric with Scotiabank. Your line is open. Hi. Thank you. Maybe if we go to slide 11 of your conference call presentation where you highlight your average monthly rents for the reposition, non-repositioned, and total portfolio. Just maybe a couple of quick questions there. First on the non-repositioned side, we saw a pretty decent uptick quarter to quarter, Q2 versus Q1. It does seem like the non-repositioned Ottawa portfolio, that disclosed rent came down 11%. Quarter to quarter, is there anything particular describing that? It does seem like the trends in Ottawa are getting better based on your commentary. Yeah, I think the trends in Ottawa are getting better. You're right. You did see that tick up on the repositioned. When we look through what's driving that, it's coming from just the timing impact. It's not so much the demand impact, it's the timing of when people moved out and turning over the suites and getting them leased back up. It is temporary in nature from what we're looking at on that repositioned portfolio. Yeah. Okay. You've also been pretty steadfast in trying to maintain rent where possible. The overall portfolio occupancy today, I think it was 91.5% as of June 30th. Your overall rent was about CAD 1,339 at Q2. Maybe a difficult question to answer, if you chose a different path and decided to try to maintain occupancy in the 95% range, how much lower do you think the CAD 1,339 would've been at the end of Q2? I don't think I can give you a quick answer on that one, but I'll tell you what we've always felt steadfast about, if we did that, we would basically box ourself in for our future growth. We always believed that this was temporary in nature. Obviously, it was much longer than we all hoped that this pandemic was going to go on for. We do think that we've chosen completely right in choosing this path. We won't have boxed ourself in, and we won't have hindered our growth potential. We look at it and say, "Okay, we've got X amount of vacancy. We've got lots of growth potential in there." We feel really good, and especially seeing the activity that we're seeing and knowing where home prices have gone, unfortunately for the younger people. I think you're going to see a lot more renters in the game and for a longer time. We feel very, very positive that this was, I guess, the right way to look at it and really for the next five to seven years down the road that we think it's the right thing to do. A little bit of a temporary pause, but we feel very good about what we did. Yeah. I don't doubt that. I was just curious. We see what the impact has been on occupancy. Just curious to see if there was any range in terms of what the savings would've been on a rent basis for all stable. Okay. Maybe shifting gears to the acquisition pipeline. Sounds fairly active in the market. If you were to characterize the overall activity in the broader market, and let's say there was CAD 100 of activity at the start of the year, how would that compare to where you see the broader market activity today? I think So if there was, say, whatever, it was CAD 100 of activity, it's probably maybe CAD 140, CAD 150 now. I'm just talking off the top of my head. I think you're going to see it keep moving up. I think there's more new players in the business, it would seem. I'm surprised by some of the people that I've seen that have looked at multifamily. I guess there's just a wall of capital out there looking for a home, and they see multifamily as being one of the safe havens. Obviously, the industrial sector's done extremely well, and I'd put us as number two. Arguably, just because the nature of our lease tenure, we've probably got the most upside potential in the shorter term. I think a lot of people are looking at it now, and there's a lot more rebalancing from my understanding of different people's portfolio being more heavily weighted towards real estate. A lot of activity out there and I would say We have to work really hard to find deals. Of that CAD 40-CAD 50 increment, how much of that would you say is new entrants looking in the market? What types of entrants would those be? Are they international or different domestic? I would say it's maybe about 10 to 15, maybe even a little bit more of new entrants. I think it's rest of people just feeling confidence of where the market's at. Not everybody bought all the way through this. We were pretty positive where we were going, and we're always doing this for the long run, and we felt a lot of confidence in what we were doing. We knew it was going to be a temporary nature. That's the way we put this. We've always built the REIT for our shareholders and with lots of support from the Board. Now we're seeing people that were, I guess, that were not active for about a year and a half, are getting active again because they're starting to see leasing traffic up and then about 10%-15%. I keep hearing new people arriving on the scene. I would add, those new people tend to be institutional. Now they might be through private REITs and whatnot, Mario Saric. There's definitely more and more capital that's maybe coming through some of the same platforms. That's the point I want to make is in this whole time, we truly still believe that this is a inflection point for this asset class. It is getting institutionalized, and it's getting institutionalized at a much faster clip. A lot of that's got to do with the fact that it's a lot harder to operate in the current environment that we just went through. The good things that have changed through some of that operating environment that's been tougher is a good thing for the space. It's made people reinvest into their platform, into the technology, virtual leasing, and we're slowly closing the gap with some of the industry participants around the world. For most of ourselves to the border, we're doing a lot of these things a lot sooner. I think really what it forces, there is an arbitrage between the private and the well-organized professional operating platforms. I do think those are going to continue to garner more and more capital, and you're going to start to continue to see this asset class institutionalize. Which is great for us from the sense that there's more opportunities for us to look at and bid on the ones that we think are a really good strategic fit and we can create value, but it hasn't got any easier from a pricing standpoint. Understood. Okay. In terms of this incremental demand, I think you referenced the Ontario guideline increase for 2022 coming through. That's good to see. Would you attribute any of the incremental demand to greater visibility on the regulatory front going forward? I think people, I guess, are getting a little bit more comfortable where we're all going. Obviously when we this point last year, I don't think there was a lot of comfort from anybody of where we're going. Really happy with the vaccines, the take- up here in Canada, where I think we're one of the leading countries in the world on that, which is terrific. I just think there's just a lot more positivity completely out there. I guess, and also a little clearer when you see, when they come out and announce that, yeah, this is the guideline increase. Things are returning. We're not completely normal yet. I don't think we're going to see full normality until 2022. There's still a number of people that are not back in their offices. We see it here in Ottawa with the federal government not back in the offices. I guess they're doing a little bit of a test case now from what I've read, which is a positive. I just see as we get in better and better shape, I think that people are feeling very comfortable in transacting a multifamily. Got it. Okay. My last question is more of an operational one. I'm not sure if you have the information or are willing to disclose it. Any sense or color in terms of the rent- to- income ratio in the portfolio, either in the existing portfolio or on some of these new leads that you're converting what you underwrite to in terms of a rent income ratio? Well, that's a lot tougher right now, Mario, given the situation that we're through, right? There's a lot of people that are current on their rents and they've been able to get help, but maybe they are underserved. That's a tougher thing to kind of work through and go through. I don't think we'd have comfort in disclosing that number to you right now. I do feel comfortable in the sense that we're being quite pleased with where our collection has been and where our receivable stands. Back to Mike's point, this is being a very stable asset class, and it's really stood up, and our portfolio is no different on that front. I think if I had to anecdotally tell you where we stood today, I'd say we probably mirror what the more macro housing- to- income ratio looks like. Yeah, I would agree with Brad. I am encouraged by in certain areas that we've seen some good, I would say some higher income earners than I would usually see in our portfolio that are buying. I think we're going to see, I don't know, but I think we're going to see a prolonged amount of time that people will be renters now because the housing costs have gone up a lot. I really believe that, and I was surprised. Even just I was in Vancouver last week, they were telling me some of the people that are renting from us and, wow. Jeez. Yeah, they're making some big income there, and we're seeing it in Ottawa. We're seeing it in different places. I think you are going to see. That's where I talk about tailwinds. I think we go back and start factoring that in. I think we're going to be fairly happy with where we're-- I think we're going to start seeing some noticeable downtrends. I should say, yeah, downtrends on the rent to income on more in a positive way, on the amount that they're paying for rent versus their income. I hope I've articulated that properly. Anyways. Yeah, no, it's interesting. I think you've collectively kind of been steadfast in saying this is temporary and the pandemic isn't going to change the structural long-term outlook of the portfolio of the broader rental market. It's interesting to hear that maybe rent duration gets extended a little bit coming out of this. At the end of the day, is there anything else in your view coming out of this that structurally changes how you operate the business going forward? I don't know if anything changes how we operate. I think as a firm, we've always been quite progressive as far as investing in the platform. I think the one thing though maybe, Mario, some of the things that were on our to-do list and to revamp and different things like that, it got accelerated. I don't think there's any difference from a lot of other industries and a lot of different asset classes. I think COVID just accelerated some of the trends for sure. The one comment I would make, this goes back to your comment previous and Mike's comment, is I think if you asked our management group that when we were in the dark to early days of when COVID hit and we went into lockdown, worked extremely hard, and the group worked extremely hard to make sure everybody was safe, our team members and our resident base was safe. That was number one priority. Number two was, what's going to come out of this? We had to step back and look towards the future. I think the one thing this group thought for sure was we would actually see a lighten up on the housing affordability issue. We thought the erosion, maybe there's still keep the erosion, it would decline at the rate of pace. We couldn't have been more wrong on that. We came out, we thought there would be discounting on housing prices and whatnot. Really what happened was it got accelerated because of the low interest rates. Anybody that could or would potentially think about owning a home in the next five years, they felt the panic that they had to do it now. I think some parents dipped into their and whatnot, gave their kids a little bit of their inheritance early. That really did create a real strain, as we all know, on the housing market. That, I think, will structurally change the ownership level in Canada and housing going forward. Which is a big plus for rentals given that we haven't had the kind of supply. We have to, as an industry, act responsible and help encourage new supply at all three levels of the government and be a part of the solution. Great. Thanks, Brad. That's an interesting color. Thanks, everyone. The next question is from Joanne Chen with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open. Hi, good morning. Maybe just on the occupancy side with the improvement in Montreal, would you attribute most of that just to the earlier reopening or are there any other drivers, whether from employment or the student population that kind of drove that improvement? I would attribute a lot of it just to the earlier opening. You're seeing kids come back. They know they're going to have in-person classes there, which is great. I expect we're going to get some more take- up here. I think it's going to be a little bit prolonged. It's still like there is pretty good, when I've been in Montreal, pretty good activity downtown. I just feel like people are being a lot more confident. I would say that not everybody's back in their offices and that. I think that's going to keep improving along the way. Specifically, I'm really looking forward to the, I guess, immigration happening again, because Montreal's done incredibly well once the immigration opens up again. I think it'll do really exceedingly well. If you look at the prices to live there versus when you go into the Toronto and Vancouver, I think you might start seeing higher percentage numbers coming out of Montreal. Okay. No, that's helpful. Maybe just switching gears back on the acquisition side of things. How should we be thinking how the back half of the year will shape up given how competitive pricing is right now? Within that, are there certain markets that you're seeing probably the best opportunities at this point? I think we're going to stick to our same markets. We do see opportunities. I think one thing that we're very hands-on. When we start looking at some of our competitors coming into the market, I think sometimes we see things that maybe just because of years of the experience we've had and being there that we can see some different levers that we can pull that make the certain properties make more sense than others. I do believe that we'll continue to transact. I think we'll be at a fairly, and hopefully a fairly steady clip. To be frank with you, we broadened out our team there for acquisitions and that, and we're always trying to get anything we can off- market. I think you'll be probably, I'm going to throw a number out there, probably potentially higher than, well, I'd say in the CAD 100 million or so in the back half. I'm just going to add one comment in this. Had to see if I was going to get in trouble, Joanne, by saying that. I'll just add to that comment. I know we're talking on our name, but it goes back, this asset class is getting institutionalized. There are only so many operating platforms that can execute. Our peers are a great example. They will benefit, too. The people that have invested in their platforms, that have well-organized professional platforms, in my opinion, and I believe my colleagues share this opinion, is we're poised to really benefit over the next three years of what we believe the inflection point because there's a lot of institutions so under-allocated to the asset class. From a risk-return perspective, it makes a lot of sense. Great. Okay. I guess on the competitive, on the acquisition side, but in terms of opportunities to further grow your development pipeline, should we be thinking about that over the near term? Sorry, I don't think I understood the question. Can you just repeat that? Sorry, just given how crazy the, I guess, on the acquisition side is for IPPs, what is the potential for you guys to further grow, I guess, the development pipeline? I think we'll still grow the development pipeline. We may look at some things like some potentially mezzanine financing for a developer on a forward kind of purchase that we can convert. We may look at some different pieces. We're going to be very mindful. We got to always watch our balance sheet. We're very happy where we're sitting right now. Again, we knew that we would transact through here. No, I think you'll see us doing more. We're going to be careful and prudent with how much development we do at any one time. As I said earlier on the call, we do have a lot of potential for intensification, and so we'll be mining that as we go forward. I don't think people have attributed any value to that whole intensification prospects that we have. I know when we brought people around on a tour a few years ago, people were noting it, and I don't think that the market totally appreciates some of the stuff that we have. I'll follow up. That's somewhat by design because we're very much about, we'll show you the numbers, and we'll let the analyst community and investment community dictate what kind of value they want to ascribe to that. Going forward, the new developments will play a role in their playbook because at the end of the day, the value creation of the older properties is great. We know what we're buying at a discount to replacement cost, so we can do that math. The risk in that game is the turnover, right, depending on how tight the fundamentals get. Where the nice thing about new developments, it's no longer about a turnover game, it's about being able to execute, deliver the product, and hit your pro forma rents. Like anything you do, we think a well-diversified approach to going forward makes a lot of sense. At the bottom line, what kind of drives this management group and Board, it has to create value. It might not create value on day one, but it has to create value within a three- to five -year time period, or it doesn't get us excited. Right. Okay. No, that's helpful. Thanks. I'll turn it back. The next question is from Brad Sturges with Raymond James. Your line is open. Hi there. Just to follow up on the intensification discussion there. It sounds like the plan is to add a little bit more disclosure on what that intensification potential could be in the portfolio today. If that's so, what would be the rough timeline of maybe seeing a little bit more disclosure on that front? Maybe I misplayed that, Brad. I'm just saying we do have a lot of opportunity to mine stuff. When you look at it's not only just a cash basis. There is potential going forward. We're happy with our exposure right now on the development side. We'll never overweight ourselves. We have to be very mindful and careful about what we do, just of the nature of what the REIT is. Anyways, I talk off the top of my head. Sorry, Brad. Understood. Good and bad sometimes, probably mostly bad, but it's okay. Maybe on slide 14, just on the CapEx and repositioning program. You give a range of full and partial suite renovation costs, CAD 15,000-CAD 40,000 per door. If we're looking at the 3,500 suites left in the program, I'm sure there's a range to what's being done. Is it more weighted towards full renovations or partial renovations, and how should we think about the remaining program from a capital spend perspective? It's a real mixed bag. I'll tell you, some of the stuff that we transacted on, they were spot on in what they did as far as their CapEx program. Really little things, maybe just be replacing appliances, going from white to stainless steel and maybe changing out a countertop to a quartz or a Caesarstone countertop. Some of them are done very well, and some of them just even it's just small things like light fixtures and things of that nature. Again, some of them we need to go full tilt on. It really varies, and it can even vary in a building. We may have somebody who started on one program and then whatever they decided they ran out of money to spend more, or they didn't think they were going to get it, or whatever reason. It had gone the other way, where they did a little bit and then they started doing more. It's got to be very specific to the suites. It's pretty hard to kind of give you a whole, here's the average. You know what I mean? Yeah. I guess, in terms of that range, has that changed much in the last, call it six or nine months during COVID, or is that a pretty consistent spend figure that you would've seen pre-COVID? Sorry, I don't know if you heard that. I was on mute. Did you hear that? No. Sorry, can you repeat it? Okay. I was going to say, I apologize. I was on mute. Guess we're all a little tired of hearing that one, eh? Being on mute. We have found that there is a bit of cost pressures on some of the items. Definitely been supply issues too, as far as on our appliances. We've been backlogged on dishwashers and things of that nature. It's crept a little bit, for sure. No question. There's two observations I'd like to add to Mike's. One is, and both of you kind of hit on it. Obviously, on the repositioning program, the majority of that is full renos. To Mike's point, there is sometimes when we will go in and purchase an asset, and we might not be purchasing it because of the unit. They've had a pretty good renovation program, but maybe they didn't market the building well. For the most part, still the non-repositioned purchases are typically full renos. This is where I want to just kind of hit home the point is on the reposition. We're getting to a point where we've owned properties for longer than five years, and then this goes speaks to what Mike was speaking to. I just want to kind of really hit the point is within those buildings, we're seeing a second-level reposition where, hey, at the time, we did a really good renovation program. Now we can go back and up it and stay with the times. Like any real good retailer, we've got to stay with it and ahead of the curve. Obviously, we do that when the returns meet our thresholds. We are seeing another level of reposition. Second, I would like to say too is, from the cost spend, regionally, we've seen some differences, and there's one region in particular where it tends to be a little higher to do a renovation program. We found during COVID, it was actually a region where we could take advantage of and actually saw some decrease in the prices, and we took advantage of that. On the whole, across the Board, we are seeing some cost creep. Last question from me. Just to go back to the cap rate compression discussion. I'm sure you're seeing some broad-based pressure on cap rates. Is there a market or region that kind of stands out as seeing a little bit more downward pressure on cap rates right now? I'd say it's across the Board, to be frank with you. I think we're seeing it everywhere. Okay. That's great. Thanks. We'll turn it back. Our final question for today is from Yashwant Sankpal with Laurentian Bank. Your line is open. Good morning. Morning, Yash. Just a clarification I wanted. I thought, Mike, you said that your occupancy will be at around 95% by the second half of Q4. Is that right? No. What we did say, Yash, is all indication of the first half of the year is pointing in the positive direction on the momentum and whatnot, and we're encouraged with what we're seeing, and each month we continue to gain some momentum. I think what was said is we'll see if we can get back to 95%. We're very confident that in 2022 we'll shape up because we'll see more newcomers, and we'll start to see a bigger participation from immigration contribute. That said, if we do have an extended leasing cycle, we'll see. We're saying we'd probably look to get there in 2022, but you never know what 2021 will bring. Yeah. We're hopeful we're going to get there, Yash. We don't have a crystal ball. We are happy of where we're getting, and we've seen, I guess we've hit the trough, and we're starting to come back. As more and more opening comes about and people get back into their offices and start again, domestically, leaving their parents' house. You see more kids going back into getting comfortable for, I guess, the in-person classes and even just any international student immigration. We just feel it's going to get better and better. We do feel there should be an extended leasing cycle. That's what we're expecting. Again, these are a little bit of uncharted waters, so we're not 100% sure we'll be able to tell you that on the next call. Okay. On student leasing, where is it at this point? Would you say it is where it was in 2019, or do you think is it lower than that? It's not completely there. It's not 100% there. We are expecting to see more of it in a little bit more of a rush here. Again, we don't have the international students to the same degree. The international students, we didn't realize how many that, I believe it's like 700,000 international students come into Canada a year. When you look at where they usually situate themselves, it's in our primary markets where we have. Like especially Montreal, McGill, Concordia, we didn't realize how many international students we have. We look at some of those markets, and it's not quite there. It's way better than last year. That's all I got to say. Yeah. The only thing I would add, it's better than last year. We're not back to 2018, 2019. The one thing that will be interesting, Yash, and who knows, and I'm just throwing this out as more of a comment than anything. We're not budgeting this or forecasting this, it will be interesting to see if the winter semester has an increase in flocks of newcomers, where they couldn't get their paperwork in order for the fall semester. Does that translate into an increased winter semester, which has never typically been strong in our markets? Like I said, we're not banking on it. It's more of throwing that out there. I'll be curious to see if that translates into something. Right. Okay, one last question. Of your 4 markets, which one do you think will be the slowest to recover? Well, from what I'm seeing, it won't be Vancouver. I guess we're going to see how it all plays out. The thing is, it's just the different times of reopening. In Ottawa, we got the federal government here at play. Montreal, again, we're around the universities, so we'll see how that plays out over the next three, four weeks. It's pretty hard to kind of predict. It really depends. Again, sometimes it's property-specific. It just seems like Van's got a lot of steam. It's got a lot of steam now. I'm wondering where it's going to be in a year or two down the road. I think Toronto proper will definitely will recover, but until some of the banks and some of the big head offices start mandating people back to the office, you might see that lag a little, just given where the pricing is for the core. Right? So if you're starting out and you had a revelation and want to change careers and whatnot, I think you'll see a lot of people start to pick maybe the city they want to live in to where they want to, where the career to be from a housing affordability perspective and a livability perspective. So I think if anything, I think all four cores that we're in are going to do extremely well, that said, I'm talking core. I'm not talking the bedroom communities of the GTA. Okay. That's good, color. Thank you very much. No further questions at this time. I'll turn the call back to the presenters for any closing remarks. Okay. I'd like to say to everybody, thank you very much for taking the time for this morning's call. We appreciate everybody's continued analysis and questions, and we're learning from everybody here during these, I guess, very different times. I am very happy to see that, yeah, we are heading in the right direction. We have a long way to go. We're not there yet, but we do feel like we're doing a lot of the right things to get to where we would like to get to. I also want to thank our team. Our team's done a really good job, and I know that without their efforts, we would not be in this position of being a little bit more positive. Just what they've done with our residents, they've been amazing with our residents, taking care of them and making sure that they all feel healthy and safe and secure. We really appreciate our whole team. On that note, I'll thank everybody again and hope everybody has a great rest of the day and enjoys the rest of the summer. Take care. We'll be looking forward to seeing, and talking to a lot of you soon. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. This concludes the InterRent REIT Q2 2021 financial results call. You may now disconnect.