Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Jonathan Habermann – Goldman Sachs.
Jonathan Habermann – Goldman Sachs
Interesting comments about starting to raise rent a little bit as occupancy is firming. Can you give us some further details about how much you're looking to increase rents, which markets, etc.?
Tony Dialto
Obviously relative to last year, rents still remain down but our occupancy has steadily improved and increased from a low in April. May was better than April. June was better than May. July is trending better than June, and as Tim pointed out we're just short of 94%. We see August the opportunity to maintain that.
So from that perspective, pricing power has returned in many markets across the board and I'd stay away from a range because it's more, the pricing increases will slow the decline if you will from what you see second quarter transaction rates were. So I think it's a positive development. It points to opportunity into the summer.
Jonathan Habermann – Goldman Sachs
Are you seeing more of a trading down impact where tenants may have left perhaps an A and they're trading down to a B? Is that most of your pickup at this point?
Tony Dialto
No, it's probably some of that, but I think generally speaking demand currently or traffic has picked up, and that has given us the opportunity to increase our occupancies and therefore given us the pricing.
Jonathan Habermann – Goldman Sachs
On the asset sales, can you give us a sense of timing for closing the $1.2 billion that LOI's are under contract?
David Robertson
We'll see, but as I mentioned, we sold about $500 million year to date. Of the $1.2 billion that we have under contract or in negotiations, half of that is under contract. Not all of that will close, but we expect a lot of it will close and those closings should occur over the next two to three months. Of the other $565 million that's in negotiations, some of that will fall out, but a lot of it will go under contract and close in subsequent months, and we have more than $1 billion of assets on the market, some of which we expect to go into negotiations and be put under contract later this year.
So it's hard to call when the closings will occur, but we expect substantial closings in the third quarter as well as the fourth quarter and probably on into the early part of next year.
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