Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Michael Salinsky – RBC Capital Markets.
Michael Salinsky – RBC Capital Markets
Focusing on operations, can you talk a little about July trends? Also, can you give us a sense of how traffic was during the quarter, as well as the delta currently in place between new leases and renewals that you're seeing?
Thomas L. Wilkes
On renewals we're staying flat with where their current lease rates are, and as Dave said in the call, our new lease rates are about 10% to 12% down.
As far as July is concerned, the occupancy as of August 1 was 93.7% so we are slightly below where we would like to be for the third quarter but the traffic and demand patterns are remaining constant from where we would normally expect them to be this time of the year.
Obviously pricing is lower but it is the pricing that is driving the demand.
Michael Salinsky – RBC Capital Markets
You also had significant expense savings in the markets at Dallas, Charlotte, and Houston. Were there any tax catch-ups or anything in there that really drove that or was it pretty much just cost cutting?
Thomas L. Wilkes
In Houston there was a tax savings where we settled a litigation on property taxes from a prior year and then as far as the other markets, that's more related to paint that we were executing in the second quarter of 2008, which created a more favorable comparison in 2009.
Michael Salinsky – RBC Capital Markets
In your condo pipeline it looked like sales activity picked up pretty significantly here relative to the first quarter. Can you talk about what kind of traffic you're seeing there, where you are seeing trends are improving and also, in your guidance for 2009, I didn't see an update on the expected contribution or loss from the condo platform. Can you quantify that for us?
David P. Stockert
We have seen decent traffic at all the three projects that are currently in sales. Now obviously, as we have talked about in the past, we have been meeting the market, and that is just trying to adjust our prices to achieve an appropriate velocity. But yes, we have seen reasonable traffic so that we are mildly encouraged by that.
Christopher J. Papa
And on the condo in our guidance, I think originally we had said that we were expecting a loss of $0.03 to $0.04 and I would say today in the guidance we are expecting a loss of about $0.07 to $0.08.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »
