American Homes 4 Rent Raises 2026 Core FFO Guidance to $1.97

American Homes 4 Rent (NYSE: AMH ) reported third-quarter financial results on Thursday. The transcript from the company's third-quarter earnings call has been provided below. This transcript is brought to you APIs. For real-time access to our entire catalog, please visit for a consultation.

View the webcast at Summary American Homes 4 Rent reported strong Q3 2026 results, with core FFO per share growing 5.3% year-over-year and guidance raised to $1.97. The company maintained a high occupancy rate of 96% in October, with positive lease spreads indicating steady demand despite a challenging economic backdrop. Development yields have improved, with new land deals yielding over 6%. The company completed $75 million in share repurchases in Q3, totaling $460 million over the past 12 months.

Net income attributable to shareholders was $82.3 million, or $0.23 per diluted share, with core FFO of $0.50 per share, showing 7.4% growth year-over-year. Management highlighted effective cost control, particularly in property taxes, and expressed optimism for continued operational success into 2027 despite potential market challenges. Full Transcript OPERATOR Greetings and welcome to the American Homes 4 Rent third quarter 2026 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode.

A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star 0 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the call over to your host, Nick Frome, Vice President, Investor Relations.

Please go ahead. Nick Frome (Vice President, Investor Relations) Good morning and thank you for joining us for our third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. With me today are Brian Smith, Chief Executive Officer, Chris Lau, Chief Financial Officer, and Lincoln Palmer, Chief Operating Officer. Please be advised that this call may include forward-looking statements.

All statements other than statements of historical fact included in this conference call are forward-looking statements that are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in these statements. These risks and other factors that could adversely affect our business and future results are described in our press releases and in our filings with the SEC. All forward-looking statements speak only as of today, November 5, 2026. We assume no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures is included in our earnings press release and supplemental information package. As a note, our operating and financial results, including GAAP and non-GAAP measures, are fully detailed in our earnings release and supplemental information package. You can find these documents, as well as the SEC reports and the audio webcast replay of this conference call, on our website at With that, I will turn the call over to our CEO, Brian Smith. Bryan Smith (Chief Executive Officer) Welcome everyone and thank you for joining us today.

American Homes 4 Rent had another strong quarter showcasing the power and consistency of our platform. This year's results reflect the efforts of our outstanding team, our continued investments in technology and strategic capital allocation decisions together with healthy demand for high quality American Homes 4 Rent homes. This has enabled us to raise the midpoint of our core FFO per share guidance by 2 pennies to $1.97, which represents 5.3% year-over-year growth. As we close out the remainder of the year and transition to 2027, we remain focused on maintaining occupancy to set us up for a strong start to the year.

Looking ahead, we continue to see solid demand for our homes even as many households navigate a more challenging economic backdrop. Affordability pressures in the for-sale market remain elevated driven by mortgage rates near multi-decade highs. This further underscores the value of what American Homes 4 Rent provides—a premium single-family living experience for those who want a quality home without the financial burden of home ownership. This value proposition continues to attract and retain a strong, high-quality resident base.

Now turning to third quarter results, same home average occupied days was 96% and new, renewal and blended lease spreads were 1%, 3.3% and 2.6%, respectively. This drove same home core revenue growth of 2.3%. Together with expenses, same home core NOI growth was 2.5% for the quarter. Turning to October, occupancy held steady at 96%, renewals grew at 3.3% and new lease rate growth remained positive at 0.1%.

These results are in line with our expectations which contemplated a flatter seasonal curve over the course of the year. On the investment front, we remain focused on optimizing the American Homes 4 Rent development program. Encouragingly, we are seeing improving initial yields on completed homes and, like we have shared previously, underwritten yields on new land deals remain north of 6%. As a reminder, recycled capital from dispositions continues to be the primary funding source for development.

This allows us to strategically reposition the portfolio by selling older assets and adding new high-quality homes with better long-term growth prospects. Notably, the average age of our portfolio today is similar to what it was in 2020. Our top priority is making smart capital decisions in the current cost of capital environment. Along with supporting our long-term development strategy, we continue to take a thoughtful and programmatic approach to share repurchases, deploying another $75 million in the third quarter.

This brings our total repurchase activity over the last 12 months to over $460 million, representing nearly 4% of shares and units outstanding. We'll continue to evaluate repurchases alongside other investment opportunities with a focus on maximizing long-term value per share. Turning briefly to the legislative landscape, with the Road to Housing Act now signed into law, attention has shifted to the Treasury Department as they complete the rulemaking process. We continue to be engaged not only in Washington, but also at the state and local levels.

This is a normal course of business for our industry and the primary work of our dedicated Government Affairs team which we've had in place for many years. In closing, it has been a strong year for American Homes 4 Rent. I would like to thank our teams across the country for their hard work and commitment. Their experience and execution are central to the success of our company.

With that, I'll turn it over to Chris. Christopher Lau (Chief Financial Officer) Thanks, Brian, and good morning everyone. Like usual, I'll cover three areas in my comments today: first, a review of our quarterly results; second, an update on our balance sheet and recent capital activity; and third, I'll close with commentary around our increased 2026 guidance. Starting off with our operating results, the teams delivered a solid third quarter, generating net income attributable to common shareholders of $82.3 million, or $0.23 per diluted share.

On an FFO share and unit basis, we generated $0.50 of core FFO representing 7.4% year-over-year growth and $0.45 of adjusted FFO representing 7.6% year-over-year growth. In addition to the strong execution this quarter, we've now received the majority of our final property tax values which have landed better than expectations in several states, notably Texas and Florida. Based on the updated values, we now expect full-year 2026 property tax growth to be in the mid-1% area, which has been positively reflected in our updated full-year guidance that I'll talk about shortly.

Turning to investments, we continued executing on our moderated 2026 development plan, delivering a total of 498 homes to our wholly owned and joint venture portfolios during the quarter. Specifically for our wholly owned portfolio, we delivered 387 homes for a total investment cost of $156 million. Additionally, during the quarter we sold 291 homes for total net proceeds of $94 million at an average economic disposition yield in the 4% area. Next, I'd like to quickly turn to our balance sheet and recent capital activity.

At the end of the quarter, our net debt, including preferred shares, to adjusted EBITDA was 5.2 times. We had $71 million of cash on the balance sheet, and we had a $420 million drawn balance on our $1.25 billion revolving credit facility with no scheduled maturities until 2028. Additionally, during the quarter we repurchased an incremental 2.4 million common shares for a total of $75 million at an average price of $31.39 per share. Since the fourth quarter of 2025, we have now repurchased 14.9 million common shares, or nearly 4% of our total shares and units outstanding, for a total of $463 million at an average price of $31.12 per share.

And next I'll cover our updated 2026 earnings guidance, which was positively revised in yesterday's earnings press release. Starting with the same home portfolio, recognizing the team's solid execution in this year's healthy leasing environment, we have modestly increased the midpoint of our full-year core revenues growth expectations to 2.4%. In contemplating our recent favorable property tax update, we have lowered the midpoint of our full-year core expense growth expectation to 1.6%. Collectively, this translates into a 40 basis point increase to the midpoint of our full-year same home core NOI growth expectations to 2.8%.

And when combined with the continued strong American Homes 4 Rent development lease-up activity within the non-same home portfolio, we've increased the midpoint of our full-year core FFO per share expectations by 2 cents. Our new midpoint of $1.97 per share now reflects the high end of our previous range and represents a year-over-year growth expectation of 5.3%, which further extends American Homes 4 Rent's lead over the rest of the residential sector. And before we open the call to your questions, I'd like to share one final thank you to the team for making our success possible.

The American Homes 4 Rent strategy is working and our results speak for themselves, and we look forward to closing 2026 on a high note as we position the portfolio for success into 2027. And with that, thank you again for your time and we'll open the call to your questions. OPERATOR Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad.

A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. To allow for as many questions as possible, we ask that you each keep to one question.

Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Juan Sanabria with BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question. Juan Sanabria (Analyst at BMO Capital Markets) Hi, good morning and thank you for the time.

I'm hoping you could talk a little bit about what drove the revision to top line or same store revenue guidance this quarter, please. Christopher Lau (Chief Financial Officer) Morning Juan, Chris here. Perfect place to start us off. You know, the way that I would think about the update to the top line is just like I mentioned a minute ago in prepared remarks, it's really a reflection of just solid execution by the team and great execution in the healthy leasing environment we've seen over the course of the year and really, in particular, across the diversification of the footprint.

And you can really see it across the board with full-year blended leasing spreads that are on track to likely land close to, you know, maybe a touch below the mid-twos. Now that's modestly better than our previous expectations along with the team accomplishing our goal for this year of flattening the curve, right. And you can see that with occupancy now remaining in the 96% area as we're shouldering into the fourth quarter, keeping us on track for full-year occupancy in the high 95s. And the execution didn't stop there.

It continued across collections as well where we're seeing bad debt on a full-year basis track a touch better than we were expecting at the start of the year as well. So collectively all of that translated into the new guidance expectation of 2.4% at the mid. OPERATOR Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Nick Joseph with Citi.

Please proceed with your question. Nick Joseph (Analyst at Citi) Thanks. Maybe continuing on that. Obviously there's been a lot of disruption in the broader housing market as mortgage rates have moved up.

So I was hoping you could touch on how that is impacting pricing power and if you're seeing more shadow supply and just kind of the broader housing dynamics and the impact to your portfolio. Lincoln Palmer (Chief Operating Officer) Thanks for the question, Nick, this is Lincoln. I'll touch on the shadow supply separately. But, you know, in general we view supply as having peaked in late 2025 for single-family product.

That's obviously very highly market dependent and our views are slightly different on some of those. But it's one of the reasons why our diversified portfolio is so important to us. We continue to be encouraged by the directional movement in absorption of single-family supply broadly across our markets. In fact, this last quarter we saw that in just about every market with the exception of San Antonio.

In some of those markets the absorption needs to continue in order to get things back into equilibrium where we feel stronger about pricing power. But directionally things are going very well. As far as the shadow side goes, the recent moves to 7% interest rates, those aren't finding their way through yet to the movements around that, how that may affect shadow supply. But our overall numbers contemplate any of those homes that are being converted from for sale to for rent back into the rental pool, and that's still declining in most of the markets.

So we feel very confident that things are moving in the right direction on the supply side. OPERATOR Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jamie Feldman with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question.

Jamie Feldman (Analyst at Wells Fargo) Great. Thank you for taking the question. Can you give us an early sense of where you think you are on earn-in heading into '27, and with a better starting occupancy position and what you're seeing in third-party market forecasts, do you think we can expect stronger blended rent growth year-over-year? Christopher Lau (Chief Financial Officer) Sure.

Jamie, Chris here. I chuckle a little bit. You know, more than happy to run through some of the building blocks. I'm sure you know what I'm going to say in that it's a little bit too early to be talking definitively, but just a couple directional thoughts if you think about the guide for this year.

This year's guide likely implies a 2027 earn-in in the, call it, low 1% area, which, as a reminder, is a touch below our '26 earn-in coming into this year, which was closer to the mid-ones. Then as of today—we've talked about this for the past quarter or two—our view is that loss to lease is in a fairly neutral position across the portfolio, so we don't see it playing much of a role or being a factor in 2027. And then the final variable, to your point, really comes down to market rent growth where John Burns, for anyone that follows his research, just recently updated his outlook, and his latest outlook is calling for a modest reacceleration of market rent growth in '27.

Again, it's still early, but it feels like a small step in the right direction. Like I said, can't express a full view yet. We'll have obviously more to talk about on the next call, but some directional thoughts in the meantime. Hopefully that's helpful.

OPERATOR Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Steve with Evercore ISI. Please proceed with your question. Steve Sakwa (Analyst at Evercore ISI) Yeah, I was just hoping you could maybe talk about some of the, maybe the weaker markets, particularly on the new rent side.

I guess you had—somebody had called out San Antonio as just maybe one market that's been softer. But, you know, I guess given the elevated mortgage rates, maybe just talk about some of the dynamics you're seeing on the new-lease side and, you know, some of those weaker markets like a San Antonio or Phoenix. Thanks. Lincoln Palmer (Chief Operating Officer) Thanks, Steve.

Lincoln here again. I think that the rate power that we're seeing in some of these markets, or the lack thereof to your point on the San Antonios and some of the other places, is largely driven by the supply and inventory picture that we talked about before. Again, that's improving in a lot of places. One notable change that we saw is that across all of our Florida markets that got better.

Across all of Texas, except for San Antonio, that got better. And Phoenix, it actually got better on a year-over-year basis. So it's encouraging that we're moving in the right direction. Again, those are a few of the markets that I would also say need to continue to absorb some inventory, and as we do that, we'll be able to, I think, see a little bit more pricing power.

But directionally we're getting there. Not quite there yet on the overall supply. OPERATOR Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Handel St.

Juste with Mizuho Securities. Please proceed with your question. Mike Good morning. This is Mike on with Handel at Mizuho.