Dear Hartman Team Members,
I hope you all enjoyed getting together for the company-wide meeting! Despite the challenges this year, I am proud of the progress we have made in 2020 and was happy to celebrate them as a team at our awards dinner. I thank God for all the blessings that have come this year. As Psalm 95:2 says, “Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving, let us shout joyfully to Him with Psalms.”
At our company-wide meeting, we focused on our vision as a company for 2021. I hope each of you took this time to think about your personal and professional goals for next year. After hearing your department’s compelling stories and skits, I am confident that 2021 will be a year that pushes us closer to our vision of growing the company to $2 billion in assets by 2025. Our board member, Horst Schulze, presented Excellence in the Workplace to our team members. As an expert, his training helps our team members execute excellence in every aspect of our service and think about implementing our brand promise to our customers of Exceptional Service. Inspired Values. As a company, we instill many of Mr. Schulze’s core values in service and strive to always put the customer first. I hope each team member focuses on the training he provided and utilizes it to better serve our tenants, prospects, vendors, and anyone who we encounter as Hartman team members.
Overall, for September, our FFO Yield is 10.1% versus the 6.8% budgeted, and our year to date FFO Yield is over budget at 10.8% versus 7.1%. This positive FFO Yield is contributed to the hard work by our property management team. They worked diligently with our tenants on collection efforts for the last three months have collected over 100% of what was billed.
September’s new leasing activity (for all markets) totaled 58,426 square feet and renewals of 80,142 square feet. Congratulations to the leasing team for signing the most leases since February. With our potential occupancy at 82.49%, I am confident that in Q4 we will finish the year strong and rise to meet the pent-up demand that I see growing in the market. The marketing and leasing teams have worked in tandem to create some excellent attention-grabbing incentives to end the year with lots of momentum and go into 2021 with a strong pipeline. Congratulations to our leasing agents, Thomas Emde and Ami Figg, for both increasing their portfolio’s occupancy by .52% this month.
Congratulations to our award-winning team members for 2020! I want to recognize Kimberly Strickland again on winning the 2020 CEO Award of Excellence. She truly embodies all our core values and I want to thank her for her leadership and efforts that she puts into this job every day.
Thank you to our HR and Office Services team for organizing the excellent quarterly meeting and awards dinner. This is a critical time for planning the new year and I want to recognize the hard work and dedication of all our departments for your participation.
In closing, as the holiday season begins, I want to ask each of you to pray on the true meaning of this season and to celebrate the joy that we are given through Jesus. Give thanks for the blessings in our lives! As stated in Encouraging the Heart, “Celebrations infuse life with passion and purpose… They bond people together and connect us to shared values…”
“I will give thanks to you, Lord, with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonderful deeds.” – Psalm 9:1
God Bless you all!
Sincerely,
Al Hartman
