Essex Property Trust is a REIT that owns and operates apartment communities exclusively on the West Coast. As of year-end 2025, Essex owned or had interests in 259 communities totaling roughly 63,000 homes across three regions: Northern California (the Bay Area), Southern California (Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego), and Seattle. Essex rents apartments directly to consumers, with in-house property management, targeting working professionals — particularly tech employees in Northern California and Seattle. Revenue is driven primarily by occupancy (targeted at ~96%), blended lease rate growth, and ancillary fees for parking, pets, and EV charging. Essex focuses on supply-constrained coastal markets where geography, zoning, and scarce developable land limit new construction, which Essex argues protects rent growth even in soft demand environments. Beyond direct rental income, Essex maintains a small structured finance portfolio of preferred equity and mezzanine loans in third-party multifamily projects, though this book has been actively downsized from ~$700M in 2021 to ~$175M as Essex redeployed capital into direct acquisitions. Growth is driven by acquisitions (concentrated recently in the Bay Area Peninsula), capital recycling through dispositions of lower-growth Southern California assets, and selective development — Essex recently broke ground on its first development project in years in South San Francisco. Essex has no plans to expand beyond the West Coast.