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Significant Accounting Policies
9 Months Ended
Sep. 30, 2017
Accounting Policies [Abstract]  
Significant Accounting Policies
Significant Accounting Policies
 
Basis of Presentation
 
The condensed consolidated financial statements are unaudited and include the accounts of AH4R, the Operating Partnership and their consolidated subsidiaries. Intercompany accounts and transactions have been eliminated. The Company consolidates real estate partnerships and other entities that are not variable interest entities (“VIEs”) when it owns, directly or indirectly, a majority interest in the entity or is otherwise able to control the entity. The Company consolidates VIEs in accordance with Accounting Standards Codification (“ASC”) No. 810, Consolidation, if it is the primary beneficiary of the VIE as determined by its power to direct the VIE’s activities and the obligation to absorb its losses or the right to receive its benefits, which are potentially significant to the VIE. Entities for which the Company owns an interest, but does not consolidate, are accounted for under the equity method of accounting as an investment in unconsolidated subsidiary and are included in escrow deposits, prepaid expenses and other assets within the condensed consolidated balance sheets. Ownership interests in certain consolidated subsidiaries of the Company held by outside parties are included in noncontrolling interest within the condensed consolidated financial statements.

The condensed consolidated financial statements have been prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America (“GAAP”) and in conjunction with the rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). Certain information and footnote disclosures required for annual financial statements have been condensed or excluded pursuant to SEC rules and regulations. Accordingly, the condensed consolidated financial statements do not include all of the information and footnotes required by GAAP for complete financial statements and should be read in conjunction with the audited consolidated financial statements and notes thereto included in the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016. Any references in this report to the number of properties is outside the scope of our independent registered public accounting firm’s review of our financial statements, in accordance with the standards of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. In the opinion of management, all adjustments of a normal and recurring nature necessary for a fair presentation of the condensed consolidated financial statements for the interim periods have been made. The preparation of condensed consolidated financial statements in conformity with GAAP requires management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities and disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities at the date of the condensed consolidated financial statements and the reported amounts of revenues and expenses during the reporting period. Actual results could differ from those estimates.

Effective December 31, 2016, in accordance with our adoption of Accounting Standards Update ("ASU") No. 2016-18, Statement of Cash Flows (Topic 230): Restricted Cash, the Company includes restricted cash together with cash and cash equivalents when reconciling the beginning and ending balances shown in the statements of cash flows, which has the effect of excluding the presentation of transfers between restricted and unrestricted cash amounts in the statements of cash flows. Prior to the adoption, the beginning and ending balances presented in the statements of cash flows included only cash and cash equivalents, and transfers between restricted and unrestricted cash amounts were presented within operating and investing activities based on the nature of the amounts. All prior period amounts have been reclassified to conform to the current presentation. This resulted in $131.4 million and $111.3 million of restricted cash as of September 30, 2016, and December 31, 2015, respectively, being added to cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash in the condensed consolidated statements of cash flows.
Effective January 1, 2017, in order to include share-based compensation costs for employees in the same financial statement line item as the cash compensation paid to the employees, noncash share-based compensation expense has been reclassified with the amounts related to corporate administrative employees and centralized and field property management employees reflected in general and administrative expense and property management expenses, respectively, within the condensed consolidated statements of operations. Additionally, all costs associated with operating our proprietary property management platform such as salary expenses for both centralized and field property management personnel, lease expenses and operating costs for property management offices and technology expenses for maintaining the property management platform, which were previously included in property operating expenses, have been reclassified into property management expenses. This resulted in the reclassification of $0.9 million and $2.7 million of noncash share-based compensation expense for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2016, respectively, with $0.4 million and $1.1 million of noncash share-based compensation expense reclassified to property management expenses, respectively, and $0.5 million and $1.6 million of noncash share-based compensation expense reclassified to general and administrative expense, respectively, in the condensed consolidated statements of operations. This also resulted in $17.9 million and $52.0 million of property management expenses for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2016, respectively, which were previously included in property operating expenses, being reclassified to property management expenses in the condensed consolidated statements of operations.

There have been no other changes to our significant accounting policies that have had a material impact on our condensed consolidated financial statements and related notes, compared to those policies disclosed in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016. Therefore, notes to the condensed consolidated financial statements that would substantially duplicate the disclosures contained in our most recent audited consolidated financial statements have been omitted.

Recent Accounting Pronouncements

In August 2017, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (“FASB”) issued ASU No. 2017-12, Derivatives and Hedging (Topic 815): Targeted Improvements to Accounting for Hedging Activities, to amend ASC No. 815, Derivatives and Hedging, to more closely align hedge accounting with a company’s risk management strategies, provide additional transparency and understandability of hedge results, as well as to simplify the application of hedge accounting. The guidance eliminates the requirement to separately measure and report hedge ineffectiveness. Instead, the entire change in the fair value of the hedging instrument included in the assessment of hedge effectiveness will be recorded in other comprehensive income, and amounts deferred in other comprehensive income will be reclassified into earnings and presented in the same income statement line item that is used to present the earnings effect of the hedged item when the hedged item affects earnings. This guidance will be effective for public companies for annual reporting periods beginning after December 15, 2018, and for interim periods within those annual periods, with early adoption permitted. The Company adopted this guidance effective September 30, 2017, which will impact our hedge accounting policy as disclosed above. The adoption of this guidance did not have a material impact on our financial statements.

In January 2017, the FASB issued ASU No. 2017-04, Intangibles—Goodwill and Other (Topic 350): Simplifying the Test for Goodwill Impairment, to simplify the accounting for goodwill impairment by removing Step 2 of the goodwill impairment test, which had involved determining the fair value of individual assets and liabilities of a reporting unit to measure goodwill. Instead, goodwill impairment will be determined as the excess of a reporting unit’s carrying value over its fair value, not to exceed the carrying amount of goodwill. The guidance will be effective for the Company for annual reporting periods beginning after December 15, 2019, and for interim periods within those annual periods. Early adoption is permitted for any goodwill impairment tests performed after January 1, 2017. The Company is currently assessing the impact of the guidance on our financial statements.

In January 2017, the FASB issued ASU No. 2017-01, Business Combinations (Topic 805): Clarifying the Definition of a Business, which changed the definition of a business and will now require management to determine whether substantially all of the fair value of gross assets acquired is concentrated in a single identifiable asset or a group of similar identifiable assets. When this is the case, the transferred assets and activities is not a business. This determination is important as the accounting treatment for business combinations and asset acquisitions differs since transactions costs are expensed in a business combination and capitalized in an asset acquisition. The guidance will be effective for public companies for annual reporting periods beginning after December 15, 2017, and for interim periods within those annual periods, with early adoption permitted. The guidance will be applied prospectively to any transactions occurring within the period of adoption. The Company adopted this guidance as of January 1, 2017, on a prospective basis, which results in our leased properties no longer meeting the definition of a business. Therefore, dispositions of leased properties will no longer result in a reduction to goodwill. The adoption of this guidance did not have a material impact on our financial statements.

In August 2016, the FASB issued ASU No. 2016-15, Statement of Cash Flows (Topic 230): Classification of Certain Cash Receipts and Cash Payments, which is intended to reduce the existing diversity in practice by addressing eight specific cash flow issues related to how certain cash receipts and cash payments are presented and classified in the statement of cash flows. The guidance will be effective for the Company for annual reporting periods beginning after December 15, 2017, and for interim periods within those annual periods with early adoption permitted. If early adopted, an entity must adopt all of the amendments in the same period. The Company is currently assessing the impact of the adoption of this guidance and does not anticipate that the adoption of this guidance will have a material impact on our financial statements.

In June 2016, the FASB issued ASU No. 2016-13, Financial Instruments—Credit Losses (Topic 326), to amend the accounting for credit losses for certain financial instruments by requiring companies to recognize an estimate of expected credit losses as an allowance in order to recognize such losses more timely than under previous guidance that had allowed companies to wait until it was probable such losses had been incurred. The guidance will be effective for the Company for annual reporting periods beginning after December 15, 2019, and for interim periods within those annual periods. Early adoption is permitted for annual reporting periods beginning after December 15, 2018, and interim periods within those annual periods. The Company is currently assessing the impact of the guidance on our financial statements.

In March 2016, the FASB issued ASU No. 2016-09, Compensation—Stock Compensation (Topic 718): Improvements to Employee Share-Based Payment Accounting, which simplifies several aspects of the accounting for share-based payment transactions, including the income tax consequences, classification of awards as either equity or liabilities, and classification on the statement of cash flows. The guidance became effective for the Company for annual reporting periods beginning after December 15, 2016, and for interim periods within those annual periods. The Company adopted this guidance effective January 1, 2017, which resulted in our election to recognize forfeitures of share-based compensation as they occur. The adoption of this guidance did not have a material impact on our financial statements.

In February 2016, the FASB issued ASU No. 2016-02, Leases (Topic 842), which will require lessees to recognize assets and liabilities on the balance sheet for the rights and obligations created by all leases with terms of more than one year. Lessor accounting will remain similar to lessor accounting under previous GAAP, while aligning with the FASB's new revenue recognition guidance for non-lease components. The new guidance will also require lessees and lessors to capitalize, as initial direct costs, only those costs that are incurred due to the execution of a lease. Any other costs incurred, including allocated indirect costs, will no longer be capitalized and instead will be expensed as incurred. The guidance will be effective for the Company for annual reporting periods beginning after December 15, 2018, and for interim periods within those annual periods, with early adoption permitted, and requires the use of the modified retrospective transition method. The Company is currently assessing the impact of the adoption of this guidance on our financial statements.

In January 2016, the FASB issued ASU No. 2016-01, Recognition and Measurement of Financial Assets and Financial Liabilities, which amends certain aspects of recognition, measurement, presentation and disclosure of financial instruments, including the requirement to measure certain equity investments at fair value with changes in fair value recognized in net income. The guidance will be effective for the Company for annual reporting periods beginning after December 15, 2017, and for interim periods within those annual periods. The Company is currently assessing the impact of the guidance on our financial statements.

In May 2014, the FASB issued ASU No. 2014-09, Revenue from Contracts with Customers (Topic 606), which provides guidance on revenue recognition and supersedes the revenue recognition requirements in Topic 605, Revenue Recognition, most industry-specific guidance and some cost guidance included in Subtopic 605-35, “Revenue Recognition-Construction-Type and Production-Type Contracts.” The standard’s core principle is that a company will recognize revenue when it transfers promised goods or services to customers in an amount that reflects the consideration to which the company expects to be entitled in exchange for those goods or services. In doing so, companies will need to use more judgment and make more estimates than under current guidance. These judgments include identifying “distinct” performance obligations in multi-element contracts, estimating the amount of variable consideration to include in the transaction price at contract inception, allocating the transaction price to each separate performance obligation, and determining at contract inception whether the performance obligation is satisfied over time or at a point in time. Since lease contracts under ASC 840, "Leases", are specifically excluded from ASU No. 2014-09’s scope, most of the Company’s rental contract revenue will continue to follow current leasing guidance. We have reviewed our other sources of revenue and identified that the non-lease components (tenant chargebacks and recovery revenue) in our single-family home and office leases will continue being accounted for under ASC 840 until the adoption of ASU 2016-02 beginning January 1, 2019.

As part of ASU No. 2014-09, the FASB issued consequential amendments to other sections, eliminating ASC 360-20, Real Estate Sales and adding ASU No. 2017-05 Other Income-Gains and Losses from the Derecognition of Nonfinancial Assets, Subtopic 610-20, "Other Income". Real estate sales to noncustomers will follow new guidance from ASC 610-20, while sales to customers will follow the general revenue guidance in ASC 606. While the Company’s property sales are not part of our ordinary customer activity and will fall under ASC 610-20, there is little economic difference in the accounting for real estate sales to customer versus noncustomer, with exception to presentation of comprehensive income (revenue and expense when sale to customer or gain and loss when sale to noncustomer).

In our initial assessment, the Company’s current accounting policies for tenant chargebacks, recovery revenue, and real estate property sales are aligned with the new revenue recognition principles prescribed by the new guidance. Although we do not expect the new standards to ultimately change the amount or timing of our revenue recognition, the Company will continue to assess the potential effects of ASU No. 2014-09 and ASU No. 2017-05, noting that the underlying principles and processes used to record that revenue are changing under ASC 606 and ASC 610-20. The guidance will be effective for the Company in fiscal years (interim and annual reporting periods) that begin after December 15, 2017, with early adoption permitted. At that time, the Company may adopt the full retrospective approach or the modified retrospective approach. The Company does not anticipate that adoption of this guidance will have a material impact on our financial statements.