VIVMARK RESIDENTIAL (VMRK, formerly EQR) — payout ratio, four ways

You asked about EQR. That ticker resolves to the operating partnership; the listed entity files as VMRK. Figures below are the listed company.

Fiscal year ending 2025-12-31 · sector Real estate · computed from SEC filings, not taken from a data vendor.

Basis	Payout	Why it differs
GAAP earnings	94.2%	What most screeners publish, and badly wrong here — depressed by depreciation on buildings that are not losing value.
Operating cash flow	63.5%	Before capital spending, so it understates the payout that free cash flow shows.
Free cash flow	106.0%	Counts property acquisitions as though they were maintenance.
Funds from operations	71.9%	The basis the real estate industry uses. Adds back depreciation on buildings that are not losing value.

Spread between highest and lowest: 43 percentage points. Same filings, different denominators.

The arithmetic

GAAP earnings — dividends declared per share $2.77 ÷ diluted EPS $2.94
Operating cash flow — dividends paid $1,046.2m ÷ operating cash flow $1,648.8m
Free cash flow — dividends paid $1,046.2m ÷ (operating cash flow $1,648.8m − capex $661.6m)
Funds from operations — dividends declared per share $2.77 ÷ derived FFO $3.85 per share

- FFO built NAREIT-style: net income, plus real-estate depreciation, less gains on sale, over weighted-average diluted shares

- This is an approximation. Every REIT defines its own adjusted variant in the filing text, so it will not match the earnings release exactly

Where the figures came from

10-K filed 2026-02-13 · accession 0001193125-26-051433

Every one is public at sec.gov and free to check. That is the point — you should not have to take my word for any of it.

Caveats on this company

ebitda built from net income (no operating income reported)
FFO derived (NAREIT approximation)

Computed by an open pipeline reading SEC XBRL directly. If any number here looks wrong to you, tell me — that is more useful to me than agreement.