Increased occupancy helped Investors Real Estate Trust (IRET), headquartered in Minot, North Dakota, to post 3.8 percent revenue growth for the second the quarter of its 2018 fiscal year.

"We experienced strong revenue growth this quarter as we continued to increase occupancy across our portfolio," Mark Decker Jr., IRET's president and chief executive officer, said. "We also drove growth in our rental rates thanks to the efforts of our operations team. While expenses are significantly higher than last year, these increases were within our expectations and were offset by a decrease in capital expenditures and an increase in revenue growth."

Expenses increased 15 percent for the year to date, which the company said was largely the result additional costs related to increasing occupancy, higher labor costs and increased real estate taxes.

"With the pending sale of our medical office portfolio and the announced sale of our other non-core assets, we are nearing the completion of our transformation to a focused multifamily REIT, which will enable us to devote management resources to our core business of developing and growing our multifamily properties," Decker said.

The company sold $105.4 million of commercial and non-core multifamily assets, including $63.4 million during the quarter and $42.0 million subsequent to quarter-end. It used the proceeds to deploy into targeted multifamily acquisitions.