Donald Wood
Chief Executive Officer at Federal Realty Investment Trust
Thanks, Leah. And good afternoon, everyone. Well, it's a new year and Federal continues to charge forward with a very solid $1.64 recorded in the first quarter, along with 3.8% same-center growth when excluding term fees and COVID repayments. And an all-time first-quarter record, 567,000 square feet of retail leased at 9% higher rents, the answer to the often-asked question of do demographics matter post-pandemic become quite evident. They sure do.
The level of leasing activity in the quarter is particularly notable. Our record retail leasing was impressive, but maybe more so with the 190,000 square feet of office space leased at our mixed-use properties. Supplementing the long-awaited 141,000 square-foot lease to accounting consulting firm PWC at One Santana West, bringing that building to nearly half leased was an additional nearly 50,000 feet leased elsewhere in the mixed-use portfolio, including two deals at 915 Meeting Street at Pike & Rose, bringing that building to nearly 80% leased. The remaining vacancy at 915 Meeting Street at Pike & Rose and One Santana West represents considerably less than 2% of the value of the Company. Tenant interest in the remaining space at both buildings remained south.
All-in all, for the quarter, we signed 117 commercial leases, retail plus mixed-use office for over 775,000 square feet of space with strong economics, not including our residential portfolio, which itself generated record first-quarter property operating income of over $17 million. Make no mistake, our product, primarily retail, but also including complementary office and residential is very desirable in the marketplace and a huge positive differentiator.
Now obviously, higher interest rates take away some of that operating positivity when you get down to the FFO line, but we still grew at over 3% in the quarter and at $1.64 at the higher end of our guidance range. We did 104 comparable retail deals in the quarter that cumulatively were written at 9% higher cash basis rent than the final year of the previous tenant or 20% on a straight-line basis. And just to pound the point home one more time, those cash-based rollover increases come on top of leases that have had what we believe to be the highest contractual rent bumps throughout their term in the sector, making that rollover all the more impressive. Contractual rent bumps for the deals done in the first quarter were roughly 2.3% blended, anchor and small-shop. The weighted-average contractual rent bumps for the entire retail portfolio, not just one or two or three quarters worth, approximates 2.5% and higher when considering the office business, best in the business as far as we can tell.
The sustained leasing volume and related economics bode well for the future, especially the contractual rent bumps. Now I spoke last quarter about the upside in our occupancy, especially with respect to shop space and felt that another 100 basis points over the 90.7% that we reported at last year -- at year-end was doable. In the first quarter of 2024, we picked up 70 of those 100 basis points, bringing our small-shop lease percentage to 91.4%. There's more to come here. Our anchored lease percentage is 95.8%, there's another 200 basis points to come there too.
Those two components combined at 94.3% leased overall, pretty strong, but as we're demonstrating room to grow. We take a very proactive approach to leasing and often lease space well in advance of an existing lease expiration or vacancy, all in the name of improved tenant health and merchandising mix and as an insurance policy towards potential gaps in future cash flow. We've got some impactful anchor renewals coming up later this year and early next that should continue the positive trajectory. In terms of a tenant watchlist or other indications of a shift in demand, there is nothing out of the ordinary that we can point to. We have little exposure to those tenants that are most talked about these days, Express, Big Locks, Joanne's, Family Dollar and $0.99 only as they tend to cater to a lower-income demographic. Our tenants have been largely been able to pass on cost of goods and labor increases to their customers. Those customers may grumble at the higher prices, but thus far, they've been both able and more importantly willing to pay them.
In addition, our retail tenant base is very well-diversified by both in terms of tenant concentration as well as property type. And while we'll always have one-off tenant failures as just part of the business, portfolio-wide collectability issues haven't been and are expect -- are not expected to be outside our historical experience or specific 2024 guidance. Business looks good.
The last topic I want to address before turning it over to Dan relates to external growth. While we've turned down the dial a bit on immediate development projects, the residential development Bala Cynwyd Shopping Center notwithstanding, we turned up the dial and level of intensity on sourcing acquisitions. It's an interesting and unique time in the acquisition marketplace right now. While there is a limited supply of Federal Realty type opportunities out there, there's also less viable competition for those centers than there has been historically.
We look for shopping centers that are generally larger in size than the average center with opportunities for remerchandising, redevelopment, higher rents and yeah potential site intensification. We look for shopping centers in markets that have strengthened significantly over the past 15 years and especially post-pandemic, markets like Phoenix, Central and South Florida and Northern Virginia, among others. We look for shopping centers that are immediately accretive to earnings based on the cost of cap -- based on our cost of capital advantage, but even more importantly, produce returns meaningfully above our long-term cost-of-capital. We look for shopping centers that will be immediately financed through combination of other asset sales and our largely undrawn $1.25 billion credit facility and then refinance for the long term subsequently.
We've begun our due diligence process on one such large asset currently and have a growing pipeline on others. Obviously, it remains to be seen if and how much success we'll have in this buy versus build cycle, but using both our operating strength and reputation, as well as our balance sheet strength and flexibility, is a specific focus of ours for the balance of this year and next.
That's all I wanted to cover in prepared remarks this afternoon. So I'll turn it over to Dan to provide more granularity before opening it up to your questions.