Michael Franco
President & Chief Financial Officer at Vornado Realty Trust
Thank you, Steve, and good morning, everyone. As Steve mentioned, we had an outstanding quarter and a strong year. Fourth quarter comparable FFO as adjusted was $0.81 per share, compared to $0.68 per share for last year's fourth quarter, an increase of $0.13 per share or 19%. And for the year comparable FFO was $2.86 per share, up $0.24 or 9% in 2020. We have provided a quarter-over-quarter bridge in our earnings release on page four and in our financial supplement on page eight.
We have several non-comparable items in the quarter, primarily 1290 Avenue of the Americas, defeasance costs and a TRS non-cash deferred tax liability, partially offset by 220 Central Park South gain, which total reduced FFO by $0.08 per share.
As we look ahead, we are expecting another strong year in 2022, with double-digit percentage FFO per share growth, driven primarily by previously signed leases in both Office and Retail, particularly Facebook at Farley and the continued recovery of our variable businesses.
With respect to our variable businesses, we continue to see a recovery in the fourth quarter. Our dominant signs in Times Square in the Penn District continue to attract disproportionate demand and have healthy signage bookings.
BMS continue to perform near pre-pandemic levels. A number of trade shows have successfully taken place, albeit with lower attendance, primarily due to travel restrictions. And finally, we still expect our garages to be fully back in 2022. Other than Hotel Penn's income, we still expect to recover most of the income from our variable businesses in 2022, with the full return in 2023.
Company-wide same-store cash NOI for the fourth quarter increased by a strong 10.1% over the prior year's fourth quarter. Our core New York Office business was up 8.5% and our Retail same-store cash NOI was up 32.3%, primarily due to the rent commencement on new leases at 595 Madison Avenue, 4 Union Square South, 770 Broadway and 689 Fifth Avenue.
Our New York occupancies also continue to recover nicely. Our Office occupancy ended the quarter at 92.2%, up60 basis points from the third quarter and 110 basis points from the trough in the second quarter.
Retail occupancy ended the quarter at 80.7%, up 350 basis points in the third quarter. We expect further improvement in both occupancies by year end 2022 based on our deal pipeline and modest 2022 Office exploration schedule.
Now turning to the leasing markets. The New York Office leasing market continues to strengthen and show resilience in this period of change, supported by strong economic and private sector job growth. Quarter-over-quarter sustained leasing momentum lead the total volume in 2021 of 25 million-square-feet, by far the highest level since the start of the pandemic.
Tenant demand continues to surge, especially from technology and financial services users. And importantly, these companies are committing to long-term leases, as they map out their futures Tour activity has returned to pre-pandemic levels, with lots of deals in the works.
Most industry experts are forecasting market rent occupancy improvement in 2022, with pent up demand building as more employers get off the sidelines and into the market. The Office markets recent performance is completely centered on flight to quality as the highest quality properties are clearly winning.
Tenants are strongly attracted to transit-oriented properties with state-of-the-art systems, amenity rich programming, outdoor space, and health and wellness features, along with food and beverage offerings. And importantly, they are happy to pay for quality and value, as is more important than ever to CEOs that they'd be an appealing and engaging workspaces to attract and retain their employees.
JLL reports that in 2021, an all-time high 164 leases comprised of 3.4 million-square-feet were signed at $100 plus starting rents. Our leasing team led the market here with 831,000-square-feet or 25% of these deals, including the largest deal in this class for the second year in a row.
Our lease with MSG at PENN 2 falls within the footsteps of 2020's largest trophy transaction with Facebook at Farley. We expect this trend to continue which bodes well for rental growth of our high quality assets.
Overall, we continue to outperform the market as is evident from our statistics and think it is worth underscoring our leasing accomplishments during the pandemic over the past 24 months, 4.48 million square feet leased, starting rents are $85 per square foot, mark-to-markets of 8.6 cash and GAAP of 14.1% and average lease term of nearly 13 years. We execute on a number of large important leases during this timeframe, Facebook 730,000-feet, NYU 633,000-feet, Interpublic 513,000-feet, Madison Square Garden 428,000-feet, Apple 336,000-feet and Clear Secure 119,000 feet.
In 2021 our Office leasing performance was comprised of 98 transactions for more than 2.2 million-square-feet total, with initial starting rents of $83 per square foot and an average lease term of 11 years. Moreover, cash and GAAP mark-to-markets were strong at 10.8% and 15.9%, respectively. 38% of this activity were trophy transactions at triple-digit rents.
During the fourth quarter we completed 23 leases totaling 954,000-square-feet. Our average starting rent during the quarter was $88 per square foot. Cash mark-to-market was 29%. GAAP mark-to-market was 39% and average lease term was 14 years, all very, very strong figures.
The Madison Square Garden lease is another major milestone for us in the Penn District and validates our program to take rents from the $60,000 [Technical Issues] Richard?
