Mike Mas
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, at Regency Centers
Hey, Michael. You pack a punch with one question. There is a lot in there. So let me unpack some of that. And if I don't get to it all, I'm certain that others will have similar questions. So just to recap what you said there, from a core earnings perspective, big moving parts, and you've got it largely correct. Same-property NOI growth is the largest and has been the largest contributor to our earnings growth rate. So at the midpoint, we're looking at a core growth rate of just over 3%, same property growth, as you can see, 2% to 2.5% largest contributor there. Very proud to deliver the UBP merger accretion estimate of 1.5% to our growth rate, and that's been consistent, as you know, since we announced the transaction back in May.
We continue to deliver upon that underwriting. The headwinds, of course, and you alluded to some of them, but let me just click through them for the benefit of everyone. No further COVID collections of about $4 million. That's $0.02 a share. By the way, we're extraordinarily happy for that headwind to be behind us and kudos to the team for collecting on that rent. Lower termination fees is about $0.02 and of course, the results of our recent debt financing, which we're also extraordinarily pleased with is another $0.02 of headwind to earnings growth. To your follow-up question, just let me start here. The puts and takes of outperformance, underperformance relative to the midpoint. Listen, it's going to come through the NOI plan. And specifically, within the NOI plan, it's going to come through move-outs as it's typically the occupancy and our assumptions around that.
We really -- we put together this occupancy plan, this leasing plan. And later in the call, I'm sure Alan will jump in and give us some color. But we feel really good about the direction of our percent leased. When you look at the top line kind of surface level, we're going to move percent leased up towards our 96% target by about 20 basis points this year. And on the surface, it looks like we're moving in the exact right direction, consistent with the dynamics we're seeing in the marketplace, which we spent some time on the prepared remarks describing. But it's what's happening beneath the surface uniquely in 2024, which is causing some of that drag. And we are going to see in the first quarter of this year, a decline in commenced occupancy of about 80 basis points.
Much of that -- the vast majority of that, we can see its bankruptcy filings, it's move-outs from Rite Aid. It's the move-outs from Bed Bath & Beyond. We have a couple of high rent paying leases in Manhattan that are expiring, and we've got great activity on the re-lease of those spaces, but we're going to feel that occupancy decline early in the year. And then to your -- to finish it up on your impactful question. As I said in the remarks, we're re-leasing this space is about as quickly as we can get it. By year-end, our commenced occupancy rate should be north of where we started.
We should be up by about 20 basis points on that rate on a spot basis again, but it's that downtime. It's that average, it is that impact of timing that's going to weigh on our 2% to 2.5% growth rate. So lastly, '25 is looking from an algorithm perspective, '25 is looking like a disproportionate year to our standard 2.5% to 3% run rate. If all -- again, there's a lot to say here, I'm not giving 25% guidance, but if all can kind of hold together here. '25 we should see the benefit of that commenced occupancy rate coming back online and moving our growth forward.
