Donald C. Wood
Chief Executive Officer at Federal Realty Investment Trust
Thanks, Brenda, and good afternoon, everyone. So here are the highlights. All-time record quarterly FFO per share at $1.69, exceeding internal expectations, analyst consensus, and a very tough comp one year ago. All-time record second quarter comparable leasing volume at 594,000 square feet, within 4,000 square feet of the most comparable leasing volume ever in any quarter.
Strong occupancy gains on both a lease and an occupied basis, the 95.3 and 93.1 respectively, up 100 and 110 basis points respectively from the last quarter, levels not seen since the 2017-2019 time period. Quarterly residential operating income on our stabilized REDI properties up 6.7% versus last year, 9.5% when including the new Darien Connecticut products. By the way, the apartments at Darien Commons are 99% leased with a waiting list to get in.
Strong transactional activity in the quarter with the $215 million acquisition of Virginia Gateway and the $12 million buyout of the minority interest at CocoWalk, not to mention the sale of our remaining assets on Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica for $103 million. The momentum continued in July with our $60 million acquisition of Pinole Vista Crossing in Pinole, California.
Yes, this was a very strong quarter, top to bottom, and based on what we see with our deal pipeline, this leasing environment is expected to continue to at least the balance of the year. Let me give you a little more color on leasing and its impact on our financing. 122 comparable deals at an average starting rent of $37.72 per foot compared with the final year of the previous lease of $34.29. 10% more rent to start, and that's great. By the way, those numbers include 98% of our deals, so they are truly representative of the entire company's results.
But what makes that particularly impressive is that the rent on many of the previous leases has likely been growing at 3% or so over the last five or 10 years, and there's still room to increase the new rent to start the next five to 10-year cycle. It's actually 23% more on a straight-line basis because of those very important contractual bumps. Contractual rent bumps on all of our commercial deals on this quarter averaged 2.4% and sit at roughly 2.25% portfolio-wide, very likely the best portfolio-wide in the business.
This isn't new for us. It's why in the last 20 years, this company has grown its bottom-line earnings, 18 of them, with only the great financial crisis and the global pandemic momentary setbacks. In this second quarter, 2Q year-over-year growth is muted, largely due to the bed-bath stores that were all still open in the second quarter of last year. Yet we still expect the whole-year growth over 2023 to be right at the top of the sector. Compare FFO for share growth over the past one, three-year, five-year, 10-year, 20-year periods against any other large retail portfolio that has a long history, and you'll see why we're so committed to our way of doing things.
The impact on occupancy on both a leased and fiscal basis has been steady and impressive over the last three years, but never more so than this quarter. Both small shop and anchor occupancy growth stood out. In the 2024 second quarter, we picked up 100 basis points in overall lease percentage, bringing it to 95.3. Great result, thanks to record-setting leasing volumes, the acquisition of a well-leased Virginia Gateway, the sale of a less well-leased Third Street Promenade, and by the planned redevelopment of places like Andorra Shopping Center. Our anchor lease percentage gained 90 basis points alone since last quarter and sits at 96.7%. There's another 100-plus basis points to come here.
Let me talk for a moment or two about the transactions this quarter, starting with the sale of Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. First of all, what a great investment this has been for the Trust over the past 25 years. A 13% unlevered IRR over that period and a springboard for this company into relationships with a type of tenant that benefited every mixed-use and lifestyle-oriented project we did. Over the past few years, we lost confidence in the future income growth there for a host of reasons and sold to a local developer for $103 million, on in $20 million when including a one-off sale there late last year.
Reinvesting those proceeds in a dynamic asset like Virginia Gateway with far more future growth possibilities seemed like a no-brainer. We've spoken about Virginia Gateway at various events and meetings over the past couple of months, so I won't use this time to repeat them. Suffice it to say, our Virginia management and development team is all over it and excited to have the new raw material to create significant value over the next few years through releasing and selective placemaking and redevelopment.
Earlier this week, we closed on the acquisition of Pinal Business Shopping Center in Northern California for $60 million, which will generate an initial cash-on-cash return in the low sevens and will grow from there. This dominant 216,000 square foot grocery-anchored regional shopping center sits on 19 acres and was purchased at $277 a foot. Not bad. The center fits in nicely with our West Coast portfolio complementing Crow Canyon Commons and East Bay Bridge in the East Bay and will be managed from our West Coast headquarters at Santana Road. We're not done on the acquisition front either.
Lease-up at Santana West continues with a newly signed deal with an AI-powered cloud database provider for 24,000 square feet on the first floor of the state-of-the-art building. Active negotiations with other prospective tenants for much of the remainder of the building should enable us to continue to report on new deals. And in Lower Merion Township outside Philadelphia, the longstanding Old Lord & Taylor building at our Bala Cynwyd Shopping Center has been fully demolished and construction is underway on our $95 million residential development of 217 apartments with ground floor retail that will be integrated with and complementary to one of federal's most successful shopping centers.
We expect a 7% stabilized yield here. It's nice to see that development economics can still work in the right locations. You might be interested to know that in addition to Bala Cynwyd, we have over 3,700 residential units with active design or entitlements in process at a dozen of our existing assets. As construction costs continue to stabilize, as they've been doing, and rents continue to rise with inflation, as they've been doing, these projects are getting closer and closer to pension. Stay tuned.
By the way, for those New Yorkers listening who may have reason to be out on Long Island around Huntington, please stop by our completely redeveloped and reimagined Huntington Shopping Center, where the brand new Whole Foods opened just last week and joined a new cadre of tenants, including REI, Ulta, New Dining Alternatives, and others. Set in a beautifully landscaped, comfortable setting, it really represents the best of federal realty thinking and execution. The $85 million comprehensive redevelopment brought in on time and on budget. The before and after effect is pretty striking.
Huntington Shopping Center is now a worthy, grocery-anchored, open-air complement to Simon's powerful Walt Whitman Mall next door. As I was finishing up these prepared remarks earlier in the week, I was reading them to the senior team in preparation for this call. Our President Jeff Burke sat back reflectively and commented as to how significant the results of our capital allocation decisions have been over the past 90 to 120 days, given the relative size of this company. He's right. Collectively, they're meaningful and they move the needle in a 102-property portfolio.
Between Virginia Gateway and Pinole, we've made nearly 900,000 square feet of acquisitions, deploying $275 million of capital at a seven-plus percent yield. We've completed a comprehensive and transformational $85 million redevelopment in Huntington, New York, began a new $95 million mixed-use development in Bella, and freed up $103 million of underperforming capital with the third-street promenade sale, all while executing 124 total leases for over 600,000 square feet of commercial space, cementing future growth. I'd say the future looks bright.
That's all I wanted to cover in my prepared remarks this afternoon, so I'll turn it over to Dan to provide more granularity before opening it up to your questions.
