Steve Schnur
Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Duke Realty
Thanks, Jim. I'll first cover market fundamentals and review our operational results. Industrial net absorption registered an impressive 85 million square feet, which is the third highest quarter on record. This was more than enough to offset new supply as completions dipped to 52 million square feet. This positive absorption over deliveries for the quarter reduced vacancy down to 4%. The strong fundamentals increased asking rents during the second quarter by 9.8% compared to the previous year. CBRE now projects demand for the full year to surpass 350 million square feet and break the all-time 2016 record of 327 million square feet. Completions are projected to be around 300 million square feet for the year. With this setup, we expect national asking rents to grow over 10% on average in 2021 with a range of mid-single digits to the mid-20s in the best submarkets.
This is consistent with what we're seeing on the ground in our own markets. Growth in retail sales and e-commerce sales across the two month May and June period, were up 20% and 9% year-over-year. And perhaps more notably, when measured against the 2019 pre-pandemic time frame, the recent May and June figures were up 19% and 37%. Continued strains in the supply chain caused the retail inventory to sales ratio to remain at a record low 1.1 level times. Demand by occupier type remains broad-based and very active with 3PLs leading the way. 3PL activity nearly doubled the square feet absorbed year-to-date compared to a year ago. The general retailer and wholesaler categories were also up over 85% from a year ago. Of course, e-commerce is still exceptionally strong.
And even with Amazon leasing 33 million square feet, which is down some from a year ago, these data points are a very good indicator that demand is broadening out past pure e-commerce players. Turning to our own portfolio. We executed a very solid quarter by signing 7.6 million square feet of leases. The strong lease activity for the quarter resulted in continued growth in rents in our portfolio as we reported 19% cash and 36% on a GAAP basis, both of which were all-time records for our portfolio. About 35% of these deals were in coastal markets, which is higher than our historical run rate, but still lower than our current portfolio exposure to these markets of about 40%. As we've been saying, our lower rollover in these coastal markets compared to our portfolio exposure results in outsized future opportunities for rent growth and this quarter certainly demonstrates this concept.
We expect rollover in coastal markets for the remainder of the year to moderate to recent historical levels, but we still expect strong overall growth in rents to continue. We started $197 million of new development this quarter that consisted of five speculative projects. As we alluded to last quarter, given the strength across our submarkets and strategically located land, we believe these projects offer a great risk-adjusted return for us. In fact, within two months after starting construction, we've already signed a lease for 100% of the space at the Columbus project totaling 582,000 square feet with an A-rated global 3PL customer at a rent well above our underwritten levels. Our development pipeline at quarter end is $1.4 billion, with 84% allocated to Tier one markets and expected value creation of almost 50%.
This pipeline was 49% pre-leased as of June 30. This 49% moves up to 54% when you include the recently completed lease in Columbus I just mentioned. I'd also add that we have a land bank to continue to support these levels of new development going forward. Our teams have also taken critical steps to mitigate schedule risk related to materials. We believe we're well positioned to continue to lead our sector and grow through new development. Looking forward, our outlook for new development is as strong as it's ever been and is reflected by our revised guidance of $150 million from the midpoint. I'll now turn it over to Nick Anthony to cover the acquisitions and dispositions.