You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: And Joe, you may be on mute.
Operator, do we have Joe's line connected.
Can you hear me now?
Yes, we hear you now.
I hope everyone and their families remain healthy and that your 2021 is off to a good start.
In my 35 years in real estate, I can't remember another year with as many positive and negative twist and turns in such a short period of time as we saw in 2020.
The range of emotions I felt from March, when I was worried about the daily safety of our employees and customers; to April, when I wondered when rental demand in our sector would return; to September, when we saw some of the strongest occupancy and rental rate fundamentals in our Company's history are hard to describe.
I am proud of our team's resilience in how well they responded to 2020's unprecedented challenges.
Our team's efforts together with our balanced portfolio, sophisticated platform and innovative external growth efforts yielded a great result in the fourth quarter.
We ended the year with same-store occupancy of 94.8%, an all-time year-end high for Extra Space.
Our elevated occupancy has given us significant pricing power, which we have experienced since August and a return to positive same-store revenue growth in the fourth quarter of 2.3%, a 380 basis point acceleration from the third quarter.
We also had excellent expense control with a 0.6% decrease in same-store expenses, resulting in 3.4% NOI growth in the quarter.
Our return to positive NOI gains coupled with strong external investment activity yielded core FFO growth of 16.5% in the quarter.
Despite the challenges of the year, the fourth quarter was full of accomplishments, including completion of two preferred equity investments totaling $350 million, $147 million in acquisitions, $168 million in bridge loan closings, the addition of 44 stores to our management platform, and receipt of NAREIT's Leader in the Light award, recognizing Extra Space for its sustainability efforts.
This is the first time a storage company has received this award.
While we are excited about the accomplishments of 2020, we are even more optimistic about how our efforts have positioned us for 2021.
Rentals continue to be steady and vacates continue to be muted.
We are heading into 2021 with the highest occupancy we have ever experienced at this time of year and expect rental rates to remain strong.
We have already added 51 third-party management stores in 2021 and our acquisition, management and bridge loan pipelines are robust.
But we are also mindful of the risks we face.
We recognize that current or potential government regulations could impede same-store revenue and expense performance.
We believe that vacates may eventually return to more normal levels and we recognize that the challenges related to new supply have not subsided completely and will continue to suppress rate growth in many markets.
As in the past, our team is prepared to use all our available tools to optimize performance in the face of any risks which materialize.
In short, despite significant turbulence, we had a very successful 2020 and look forward to an even better 2021.
We continue to execute on our strategy to maximize shareholders' long-term value and to deliver the results our shareholders have come to expect from Extra Space Storage.
I would now like to turn the time over to Scott.
As Joe mentioned, we had a great fourth quarter with reaccelerating same-store revenue growth driven by all-time high occupancy and strong rental rate growth to new customers.
Late fees and other income continue to be lower year-over-year and partially offset rental income, but we saw improvement in both line items from levels experienced in the third quarter.
We lowered expenses in all controllable expense categories in the quarter and despite property tax increases of 6.4%, we still delivered a reduction in same-store expenses overall.
This resulted in same-store NOI growth of 3.4%.
Core FFO for the quarter was $1.48, a year-over-year increase of 16.5% and well above consensus estimates.
Our same-store performance was the primary driver of the outperformance with additional contribution from growth in tenant reinsurance income, management fees, and interest and investment income.
We continue to evolve our balance sheet to reduce secured debt and increase the size of our unencumbered pool.
Our efforts resulted in Moody's issuing Extra Space a BAA2 credit rating on January 28th, our second investment grade credit rating now providing us access to the public bond market.
We are excited to add another capital option to finance future growth, reduced total cost of debt, and further ladder our maturities.
At year-end, we had higher than normal revolver balances and variable rate debt due to the elevated capital activity that took place in the fourth quarter, including settling our convertible notes, completing preferred equity investments, and closing substantial bridge loan and acquisition volume.
A significant portion of these transactions were temporarily funded by draws on our revolving lines.
We are comfortable doing so -- we were comfortable doing so knowing we were actively issuing on our ATM, had pending bridge loan sales and are recapitalizing stores into a JV, which bring our revolver balances down to historical levels.
Last night, we provided guidance and annual assumptions for 2021 with ranges that are wider than previous -- than in previous years to address some of the uncertainty related to COVID-19 and its impact on customer behavior and government regulation.
Our new same-store pool includes a total of 860 stores, which is essentially flat with last year.
The number of new stores added to the pool was generally offset by sites removed due to disposition or redevelopment.
We anticipate the changes in the same-store pool will benefit our 2021 same-store revenue growth by approximately 20 basis points.
Same-store revenue is expected to increase 4.25% to 5.5%, driven by higher occupancy in the first half of the year and elevated rates in new and existing -- to new and existing customers.
Same-store expense growth is expected to be 3.5% to 4.5%, primarily driven by higher property tax expense.
Our revenue and expense guidance results in same-store NOI growth range of 4.25% to 6.25%.
The acquisition market continues to be expensive and we will remain disciplined but opportunistic.
We expect to do significant acquisition volume and plan to close a number of transactions with joint venture partners.
Our guidance assumes $350 million in Extra Space investment, approximately $180 million of which is closed or under contract.
We also expect to close approximately $400 million of bridge loans and plan to retain 20% to 25% of those balances or approximately $100 million in 2021.
We have plenty of capital to invest if we find additional opportunities that create long-term value for shareholders and we will be creative as we deploy capital in the sector.
Our full year core FFO is estimated to be between $5.85 and $6.05 per share.
We anticipate $0.16 of dilution from value-add acquisitions or C of O stores, down $0.04 from 2020.
As Joe mentioned, 2020 has been a memorable year for Extra Space.
We are excited to turn the page and are already on our way to a very strong 2021.

user
q4 ffo per share $1.48.
reported same-store occupancy of 94.8% as of december 31, 2020, compared to 92.4% as of december 31, 2019.
qtrly core ffo per share $1.48.

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