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: As always, we appreciate your interest.
Brent Wood, our CFO, is also participating on the call.
We hope everyone is enjoying their fall.
They continue performing at a high level and reaping the rewards of a very positive environment.
Our third quarter results were strong and demonstrate the resiliency of our portfolio and of the industrial market.
Some of the results the team produced include, funds from operations coming in above guidance up 14% compared to third quarter last year and ahead of our forecast.
This marks 34 consecutive quarters of higher FFO per share as compared to the prior year quarter, truly a long-term trend.
Our quarterly occupancy averaged 97.1%, up 50 basis points from third quarter 2020 and at quarter end, we're ahead of projections at 98.8% lease and 97.6% occupied.
Our occupancy is benefiting from a healthy market with accelerating e-commerce and last mile delivery trends.
Quarterly releasing spreads were at record levels at 37.4% GAAP and 23.9% cash and year-to-date, those results are 31% GAAP and 18.5% cash.
Finally, cash same-store NOI rose 5.2% for the quarter and 5.6% year-to-date.
In summary, I'm proud of our team's results, putting up one of the best quarters in our history.
Today, we're responding to the strength in the market and demand for industrial product by both users and investors by focusing on value creation via development and value-add investments.
I'm grateful we ended the quarter at 98.8% leased, our highest quarter on record and to demonstrate the market strength, our last four quarters marked the highest four quarterly rates in our company's history.
Looking at Houston, we're 96.7% leased.
It now represents 12% of rents, down 140 basis points from a year ago and is projected to continue shrinking.
As we've stated before, our development starts are pulled by market demand.
Based on the market strength we're seeing today, we're raising our forecasted starts to $340 million for 2021.
This represents an annual record level of starts for our company.
To position us for this market demand, we've acquired several new sites with more in our pipeline along with value-add and direct investments.
More details to follow as we close on each of these opportunities.
And Brent will now review a variety of financial topics, including our 2021 guidance.
Our third quarter results reflect the terrific execution of our team, strong overall performance of our portfolio and the continued success of our time-tested strategy.
FFO per share for the third quarter exceeded our guidance range at $1.55 per share and compared to third quarter 2020 of $1.36 represented an increase of 14%.
The outperformance continues to be driven by our operating portfolio performing better than anticipated, particularly occupancy and rental rate growth.
From a capital perspective, during the third quarter, we issued $49 million of equity at an average price over $176 per share.
In July, we repaid a maturing $40 million senior unsecured term loan.
And in September, we closed on the refinance of $100 million unsecured term loan that reduced the effective fixed interest rate from 2.75% to 2.1%, with five years of term remaining.
In our ongoing efforts to bolster our ESG efforts, we incorporated a sustainability-linked metric into the amended terms.
That activity combined with our already strong and conservative balance sheet, kept us in a position of financial strength and flexibility.
Our debt to total market capitalization was below 17%, debt-to-EBITDA ratio at 4.7 times and our interest and fixed charge coverage ratio increased to over 8.5 times.
Our rent collections have been equally strong.
Bad debt for the first three quarters of the year is a net positive $346,000 because of tenants whose balance was previously reserved but brought current, exceeding new tenant reserves.
This trend continues to exemplify the stability, credit strength and diversity of our tenant base.
Looking forward, FFO guidance for the fourth quarter of 2021 is estimated to be in the range of $1.54 to $1.58 per share and $6.01 to $6.05 for the year, a $0.15 per share increase over our prior guidance.
The 2021 FFO per share midpoint represents a 12.1% increase over 2020.
Among the notable assumption changes that comprise our revised 2021 guidance include: increasing the cash same-property midpoint by 8% to 5.6%, decreasing reserves for uncollectible rent by $900,000, increasing projected development starts by 24% to $340 million and increasing equity and debt issuance by combined $95 million.
In summary, we were very pleased with our third quarter results.
We will continue to rely on our financial strength, the experience of our team and the quality and location of our portfolio to carry our momentum through the year.
Now Marshall will make some final comments.
In closing, I'm excited about where we stand this far into 2021.
We're ahead of our initial forecast and adhering that momentum into 2022.
Our company, our team and our strategy are working well, as evidenced by the quarterly results.
And it's the future that makes me most excited for EastGroup.
Our strategy has worked well the past few years.
We're further seeing an acceleration and a number of positive trends for our properties and within our markets.
Meanwhile, our bread and butter traditional tenants remain and will continue needing last-mile distribution space in fast-growing Sunbelt markets.
These, along with the mix of our team, our operating strategy and our markets has us optimistic about the future.

user
q3 ffo per share $1.55.
eastgroup - qtrly same property net operating income for same property pool excluding income from lease terminations increased 5.2% on a cash basis.

assistant