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: We are off to a great start in 2020.
The strong fundamentals we discussed on our fourth quarter call not only continued, but actually accelerated as we move through the first three months of the year.
Same-store occupancy remained at all time highs for Extra Space with sequential growth in January and February at a time of the year when occupancy normally declines.
Occupancy increased further in March, ending the quarter with the year-over-year positive delta of 480 basis points.
Our elevated occupancy has given us significant pricing power, which has also accelerated during the quarter with achieved rates increasing from 10% in January to well into the teens by the end of March.
These trends fueled same-store revenue growth of 4.6% despite a 110 basis point drag on revenue growth from lower year-over-year late fees.
We had excellent expense control with 0.2% decrease in same-store expenses.
The result with same-store NOI growth of 6.5% a sequential acceleration of 310 basis points from Q4 and year-over-year core FFO growth of 21%.
With fundamentals holding and performance comps becoming much easier in the upcoming months, we expect continued acceleration in revenue growth through the second quarter.
Our concern of a dramatic increase in vacates has not materialized and now we are into our busy leasing season when demand is typically strongest.
We believe that vacate risk to our elevated occupancy has likely been postponed until the end of the summer or even into the fall.
Turning to external growth.
The acquisition market continues to be expensive and we remain disciplined but opportunistic.
Year-to-date, we've been able to close or put under contract a little over $300 million in acquisitions.
These are primarily lease-up properties and several of the properties came from our bridge lending program.
Looking forward, we anticipate the majority of additional acquisitions to be completed in joint ventures and we have plenty of capital to invest if we find additional opportunities that create long-term value for our shareholders.
We were very active in Q1 on the third-party management front, adding 61 stores in the quarter, which includes the previously announced JCAP stores.
Our growth was partially offset by dispositions.
We have only sold to other operators at prices we viewed as unattractive to the region.
While this trend presents a headwind, we still expect solid growth in our third-party management platform for the year.
As I said on our last call, we are mindful of the risks we face.
These include difficult fourth quarter operational comp, a tight labor market and new supply and state of emergency orders in certain markets.
That said, current fundamentals are the strongest we have seen in some time.
And our team is prepared to use all our available tools to optimize performance.
Our first quarter outperformance coupled with steady external growth and the improving 2021 outlook allow us to increase our industry-leading annual guidance $7.5 at the midpoint.
I would now like to turn the time over to Scott.
As Joe mentioned, we had a good first quarter with accelerating 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 down and partially offset rental income, but we will lap this comp in the second quarter, which will enhance same-store revenue growth.
Existing customer rate increases will also provide a tailwind in the second quarter since they were paused during much of Q2 2020.
We delivered a reduction in same store expenses despite property tax increases of 6.9% and repairs and maintenance increases of 20% due to higher year-over-year snow removal costs.
These increases were up and were offset primarily by savings in payroll and marketing.
We believe payroll savings will continue throughout the year, albeit perhaps at lower levels due to wage pressure in certain markets.
Marketing spend will depend on our use of this lever to drive topline revenue growth, but it should also remain down for the year.
Core FFO for the quarter was $1.50 per share, a year-over-year increase of 21%.
Same-store property performance was the primary driver of the outperformance with additional contribution from growth in tenant insurance income and management fees.
As we announced during the quarter, Moody's issued Extra Space a BAA2 credit rating, our second investment grade credit rating now providing us access to the public bond market.
We continued to strengthen our balance sheet during the quarter through ATM activity and an overnight offering, which combined for net proceeds of $274 million.
We sold 16 stores into a joint venture and obtained debt for that venture, resulting in cash proceeds to Extra Space of $132 million and an ownership interest of 55%.
We plan to add a third partner to this venture in the second quarter, which will reduce our ownership interest to 16%.
Our equity and disposition proceeds reduced revolving balances and we ended the quarter with net debt to EBITDA of 5.1 times lower than our long-term debt target of 5.5 times to 6 times.
Last night, we revised our 2021 guidance and annual assumptions.
We raised our same-store revenue range to 5% to 6%.
Same-store expense growth was reduced to 2% to 3%, resulting in same-store NOI growth range of 6% to 8%, a 175 basis point increase at the midpoint.
These improvements in our same-store expectations are due to better-than-expected first quarter performance, relaxed legislative restrictions in certain markets, and better-than-expected resilience in storage fundamentals as the vaccine rolls out.
We raised our full year core FFO range to be $5.95 to $6.10 per share, a $7.5 increase at the midpoint.
We anticipate $0.14 of dilution from value-add acquisitions in C of O stores, $0.02 less than previously reported due to improved property performance.
We are excited by the strong performance year-to-date, as well as the acceleration we see heading into the second quarter.

user
q1 ffo per share $1.50 excluding items.
sees ffo per share $5.95 - $6.10 for 2021.

assistant