I'm pleased to announce that core earnings came in at $0.10 per share for the quarter, exceeding our recently increased dividend of $0.08 per share.
Book value was $3.86 at quarter end, which represents an increase of 11.2% for the quarter.
The combination of the increased dividend and our book value appreciation produced an economic return of 13.5% for the quarter.
The improvement in book value has continued since quarter-end, as we estimate that book value was up approximately 5% through last Friday, with those gains concentrated in January and relatively flat performance so far during February.
At IVR, we have largely completed our reallocation to Agency MBS, ending the year with 98% of our assets in agencies.
We continue to take advantage of the strong demand for credit assets by further reducing our credit book by $336 million, resulting in a credit portfolio of $161 million at quarter end.
Our liquidity position remains strong as we ended December with a $745 million balance in cash and unencumbered assets.
Earlier this month, we successfully completed a common stock offering with net proceeds of approximately $103 million that was deployed into additional agency mortgages.
I'll begin on slide four, which details the changes in the US Treasury yield curve over the past 12 months in the upper left hand chart.
As the short-end remained anchored, while the 10-year and 30-year both increased approximately 20 basis points during the quarter.
Lastly in the bottom right chart, we detailed the growth in both US Bank and Federal Reserve Holdings of Agency RMBS, which had a significant impact on Agency RMBS valuations, as we entered 2021, despite net issuance close to an all-time record at $210 billion in the quarter.
The combination of the Federal Reserve with the prescribed $120 billion of net purchases and commercial banks with over $200 billion of net demand during the quarter, produced impressive hedged returns in the asset class.
Particularly in lower coupon 30 years, as the primary beneficiary of the demand from both entities.
These totals resulted a net demand for the year of over $600 billion for the Fed and $500 billion from banks, overwhelming the historically high $500 billion of net supply.
Finally, the lower right-hand chart shows the implied financing rate for dollar roll transactions and 30-year, 2%, 2.5% and 3% TBAs.
As indicated in the chart, volatility in dollar roll attractiveness increased during the quarter, as implied financing rates improved for higher coupon 30 year, 2.5% and 3%'s and were weaker for 30 year 2%'s.
Dollar rolls trading with implied financing rates below 0% indicate a particularly attractive environment for investors and while lower coupon TBAs are not rolling quite as well as they were late in the third and early in the fourth quarters, they still provide investors with improved funding levels for Agency RMBS relative to short-term repo in a highly liquid securities.
As indicated in the upper left hand chart, in addition to the 18% allocation to Agency TBA, our Agency RMBS portfolio is well diversified across specified pool collateral types.
We remain focused on lower price collateral stories, mitigating our exposure to elevated payoffs, at historically tight spreads, as our specified pool holdings had a weighted average pay up of 0.8 points as of 12/31.
We purchased $3.1 billion of lower coupon 30 year specified pools during the quarter, while rotating out of $491 million of underperforming pools, underscoring our active management strategy within the portfolio and the superior liquidity of the asset class.
In addition, we added $800 million notional of lower coupon 30 year TBA, increasing our allocation from 14% at the end of the third quarter to 18%, and dollar rolls remain an attractive and highly liquid alternative to holding specified pools in financing them via short-term repo.
Our specified pool holdings paid 3.9% CPR, during the quarter, as our relatively newly issued pools at a weighted average loan age of five months at quarter end.
We remain focused primarily in 30-year, 2% and 2.5% coupons, and those coupons provide the most attractive combination of lower prepayment speeds and strong support via consistent, Federal Reserve and commercial bank demand.
Our remaining credit investments are detailed on Slide 7 with non-Agency CMBS representing nearly 70% of the $161 million portfolio.
As John referenced on Slide 3, we sold $336 million of credit investments during the quarter, a strong demand for our assets provided attractive exit opportunities.
Our $121 million of remaining credit securities are high quality, with 72% rated single A or higher and we remain comfortable with the credit profile of our remaining holdings.
Although, we anticipate limited near term price appreciation, given the significant improvements experienced inflows we reached in the second quarter of 2020, we believe these assets are attractive holdings as 100% are held on an unlevered basis and provide attractive unlevered yields.
Repurchase agreements collateralized by Agency RMBS grew to $7.2 billion as of December 31 and hedges associated with those borrowings also grew during the quarter to $6.3 billion notional of fixed to floating rate interest rate swaps.
We continue to take advantage of low interest rates further out, the yield curve to lock in lower funding costs, via longer maturity hedges with a weighted average life of 6.7 years at year-end.
While rates on our repo borrowings continue to drift lower during the quarter and into 2021, with one month repo rates for our Agency RMBS holdings averaging 21 basis points at year-end.
Our economic leverage, when including TBA exposure increased from 5.1 times debt-to-equity on September 30 to 6.6 times debt-to-equity as of December 31, indicating further progress toward the transition to an agency focused strategy.
Economic leverage since year end is modestly higher, estimated 7.1 times as of Friday and deployment of proceeds from our February capital raise into Agency RMBS investments financed via short-term repo, increased company leverage to our current target.

Summary:
I'm pleased to announce that core earnings came in at $0.10 per share for the quarter, exceeding our recently increased dividend of $0.08 per share.