I'm very pleased to report that we continued our strong start to the year, achieving record investment volume of more than $750 million during the first six months of 2021.
Robust and high quality investment activity further increased our investment grade, concentration and raised our ground lease exposure to a record of nearly 13%.
Our investment activities during the quarter were supported by more than $1 billion of strategic capital markets transactions that fortified our best-in-class balance sheet and positioned our company for continued growth in the quarters ahead.
During the second quarter, we invested approximately $366 million in 59 high-quality retail net lease properties across our three external growth platforms.
54 of these properties were originated through our acquisition platform representing acquisition volume of more than $345 million.
The 54 properties acquired during the second quarter are leased to 32 tenants operating in 18 distinct retail sectors including best-in-class operators in the off-price, home improvement, auto parts, general merchandise, dollar store, convenience store, craft and novelties, grocery and tire and auto service sectors.
The acquired properties had a weighted average cap rate of 6.2% and a weighted average lease term of 11.8 years.
Through the first six months of this year, we've invested a record $756 million into 146 retail net lease properties spanning 35 states in 24 retail sectors.
Approximately $732 million of our investment activity originated from our acquisition platform.
Roughly 75% of the annualized base rents acquired in the first half of the year comes from leading investment grade retailers, while almost one-third of annualized base rent is derived from ground leased assets.
Given our record acquisition activity date and visibility into our pipeline, we are increasing our full-year 2021 acquisition guidance to $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion.
Most significant with a five-store sale leaseback transaction with Kroger for approximately $68 million.
The stores are located in Texas, Michigan, Ohio, and Mississippi and each location is subject to a new 15 year net lease.
With this transaction Kroger moved into our top 10 tenants at 3.2% of annualized base rents.
ShopRite is a tremendous operator in the real estate located at a strategic interchange of I-95 is yet another example of the diligent bottoms for analysis that we conduct on every asset that we acquired.
The store located in Parsippany, New Jersey is over 100,000 square feet and was constructed at Wegmans expense.
Through the first six months of the year we've acquired 45 ground leases for a total investment of over $240 million.
The second quarter contribution to this total was 14 ground leases representing an investment volume of more than $113 million.
A Walmart Supercenter and Lowe's and Hooks at New Hampshire, our first Cabela's in Albuquerque, New Mexico, as well as three additional Wawa assets increasing our Wawa portfolio to 25 properties including their flagship store in Downtown Philadelphia.
As mentioned at quarter end, our overall ground lease exposure stood at a company record of 12.7% of annualized base rents and includes a very unique assets leased to the best retailers in the country.
Inclusive of our second quarter acquisition activity, the ground lease portfolio now derives nearly 90% of rents from investment grade tenants and has a weighted average lease term of 12.5 years.
The majority of the portfolio includes rent escalators that result in average annual growth of close to 1% while the average per square foot rent is only $9 and $0.65.
As of June 30, our portfolio's total investment grade exposure was nearly 68%, representing a significant year-over-year increase of approximately 670 basis points.
On a two-year stacked basis, our investment grade exposure has improved by more than 1,300 basis points.
We had six development in PCS projects either completed or under construction during the first half of the year that represent total capital committed of more than $36 million.
Gerber will be subjected to a new 15 year net lease upon completion and we anticipate rent will commence in the first quarter of 2022.
We anticipate delivery will take place in the first quarter of next year at which time 7-Eleven will be subject to a new 15 year net lease.
We continue to reducing Walgreens exposure and as well as franchise restaurants as we sold seven properties for gross proceeds of approximately $28 million with a weighted average cap rate of 6.7%.
In total, we disposed of 10 properties through the first six months of the year for gross proceeds of more than $36 million with a weighted average cap rate of approximately 6.7%.
Given our disposition activities during the first half of the year, we are raising the bottom end of our disposition guidance to $50 million for the year, while the high-end remains at approximately $75 million.
Their efforts to reduce the remaining 2021 maturity to just three leases representing 20 basis points of annualized base rents.
During the second quarter, we executed new leases, extensions or options on approximately 209,000 square feet of gross leasable area.
Most notably, we are extremely pleased to have executed a new 15 year net lease with Gardner White to backfill our only former Loves Furniture store in Canton, Michigan.
We delivered the space to Gardner White in June and rent commenced in July, allowing us to recover close to 100% of prior rents with just over one month of downtime.
During the first six months of the year we executed new leases, extensions or options and approximately 275,000 square feet of gross leasable area and as of June 30, our expanding retail portfolio consisted of 1,262 properties across 46 states, including 134 ground leases and remains nearly 100% occupied at 99.5%.
Starting with earnings core funds from operations for the second quarter was $0.89 per share, representing a record 17.3% year-over-year increase.
Adjusted funds from operations per share for the quarter was $0.88, an increase of 15.9% year-over-year.
Per FactSet, current analyst estimates for full year AFFO per share range from $3.40 per share to $3.53 per share, which implies year-over-year growth of 6% to 10%.
Building upon our 6% of AFFO per share growth in 2020-this implies two year stack growth in the mid-teens.
General and administrative expenses totaled $6.2 million in the second quarter.
G&A expense was 7.6% of total revenue or 7.1% excluding the noncash amortization of above and below-market lease intangibles.
Even as we continue to invest in people and systems to facilitate our growing business, we anticipate the G&A as a percentage of total revenue will be in the lower 7% area for full year 2021 excluding the impact of lease intangible amortization on total revenues.
As mentioned last quarter, G&A expense for our acquisitions team fluctuates based on acquisition volume for the year and our current anticipation for G&A expense reflects acquisition volume within our new guidance range of $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion.
Total income tax expense for the second quarter was approximately $485,000 for 2021.
We continue to anticipate total income tax expense to be approximately $2.5 million.
Moving onto our capital markets activities for the quarter, in May we completed a $650 million dual tranche public bond offering, comprised of $350 million of 2% senior unsecured notes due in 2028 and $300 million of 2.6% senior unsecured notes due in 2033.
In connection with the offering, we terminated related swap agreements of $300 million that hedged for 2033 Notes receiving approximately $17 million upon termination.
Considering the effect of the terminated swap agreements, the blended all-in rates for the 2028 Notes and 2033 Notes are 2.11% and 2.13% respectively.
We used the portion of the net proceeds from the offering to repay all $240 million of our unsecured term loans, the termination costs related to early pay down of our unsecured term loans total approximately $15 million.
The offering in combination with the prepayment of all of our unsecured term loans extended our weighted average debt maturity to approximately nine years and reduced our effective weighted average interest rate to approximately 3.2%.
In June, we also completed a follow-on public offering of 4.6 million shares of common stock.
Upon closing, we received net proceeds of approximately $327 million.
During the second quarter, we entered into forward sale agreements in connection with our ATM program to sell an aggregate of roughly 1.2 million shares of common stock for anticipated net proceeds of approximately $81 million.
In May, we settled roughly 164,000 shares and received net proceeds of approximately $10 million.
At quarter-end we had approximately 3.9 million shares remaining to be settled under existing forward sale agreements which are anticipated to raise net proceeds of approximately $259 million upon settlement.
Inclusive of the anticipated net proceeds from our outstanding forward offerings cash on hand and availability under our credit facility, we had nearly $950 million in available liquidity at quarter-end.
As of June 30, our pro forma net debt to recurring EBITDA was approximately 3.6 times, including our outstanding forward equity offerings.
Excluding the impact of unsettled forward equity, our net debt to recurring EBITDA was approximately 4.5 times.
Total debt to enterprise value of quarter-end was approximately 25% while fixed charge coverage remained at a record five times.
During the second quarter, we declared monthly cash dividends of $0.217 per share for April, May and June.
The monthly dividend reflected an annualized dividend amount of $2.60 per share representing an 8.5% increase over the annualized dividend amount of $2.40 cents per share for the second quarter of last year.
Our payout ratios for the second quarter were a conservative 73% of Core FFO per share and 74% of AFFO per share respectively.
Subsequent to quarter-end, we declared a monthly cash dividend of $0.217 per share for July.
The monthly dividend reflects an annualized dividend amount of $2.60 per share or an 8.5% increase over the annualized dividend amount of $2.40 per share from the third quarter of 2020.

Summary:
Starting with earnings core funds from operations for the second quarter was $0.89 per share, representing a record 17.3% year-over-year increase.
Adjusted funds from operations per share for the quarter was $0.88, an increase of 15.9% year-over-year.