We ended the first quarter with $217 million cash on hand and a zero balance drawn on our $900 million line of credit.
Our largest tenants operate over 1,000 units each on average and are typically the leaders in their respective lines of trade.
Our entire management team was with the company during the great recession in 2008 and most of us have been through a number of other major downturns in the past.
Our portfolio of 3,125 single-tenant retail properties ended the quarter with an occupancy rate of 98.8%, which is consistent with our long-term average occupancy.
We acquired 21 new properties in the first quarter, investing slightly over $67 million at an initial cash cap rate of 6.9%.
We also sold 14 properties during the quarter, generating proceeds of just over $36 million at a cash cap rate of 4.7%.
Due to the sudden impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on retail businesses and the economy beginning in mid-March, we are reporting today that we received approximately 52% of our rents due for the month of April.
We also entered into rent deferral agreements or are currently negotiating such agreements with tenants representing approximately 37% of our annualized base rent.
While we are dealing with deferrals on an individual case-by-case basis, generally our rent deferral discussions involve deferring one to three months of second quarter base rent with the deferred rent to be repaid commencing in late 2020 through late 2021.
We do believe however that our impressive streak of consistently increasing the dividend for 30 consecutive years is a powerful indicator of the value of our consistent, conservative balance sheet philosophy and business model.
And just a couple of comments about the first quarter, which I'm guessing few are focused on at this point, but our AFFO dividend payout ratio for the quarter was 72.4% and that was consistent with full year 2019 levels.
Occupancy was 98.8% at quarter-end, G&A expense was 5.8% of revenues for the first quarter and that's flat with the prior fourth quarter and we ended the quarter with $677.5 million of annual base rent in place for all leases as of March 31, 2020.
As Jay mentioned, on February 18th, we issued $700 million of unsecured debt, $400 million with a 10-year maturity and a 2.5% coupon plus $300 million with a 30-year maturity and a 3.1% coupon.
We used about half of those proceeds to redeem our $325 million of 3.8% 2022 notes due in March -- we paid those off in March, they weren't due till 2022.
I will note that first quarter interest expense include $2.3 million of accelerated note discount and no cost amortization as a result of that early 2022 note redemption.
Absent this, incremental non-cash expense that would have allowed us to report $0.71 of core FFO per share, representing 6% growth over prior year results.
We ended the quarter of $217 million of cash on the balance sheet and we have no amounts outstanding on our $900 million bank line.
These transactions pushed our weighted average debt maturity to 11.2 years with a weighted average interest rate of 3.7%.
Leverage metrics remain very strong, debt to gross book assets was 35.3% that was flat with year-end, net debt to EBITDA was 4.9 times at March 31, interest coverage was 4.6 times and fixed charge coverage was 4.1 times for the first quarter.
If you excluded the $2.3 million of note discount and note cost amortization, those two metrics would have been 5.0 times and 4.3 times respectively for interest coverage and fixed charge.
Only five of our 3,125 properties are encumbered by mortgages, totaling $12 million.

Summary:
While we are dealing with deferrals on an individual case-by-case basis, generally our rent deferral discussions involve deferring one to three months of second quarter base rent with the deferred rent to be repaid commencing in late 2020 through late 2021.
Absent this, incremental non-cash expense that would have allowed us to report $0.71 of core FFO per share, representing 6% growth over prior year results.