For the quarter core earnings came in at $0.06 share, exceeding our recently increased dividend of $0.05.
Book value is $3.47 at quarter end, which represents an increase of about 9.5% for the quarter.
The combination of the increased dividend and our book value appreciation produced an economic return of 11% for the quarter.
The improvement in book value has continued since quarter-end, as we estimate that book value is up approximately 6% since quarter-end through last Friday.
During the quarter, we purchased $5.6 billion in specified pool agencies and invested an additional $900 million in Agency TBAs.
This brought our allocation to agency mortgages up to 93% of assets and 60% of equity.
We also reduced our credit exposure significantly selling $1.1 billion of credit assets, while repaying the remaining balance of our secured loans that were collateralized by credit.
Consistent with the strategic transition we've communicated since June, we purchased $5.6 billion of Agency RMBS specified pools during the quarter.
While pay-ups on our specified pool holdings range from less than a 0.25 point up to 4 points, the weighted average pay-up on our portfolio was approximately 1.25 points, representing approximately $70 million of market value at quarter end.
All purchases in the quarter consisted of 30-year collateral with coupons ranging from 1.5% to 3%, with the majority in 2s and 2.5s, as indicated in the chart on the bottom left.
Our specified pools paid only 1.8% CPR during the quarter, reflective of the focus in newly issued lower coupon pools, given mortgage loans tend to pay slowly in the months immediately after after closing, before prepayments typically begin to ramp higher around month six.
This dynamic benefited the performance of our Agency RMBS pools during the quarter as the weighted average yield was an impressive 1.91%.
In addition, we added $900 million notional in agency TBA contracts, given the attractive implied financing rates and hedged carry available in the forward market for Agency RMBS, due to the significant demand from the Federal Reserve and commercial banks for lower coupon pools.
Substantial credit dispositions at attractive valuations allowed us to pay off our secured loan at the FHLB in August, and redeploy capital into Agency RMBS investments, which further improved the earnings power of the portfolio, allowing us to increase our third quarter dividend to $0.05.
As shown in the chart on the left, our credit assets consist of predominantly seasoned investments with over 80% of our holdings issued prior to 2015.
In addition to the benefits of seasoning, given the improvement in property valuations over the past five years, our CMBS credit holdings also benefit from substantial credit enhancement, as detailed in the chart on the right, with over 82% of our holdings maintaining at least 10% of credit support.
In addition 69% of our remaining credit investments are rated A or higher.
Repurchase agreements collateralized by Agency RMBS grew to $5.2 billion as of September 30 and hedges associated with those borrowings also grew during the quarter to $4.6 billion notional of fixed-to-floating interest rate swaps.
Interest rates on our borrowings drifted lower during the quarter and that settled in near 0.2%, and we took advantage of historically low interest rates further out the yield curve to lock-in low funding cost to be a longer maturity interest rate swaps, given the potential for a steepening yield curve as the Federal Reserve keeps short-term rates anchored for the foreseeable future.
Our economic leverage, when including TBA exposure increased to 5.1 times debt-to-equity as of September 30, indicating significant progress toward the transition to the agency-focused strategy.
Demand for our credit assets continued during the month, as we were successful in disposing of $112 million of credit exposure at attractive valuations.
These sales provided further opportunities to continue the ramp in Agency RMBS, as we purchased $1 billion of specified pools and an additional $300 million notional in Agency TBA contracts, bringing our total to $6.5 billion of pools and $1.2 billion of TBA.
Our borrowings and hedging grew commensurate with these purchases, with repurchase agreements of $6.2 billion hedged with $5.2 billion notional of interest rate swaps at month end.
As noted on Slide 7, our liquidity position remains substantial, with $351 million of unlevered credit investments in addition to $340 million of unrestricted cash, combining to represent approximately 8.5% of our investment portfolio.

Summary:
For the quarter core earnings came in at $0.06 share, exceeding our recently increased dividend of $0.05.