After delivering nearly 5% earnings growth in 2019, the Q1 delivered NOI that exceeded our expectations for each of the three months.
Additionally, our velocity for fall 2020 lease-up was over 3% ahead of the prior year with rental rate growth trending well relative to targets.
With COVID- 19 being declared a pandemic, the student housing sector like most businesses faced unprecedented and unanticipated disruptions.
Over the last 3 quarters of 2020, we responded by attempting to do the right things on behalf of all of our stakeholders, while continuing to provide a central housing services to students all across America, all the while attempting to mitigate long term negative impacts to our business and providing thought leadership in action to help universities return to a sense of normalcy.
Ultimately fall 2020 enrollment levels at Tier 1 universities we serve remained relatively consistent with 2019, and most students returned to their college towns for the fall term, regardless of whether their university was holding in-person classes or providing them online.
This was evidenced by the fact that our portfolio achieved approximately 90% occupancy for fall of 2020 with the sector as a whole being over 88% occupied.
We also had strong demand for spring leases signing over 3600 new leases commencing in the spring term, 50% more in the prior year.
With the holiday season in the start of the New Year, being a slow leasing period for conventional multifamily, we have signed 88 leases to date and anticipate the velocity will accelerate through the remainder of the year as cast members' current leases expire.
The original pre-COVID proforma projected Disney College Program to deliver approximately $14 million in operating income after ground rent in 2021.
However, based on a standard multifamily leasing stabilization trend of 25 to 100 leases per month, we now expect 2021 to have a net operating loss after ground rent between $2.7 million and $5.4 million.
Disney continues to be fully committed to the full reopening of Walt Disney World as soon as possible, evidenced by their continued investment in the parks and resorts, including the continued construction of Flamingo Village Crossing Town Center, a 200,000 square feet mixed used entertainment center set to open in fall of 2021 across the street from our community.
Although the timing and velocity of the reinstatement of the Disney College Program continues to be influx at this time, we currently expect the completed project to be fully stabilized and pro forma occupancy and rents within 12 to 24 months of the originally anticipated date of May 2023 at its originally targeted stabilized yield of 6.8%.
As with many sectors, 2020 volumes were down significantly, with CBRE reporting student housing transactions decreasing approximately 20% versus 2019.
Currently, we are tracking over 60 universities that are evaluating potential on-campus projects.
As such, we're providing Q1 FFOM guidance in the range of $0.54 to $0.56 per share.
We also expect to see significantly higher same-store operating expense growth levels than normal, as 2020 presents a tough comparison year given that operating expenses were approximately 6% below our original 2020 guidance for expenses.
Ed has helped oversee our company's transformation from an owner of only 16 student housing properties at IPO to becoming the industry leader, and we'd also like to congratulate Ms. Cydney Donnell, who will be assuming the role of Board Chair up on Ed's departure.

Summary:
As such, we're providing Q1 FFOM guidance in the range of $0.54 to $0.56 per share.