Net effective market rents are now 6.4% above pre-COVID levels and it's notable that we've exceeded pre-COVID market rents despite having recovered only about 63% of the jobs lost during the pandemic.
As a result of improving market conditions, we reported quarterly core FFO of $3.12 per share, $0.08 per share above both our sequential results and guidance provided last quarter.
Southern California continues to deliver the strongest growth with net effective rents up 17.2% compared to pre-COVID while Northern California is still down 5.2%.
Overall, September job growth in the Essex markets was 5.2%, substantially above the U.S. average of 4%.
We published our initial market rent estimates on page S-17 of our supplemental package.
We are expecting 7.7% net effective rent growth on average in 2022 with Northern California the notable laggard in 2021 forecasted to lead the portfolio average in market rent growth next year.
Median for-sale home prices are up 17% in California and almost 16% in Seattle, making for-sale housing more costly relative to rental housing and often impeding the transition from renter to homeowner.
Finally, despite large increases in for-sale housing prices, our expectation for the production of for-sale housing in 2022 remains very muted at only 0.4% of the single-family housing stock.
Page S-17.1 of our supplemental highlights recent investments by large tech companies which have continued throughout the pandemic and include Apple's 550,000 square foot recent expansion in Culver City, their new 490,000 square foot tech campus that will soon begin construction in North San Jose and a recent acquisition of five office buildings with a total of 458,000 square feet in Cupertino.
Google last quarter received needed approvals for its planned 80-acre campus near Downtown San Jose and YouTube's 2.5 million square foot campus in San Bruno was just approved by the city last week.
Our most recent survey of open positions indicates 38,000 job openings in the Essex markets for the 10 largest tech companies, up 9,000 jobs or 26% as compared to the first quarter of 2020.
Strong economic growth on the West Coast is further supported by venture capital investments which achieved new highs in Q3 '21 of $72 billion, of which 44% was directed to organizations in the Essex markets.
Turning to our supply outlook for 2022, we are expecting 0.6% housing supply growth for the full year, including 0.9% growth for the multifamily stock which is manageable relative to our expectations for job growth of 4.1% in 2022.
Longer term, residential building permits in Essex markets saw a modest 3.5% increase on a trailing 12-month basis, which is favorable compared to the U.S. where permits have increased 13.6% compared to one year ago.
We continue to see strong demand from institutional capital to invest in the multifamily sector along the West Coast as evidenced by increasing transaction volume and cap rates in the mid-3% range.
Apartment values across our markets are up approximately 15% on average compared to pre-COVID valuations.
The company has recently seen more development opportunities, and we were able to purchase two commercial properties in the third quarter, one located in South San Francisco that we expect to become a near-term apartment development opportunity and another in Seattle that we will begin to entitle for apartments while earning an attractive 6% going-in yield with a high-quality tenant.
In the third quarter, same-property revenue -- same-property revenues grew by 2.7%, which is primarily attributable to a reduction in concessions compared to the previous period.
By primarily utilizing concessions last year, we were able to limit the in-place rent decline to only 1.1% in the third quarter.
The benefit of this strategy is also coming through our sequential revenue growth, which increased 3.2% this quarter from the second quarter.
From a portfoliowide perspective, market conditions remain strong compared to a year ago as demonstrated by the 12.6% blended net effective rent growth in the quarter.
Rents and jobs in the Seattle region have had a strong recovery with net effective rents up 8.3% compared to pre-COVID levels and year-over-year job growth of 5.5% in September.
New supply continues to be largely concentrated in the CBD, which is less impactful to Essex because 85% of our Seattle portfolio is located outside of CBD.
Looking forward to 2022, as outlined in our S-17 of the supplemental, total housing supply deliveries for the region is expected to decline compared to 2021, and we anticipate job recovery to continue, led by Amazon, which recently announced plans to hire over 12,000 corporate and tech employees in Seattle.
As such, we are forecasting market rent growth of 7.2% in 2022.
In addition, the job recovery in Northern California has been at a slower pace than our other regions, with only 4.4% year-over-year improvement compared to a 5.2% for the entire Essex portfolio as of September.
On the other hand, we anticipate that Northern California will be our best-performing region in 2022, with market rent growth forecast of 8.7% on our S-17.
Rent growth has continued to improve in the third quarter, and net effective rents in September are 17.2% above pre-COVID levels.
In June, L.A. rents were still below pre-COVID levels, but as of September, they are now 6.8% above.
While Orange County, San Diego and Ventura have achieved rents between 17% to 30% above pre-COVID levels.
Job growth in Southern California continues to progress well, up 5.9% in September as the region's economy continues to reopen and recover.
As you can see on our S-17 market rent growth for Southern California of 7.1%, we anticipate this region to perform at a comparable level as Seattle.
I'm pleased to report core FFO for the third quarter exceeded the midpoint of our guidance range by $0.08 per share.
During the quarter, we saw an improvement in our delinquency rate, which declined to 1.4% of scheduled rent on a cash basis compared to 2.6% in the second quarter.
Year-to-date through September, we have received $11.6 million from the various tenant relief programs, of which $9.5 million was received in the third quarter.
As a result of the strong third quarter results, we are raising the full year midpoint for same-property revenues by 20 basis points to minus 1.2%.
As it relates to full year core FFO, we are raising our midpoint by $0.11 per share to $12.44.
Year-to-date, we have raised core FFO by $0.28 or 2.3% at the midpoint.
The new venture will have approximately $660 million of buying power, a portion of which is expected to be invested by year-end.
For the year, we expect redemptions to be around $290 million.
Roughly 40% of these redemptions are expected to occur in the fourth quarter.
Year-to-date, we have closed on approximately $110 million of new commitments.
In the third quarter, our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio declined from 6.6 times last quarter to 6.4 times.

Summary:
As a result of improving market conditions, we reported quarterly core FFO of $3.12 per share, $0.08 per share above both our sequential results and guidance provided last quarter.