This quarter, we demonstrated our commitment with more points on the board. These actions together enhance shareholder value. While we work through challenges, we are in a position to take advantage of opportunities created through market disruptions and capital dislocations. ESRT is prepared to act. We believe in New York City, and we offer 4 ways to play it; Office, the Empire State Building Observatory, retail and multifamily. New York City is resilient, and ESRT is future-ready and well positioned to drive value for shareholders. Tom and Christina will provide more detail on our progress and how we plan to accomplish these goals in the balance of the year. Tom?
Tom Durels: Thanks, Tony, and good afternoon, everyone. We had another strong quarter with 248,000 square feet of total leasing at 10% positive mark-to-market rent spreads for our office and retail portfolio. This represents our seventh consecutive quarter in which we achieved positive absorption based on leased percentage for our commercial portfolio and our ninth straight quarter with positive mark-to-market lease spreads in our Manhattan office portfolio. We continue to attract new and renew existing tenants who look for high-quality product that is modernized, amenitized, well located near mass transit and neighborhood amenities and has best-in-class sustainability and indoor environmental quality at an accessible price point.
We increased our Manhattan office leased percentage to 91.9% in the third quarter, which increased 30 basis points compared to last quarter, is up 250 basis points compared to a year ago and has increased 490 basis points since the end of 2021. In the third quarter, we signed 248,000 square feet of leases, which include a 235,000 square feet of leases in our Manhattan office properties. And in our retail portfolio, we signed a new lease with an exciting Sushi Restaurant at 1359 Broadway, which will be a great amenity for our office tenants in the Broadway portfolio, where we continue to bring in food and services to support the growing demand from office users. Notable leases signed in the third quarter include a 10-year 144,000 square foot lease with LinkedIn at the Empire State Building.
LinkedIn acted upon its existing rights to relocate 119,000 square feet from tower floors to base floors and also expanded by 25,000 square feet, which brings LinkedIn’s total lease square footage at the Empire State Building to 527,000 square feet. Our track record of tenant retention and expansions, including this most recent expansion by LinkedIn is the result of excellent work by our entire team to provide exceptional service to our tenants, and this is not just effort, it is results. We signed a full floor 11-year office lease with Starbucks for 25,000 square feet at the Empire State Building. The company where we located is only New York City office to the Empire State Building where currently operates a 3-story Starbucks Reserve. As Tony mentioned, our long-standing partnership with Starbucks continues to add value to both Starbucks and to our portfolio.
And we signed leases for 14 pre-boot office suites that totaled 66,000 square feet across the portfolio. Our reported weighted average TI costs, tenant installation costs vary by quarter depending on the variety of space types leased. Long term, full floor leases typically include turnkey installation or equivalent tenant installation contribution. And for most prebuilt space, we have already incurred the prior cost to build. Our TI costs in the third quarter were higher than the prior quarter, mostly due to the LinkedIn and Starbucks deals, which represent about 2/3 of our total lease volume this quarter. Both are long-term leases for full floors and the TI costs are consistent with full floor leases that we have signed over the past several years.
One thing to note about the LinkedIn transaction is that it includes an as-of-right relocation within the Empire State Building. The TI allowance for the floors they will vacate has not been contributed and will now be used for the new space they will occupy. Against that background, for our third quarter Manhattan office leasing, the average starting rent was $67.73 per square foot, with an average lease term of 8.6 years, 10.9 months of free rent and tenant improvement allowance of $93 per square foot, that is consistent with our historic free rent and tenant improvement allowance for the last several quarters and represents no increase in our general market terms. Following the close of the third quarter, we signed an 11-year 9,500 square foot new lease with Elemis, a subsidiary of L’Occitane at 111 West 33rd Street and extended L’Occitane’s existing 21,000 square foot lease for an additional 5 years.
Year-to-date through the third quarter, we have leased 787,000 square feet throughout our entire commercial portfolio. And as shown on Page 10 of our supplemental, we have $15 million in incremental cash revenue from signed leases not commenced and free rent burn-off. Looking ahead to the fourth quarter of 2023, we expect approximately 136,000 square feet will be vacated by year-end, which will be partially offset by new leases that we expect to be signed during the same quarter. We have manageable lease expirations in 2024 with only 496,000 square feet set to expire, of which about 200 and 7,000 square feet are known vacates. Based on our annual average of 680,000 square feet of new leases signed in the past 3 years, we are well positioned to increase our leased percentage in 2024.
In today’s market, there is a flight to quality at every price tier and ESRT offers a unique value proposition for tenants as the best-in-class space in our tier. Our price tier represents the biggest segment of the market. We have done the work that ESRT’s well-located portfolio is modernized, amenitized and energy-efficient with superior indoor environmental quality, and our product is top in our tier competitive and attractive to tenants as demonstrated by our leasing results. Within our multifamily portfolio, the average occupancy of 97.1% reflects strong market fundamentals, and we are underway with property improvements that will enhance future performance. So once again, we had another solid quarter with 248,000 square feet of total office and retail leasing at strong positive mark-to-market spreads.
We increased our Manhattan office portfolio of leased percentage by 30 basis points over the prior quarter and by 250 basis points from a year ago to reach 91.9%. We are well positioned to further increase our lease percentage in 2024, and we continue to see strong performance in our multifamily portfolio. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Christina. Christina?
Christina Chiu: Thanks, Tom. For the third quarter of 2023, we reported core FFO of $66 million or $0.25 per diluted share, which is up 17% year-over-year, excluding lease termination fee income. Same-store property cash NOI, excluding lease termination fees, increased 8.8% year-over-year, primarily driven by cash rent commencement and increased tenant expense reimbursement. In the third quarter, the Observatory generated NOI of $28 million, an increase of 14% year-over-year. Revenue per capita remains high and admissions continue to improve. Observatory expense was $9.5 million in the third quarter. Year-to-date, the Observatory generated NOI of $67 million, which represents NOI recapture of 102% as compared to the same period in 2019.
As of September 30, 2023, the company had total liquidity of $1.2 billion, which was comprised of $354 million of cash and $850 million of undrawn capacity on our revolving credit facility. At quarter end, the company had net debt of $2.2 billion with a weighted average interest rate of 3.9% and a weighted average term to maturity of 5.7 years. We have the lowest leverage among all New York City office REITs at 5.5x net debt to adjusted EBITDA. We have strong liquidity, no floating rate debt exposure and no meaningful debt maturity until early 2025. ESRT owns 100% of our commercial assets with no complex JV structures, and that allows for great opportunity and flexibility for future financing and capitalization. With this balance sheet flexibility, we have recycled capital, pursued investment opportunities that are additive to our New York City focused portfolio and repurchased our shares, and we’ll continue to allocate capital to generate shareholder value.
