Mark J. Parrell
Chief Executive Officer, President & Trustee at Equity Residential
Thanks, Marty, and thanks to all of you for joining us. Today, I'll give some brief remarks on our operating trajectory and investment activity, then Michael Manelis will follow with some top-level commentary on the current state of our operations and how we see the remainder of the year playing out, followed by Bob Garechana adding color on our guidance changes and balance sheet, and then we'll take your questions. Also, as Marty mentioned, we are pleased to have Alec Brackenridge, EQR's Chief Investment Officer, available during the Q&A period. For those of you who do not know Alec, he's a 28-year veteran in this company.
He literally started work here the day we went public in 1993 and took over as our CIO in 2020. As you can see from the release, he and his team have done exceptional work of late on the transactions side. Turning to operations. All of our operating metrics continue to improve at a faster rate than we assumed earlier in the year. We are seeing demand levels well above 2019 in all our markets. And this has allowed us to continue growing occupancy, while at the same time raising rates. This resulted in the company materially raising annual same-store revenue, NOI and normalized FFO guidance.
While our quarter-over-quarter same-store revenue and NOI results remained negative, the decline was less than what we expected, and our sequential same-store revenue and NOI showed positive growth for the first time since the pandemic began. As we have discussed on prior calls, improvement in our reported quarter-over-quarter same-store numbers will lag the recovery in our operating fundamentals as we work these now higher rents and lower concessions through our rent roll.
We believe that our business is set up for an extended period of higher-than-trend growth beginning in 2022 as we recapture revenue loss due to the pandemic and continue to benefit from strong demand and growing incomes in our target demographic. Also, the more diverse portfolio we are creating should improve long-term returns and dampen volatility going forward. On the investment side, we are active buyers and sellers in the second quarter and expect to continue being active capital recyclers.
Consistent with what I've said on prior calls, we are allocating capital to places that are attractive to our affluent renter base, including the suburbs of our established coastal markets as well as Denver and our two new markets of Austin and Atlanta. We are making these trades with no dilution, even given higher pricing levels for the properties we are targeting because we are able to sell our older and less desirable properties at low cap rates and at prices that exceed our pre-pandemic value estimates.
Earlier this month, we reentered the Texas market after an 11-year absence by acquiring two well-located new assets in Austin, Texas. These properties are located in a desirable area with high housing costs that is equidistant between Downtown Austin and the Domain Hub on the north side. We acquired these two properties for $96 million, and approximately, a 3.9% cap rate and about $195,000 per unit. We expect to acquire a mix of urban and suburban assets in the Austin market.
During the second quarter and in July, we acquired two properties in Atlanta. SkyHouse South in Midtown for $115 million with a 3.6% cap rate. This is a deal we did previously disclose. And a few days ago, we acquired a second property in Atlanta in the bustling Midtown West neighborhood. We acquired this new property for $135 million, and it is about half occupied. And once it completes lease-up, we expect it will stabilize at a 4.1% cap rate. We also continued adding to our Denver presence by purchasing an asset in the suburban Central Park area of Denver for $95 million.
This property is located just west of the large and growing Fitzsimons medical campus and draws residents attracted to its access to abundant outdoor amenities. We expect this property, which is also in lease-up currently, to stabilize at a 4.2% cap rate. We're also pleased to add to the portfolio of property each in the suburbs of Boston and Washington, D.C. The Boston property is located in Burlington, Massachusetts, and is a new asset that we acquired for $134.5 million at a 4.1% cap rate.
This property is in a difficult-to-build suburb of Boston with high single-family housing costs and good access to high-paying jobs. The D.C. asset is located in Fairfax, Virginia, and is a 2016 asset that we acquired for $70 million at a 4.3% cap rate. This property is well located with both good highway and good metro access and proximity to the growing job base in Northern Virginia. Both the Burlington and Fairfax assets are located in submarkets, where our existing assets have performed particularly well.
Year-to-date, we have bought $645 million of properties and expect to close on another $850 million in acquisitions, a good number of which are in various states of advanced negotiation by the end of the year. We'll fund these buys with an approximately equivalent amount of dispositions, mostly from California of older and less desirable assets, which we sold or are under contract to sell at significantly above our pre-pandemic estimate of value.
Turning to development. We've put into service and began leasing our newly developed property in Alameda island, a short ferry ride to the city of San Francisco. Built on the side of a former naval base, this property has terrific views of the skyline and an evolving restaurant and bar scene that we think is attractive to our clientele. Over the next few months, we'll complete our other two current development projects, including the Alcott in Central Boston, the largest development project in the company's history.
Early leasing efforts on this project and our development project in Bethesda, Maryland, are going well. And our current estimates are that these three projects will stabilize at a development yield of approximately 5%, considerably higher than prevailing acquisition cap rates. These properties will be meaningful contributors to NFFO starting in late 2022. We see development as a good complement to our acquisition activities as we spread more of our footprint to the suburbs of our established markets as well as to our new markets. We expect a significant amount of our development activity going forward to be done through joint venture arrangements.
This allows us to leverage our partners in place sourcing and entitlement teams in locations like our new markets where we do not currently have a development presence. Before I turn the call over to Michael, a big thank you to my colleagues in our offices and properties across the country. You're doing an exceptional job during this particularly busy leasing season, and we're all very proud and grateful.
Go ahead, Michael.