Steve Schnur
Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer at Duke Realty
Thanks, Jim. I'll first touch on overall market fundamentals. Fourth quarter demand was exceptional in the logistics sector with 122 million square feet of absorption, about similar to last quarter and the third highest quarter on record. Demand exceeded supply by about 40 million square feet which dropped national vacancy rates to an all-time record low of 3.2%, which is over 300 basis points below long-term historical averages.
For the full year, demand was 433 million square feet compared to completions of 268 million feet. Lease activity was robust and nearly all user groups, with the e-commerce, third-party logistics and retail representing the largest segments in the market as a whole as well as in our own portfolio. National asking rental rates rose again in the fourth quarter, up 11% over this time last year. We see this trend continuing into 2022 with nationwide market rent growth on average, expected to be around 10%. The reaction to supply chain bottlenecks continues to be in the early stages of a longer-term boon for our sector.
CBRE recently reaffirmed the just in case inventory restocking strategy will be a significant contributor to the 1.4 billion square feet of projected aggregate demand over the next 5 years. In addition, consumer spending growth and the continued secular growth in online shopping are driving much of this demand. For the current year, we expect the demand and supply would be mostly in balance, even as large as the under construction pipeline currently is. I'll remind everyone on this call, we estimate about 65% of the current supply pipeline is not located in our sub-markets.
Turning to our own portfolio results we executed a very strong quarter by signing 8.9 million square feet of leases with an average transaction size of 122,000 feet. Rent growth for the fourth quarter leasing was again very strong at 21% cash and 41% GAAP. We expect growth in rents on second generation leasing for the foreseeable future to be very strong. In our portfolio we estimate our lease mark to market to be 39%.
Turning to development. We had a tremendous quarter starts as Jim mentioned, breaking ground on nine projects only $466 million in cost. 80% of the fourth quarter development starts were in coastal Tier 1 markets and six of the nine projects were redevelopments of existing site structures. Our development pipeline at year ends totaled $1.4 billion. This pipeline is 48% pre-leased with active prospects to bring this number even higher in the near term. We expect to generate value creation margins in the 65% to 70% range of these projects.
Looking forward, our prospect list for new development starts, is very strong, and our land balance at year-end totaled $475 million with an additional $173 million of covered land plays. Our current land holdings are above our levels in the last few years and consistent with what we've recently communicated as much of the land acquired late in 2021 has been under contract for several quarters. 94% of our land balance is located in coastal Tier 1 markets. We own or control land that can support roughly $1 billion of annual starts for the next 4 years, as long as the demand picture remains robust, which we believe it will.
It's also important to note the market value of our land we own is about two times our book basis and on average, we've only owned this land for about 2 years. Our favorable land value will continue to support high development margins and very good long-term IRRs. We believe we are very well positioned to continue to lead the logistics sector and grow through new development.
With that, I'll turn it over to Nick Anthony to cover, acquisition and disposition activity for the quarter.