Michael J. Mas
Executive VP and Chief Financial Officer at Regency Centers
Thanks, Jim. Good morning, everyone. I'll start by addressing third quarter results, walk through a few changes to our current year guidance, provide some comments on 2023 and touch base on our balance sheet. Same-property NOI, excluding prior year collections, was up 2.6% in the third quarter. This metric continues to be impacted by the noisier comps of uncollectible lease income last year, diluting the growth rate.
But as we've indicated previously, we are now back to a more historical run rate on collection losses of about 50 basis points on current year billings. Importantly, base rents contributed 3.9% to that growth rate, reflecting our strong embedded rent steps, combined with the progress we've made, growing occupancy and marking our rents to market as we convert on our strong leasing pipeline. I'll continue to stress that while we are -- we still have some remaining pandemic-related accounting anomalies impacting our same property NOI growth rate, we believe that base rent growth is the best representation of the trends driving our business today. Included within our Q3 results is close to $3 million of prior year reserve collections, now totaling $18 million year-to-date.
And we have increased our fourth quarter expectations for continued collections by another $2 million, bringing our full year 2022 guidance range to an anticipated total of $20 million. We also converted another 3% of our cash basis tenants back to accrual in the third quarter, resulting in a reversal of straight-line rent reserves that contributed another $4.6 million to NAREIT FFO. Following these conversions, we now have about 9% of our ABR remaining on a cash basis of accounting. As has been our practice, we have not included any potential fourth quarter conversions in our guidance, but it is possible that we may see another 1% to 2% convert before year-end, which could result in an additional straight-line rent of $2 million to $3 million on top of what's currently in the 2022 guidance range.
We raised our full year 2022 NAREIT FFO range by $0.075 at the midpoint, $0.045 of which was driven by the prior year collections and straight-line rent reversals that I just discussed. But most importantly, a large contributor to the increase was also further improvement in core trends, reflected in an increase in same-property NOI growth ex prior year collections of 25 basis points at the midpoint to a new range of 5.25% to 5.75%. Our revised core operating earnings per share range of $3.75 to $3.78 excludes the impact of noncash items, and when further backing out the impact of prior collections, represents year-over-year growth of 7%. We also made a few tweaks to our transactions guidance, mostly to adjust for the $30 million acquisition of East Meadow, which closed shortly after quarter end.
This is a value-add opportunity for us, a low going in cap rate, under earning center immediately adjacent to the Stew Leonard's anchored center that we bought as part of our Long Island portfolio late last year. This property is an ideal addition to our future redevelopment pipeline. Looking ahead to 2023, as usual, we will provide full year guidance in February. But recognizing that we still have some pandemic hangover noise in our numbers, we would like to provide some context as you think about modeling our earnings over the next year. I'd also refer you to Slide eight of our earnings presentation for additional details. First, with regard to prior year collections, an area where we certainly experienced the most dramatic change over the last several years. Recall that in 2021, earnings benefited from prior year collections by $46 million, and our current 2022 guidance now implies an impact of $20 million.
We're proud of the success we've had collecting those rents, much of which we reserved during the height of the pandemic in 2020. These collections are evidence of the strength of our tenant base. But thankfully, there's not a whole lot left in this bucket. As we look ahead, we only expect to recognize another $3 million next year related to collections of receivables initially reserved in 2020 and 2021. Beyond those anticipated collections, the impact from -- of pandemic-related reserves should start to normalize. I'd also like to point out the impact of noncash items where our current year guidance of $43 million includes $12 million positive contribution from the reversal of straight-line rent reserves. Our 2023 guidance will not include any further impact from conversions.
As of right now, we expect total noncash items, which include straight-line rents, above and below market rents and amortization of above- and below-market debt of approximately $30 million for the full year 2023. Turning to the balance sheet. We remain well positioned with one of the strongest balance sheets in the REIT sector, and we're proud to have been recognized for that strength by Moody's, placing us on positive outlook during the third quarter. Our leverage is at five times net debt to EBITDA, which is the lower end of our target range, and we ended the quarter with full capacity on our revolver. We are extremely well prepared, whether the future holds further challenging conditions or increasing opportunities for value-add investment.
The debt markets have remained volatile and the rise in treasury rates, along with wider credit spreads, has meaningfully impacted everyone's cost of new debt capital. But with no unsecured debt maturities until the middle of 2024, we have no need to access these uncertain credit markets in the near term. We can remain patient. In addition, 99% of our pro rata debt is fixed rate, and our low leverage and long-dated maturity schedule will help to further suppress any potential negative impacts to our growth rate of marking our debt to market in the coming years.
With that, I'll turn it back over to Lisa.
