Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, everybody, and welcome to our results presentation for the first nine months of 2021. Thank you very much for dialing in. I trust you are all well and healthy. With me here, as always, are Tim Brückner, CFO, and Michael Tegeder, our Head of Investor Relations. I don't know if you're aware, but today is a special day, at least for me as a Rhinelander. It is the beginning of the Carnival, a happy and joyful time of the year. This, together with our set of results for the first nine months of the year, I am going to guide you through over the next couple of minutes, which brings me into a good mood. Let's start with slide number four. Another reason for an overall good mood is the coronavirus impact on our operations.
I used to start previous presentations with an update on the coronavirus's effect on our business. Although the coronavirus is not gone, the impact on our operations is not the most significant topic to speak about anymore. I will come back to that later. Let me start by emphasizing our REALize Potential strategy and how we have applied it. Back in early 2019, when Tim and I came into office, we decided to focus on the main goals of portfolio optimization, financial strength, operational excellence, and increased profitability. This has helped to improve the overall performance of the company and made DEMIRE more resilient even before the pandemic. Our REALize Potential strategy consists of four pillars: asset management, acquisition, financials, and processes, which have all significantly supported us since the coronavirus came over us and contributed to our strong performance in 2021 so far.
Let's hope that we will not have to get back to any pandemic-caused measures at all, but the results and outcome of REALize Potential encourage us to keep going on this way. Let us look at what has happened in the first nine months of 2021 from the four pillars of our strategy. Let's start with asset management. The first nine months of 2021 were driven by a very strong letting result. More than 138,000 sq m were let, which is more than last year at this time. Almost 49% of those are new rental contracts, and about 51% are prolongations of existing contracts. As some of the new contracts kick in later this year or next year, the vacancy amounts to 8.8%.
The WALT has come down slightly to 4.6 years, and annualized rent decreased as planned due to disposals we executed in 2021 so far. Acquisitions, or we can call it as well, portfolio dynamization. Firstly, and most importantly, we were able to close the acquisition of Cielo at the beginning of July. As you know, this deal has a certain level of complexity and will be consolidated as equity. It is not feasible for most of our KPIs, but it already does and will further contribute to our FFO significantly. In addition, we disposed of eight assets, gaining proceeds that exceeded the last market value by about 6%, underlining the efforts of our active asset management approach.
Hence, the average asset size, another KPI that does not include Cielo, increased to EUR 20.7 million on September 13 from EUR 90.2 million at the end of 2020. Financials. The financials reflect well the execution of our strategy and that the strategy is right. While the rental income decreased due to the disposals of assets, the results improved due to lower admin expenses and lower impairment of receivables. Also, the positive Cielo effect is to be seen under the financial results, hence the FFO improved. Tim will give you the details in a minute, but for the time being, I'm happy to confirm our guidance. Processes. In order to improve our transparency and to strengthen our external reporting, we have introduced and implemented the newly defined EPRA KPIs, which are available on our annual report 2020 and our half- year report 2021.
We are proud that EPRA has recognized this with the EPRA Gold Award and a special award for the most improved REITS. Finally, the coronavirus numbers. As of the end of September, there are 2.9% of EUR 4.4 million of the agreed rent outstanding for both 2020 and 2021 since the beginning of the pandemic about a year ago. This has improved over the last three months quite significantly, and we currently hear no loud coronavirus complaints from our tenants. The increasing share of the vaccinated population and assumption of no further strict lockdown measures make us confident that our business will not be materially impacted for the remainder of the year and beyond. Corona is not that heavily impacting our business like before.
We all know we see that the coronavirus has not disappeared, and everybody should stay careful. Let's have a more detailed look at our KPIs and follow me to slide number six. Annualized rent and leasing performance. The annualized rent decreased due to the executed disposals over the course of the last 12 months and came in 4.3% lower at EUR 89.9 million. Please note that Cielo, with its EUR 10 million, is not included in this number. The like-for-like rental growth of the top 10 assets increased by 1.7% compared to last year. The overall like-for-like rent decreased by about 2% due to temporary vacancy. I mentioned the letting activities earlier. They were again strong.
Coming from last year's record level, I'm explicitly not promising you another record result for 2021 here, but some of you might remember that until three years ago, our annual letting performance was about 80,000 sq m. Some of the contracts we signed will start later this year or next year, like the Amazon contract, where the distribution hub is currently under construction. This result underlines our strong asset management performance and makes us confident about the full- year development, including towards the valuation at the year-end. The letting activities in the first nine months secured about EUR 10.3 million annual rent and a standalone WALT of almost 7.4 years. Let's look at the leasing performance. Within the first nine months of the year 2021, we have signed about 108 contracts.
New lettings account for roughly 49% of leased space. 51% of the agreed contracts were renewals. Total net cold rent amounts to EUR 861.3 thousand per month, or about EUR 10.3 million per year. The agreed WALT amounts to 89 months, with the new lease significantly exceeding the WALT of renewals. In the tables at the bottom, you'll see that the new leases are topped by an Amazon contract, as well as a new contract for a hotel in Dresden, both exceeding 10,000 sq m space and both with very long duration. Plenty of further contracts are Mittelstand in size , with a lease area below 3,000 sq m , but high quality with strong corporate and some public tenants. The tail of our extended contracts is comparably fat, with four contracts exceeding 10,000 sq m in space each.
This expresses the satisfaction of existing tenants to remain with us. The two contracts in Leipzig are, as well as the Amazon contract, logistics space, underlining the strong demand for this asset class, also from tenants. Also, the rent per square meter is way below the office rent. The EPRA vacancy increased to 8.8%, but not as a surprise, up from a strong 6.9% at year-end 2020. Some of the contracts I just mentioned will become effective later this year, and in the case of Amazon, Regensburg, and others, over the course of the next year. Please also note that, in line with the EPRA definition, we have excluded assets held for sale and assets that are in the development phase from a vacancy calculation.
In line with the already reported strong asset management performance, the WALT decreased only slightly to 4.6 years from 4.8 years, nine months ago. The natural WALT reduction was mitigated by prolonged and extended rental contracts in one of our largest assets in Essen and the long-term rental contract with a new hotel operator in Dresden, as already said. Amazon will take its positive effect in the second half of 2022. Portfolio development and the bridge to gross asset value. Also, we have been active and successful in our asset management efforts. The development of the portfolio is moving only a little. The disposals of eight assets amount to EUR 24 million and reflect an average premium of about 6% to the latest valuations.
They are partly offset by EUR 11.4 million CapEx spending. As of the end of September 2021, there were no reclassifications toward assets held for sale. Considering the sum of all these effects, but without Cielo, the book value of the portfolio as of the end of September 2021 is only slightly below the end of December 2020. Tim, please go along with the details about the financial performance.
Thank you, Ingo. Good morning, everyone. I hope everyone is doing fine. As Ingo already mentioned, we had a strong Q3, but let's have a more detailed look at our year-to-date September numbers as shown on pages 11 and 12. As you can see on page 11, our rental income is lower due to some disposals. The effect is partially mitigated by especially lower maintenance spend, resulting in an income from the rental real estate of slightly below EUR 52 million. As already said before, we had a good effect from the disposal of properties at about 6% above book value. If you put together items two and three, you see the positive effect in our P&L. The impairment of receivables is certainly a number that we all look closely at due to the coronavirus pandemic.
What we see in 2021 is that the effects are lower than in the years before, and we are slightly concerned about the current high corona numbers in Germany, but at the moment, we remain positive for the rest of the year and don't expect numbers to match the higher numbers from the previous year. What is certainly a great success when you look at our P&L is that we have been able to lower our G&A expenses despite the pandemic effects. The EUR 8.3 million is a significant drop from last year. We hope to stay on that positive development also in Q4 this year, which brings us much closer to our peers, and I think it's a good sign for operational performance when it comes to the management and the setup of the organization.
The financial result, as shown on the sixth, is also better than before. The financial expenses are roughly the same as previously, but as you know, we have done the Cielo acquisition, which helps us to increase our financial income, and thus the net effect here is positive. Putting all this together, you see funds from operation numbers for the first nine months of 2021 of EUR 30.4 million, which is slightly above the numbers of the previous year. Jumping to page 12, no big surprises here. You see little changes in investment properties, as Ingo already explained. You see a significant rise in other assets due to the Cielo transaction. We currently have no properties held for sale, and our cash and cash equivalent position is roughly stable, whereas year-end 2020 is slightly below EUR 100 million.
As we have paid for Cielo and sold only a lower amount of properties over the last nine months, we have increased our financial debt position slightly via two new mortgage loans that helped us lower our average cost of interest on a nominal basis. A few words on that on the next page. Maybe a quick look at the NAV per share. Also, no surprise, you have seen us paying a dividend in the second quarter of this year. The effect is partially mitigated by the positive income of the period, but the NAV per share is down to 550 or 552 on a non- diluted basis. On page 13, you see our leverage evolution over the last few years. As you know, our leverage target is 50%. We now show the net LTV definition as defined in our bond prospectus here.
I think that is for good reason. As you know, Cielo is an equity position, and the bond definition is most relevant when it comes to the LTV for capital market participants. You see a jump from 49.2% to 53% here, driven by the Cielo transaction and the dividend paid in the second quarter of this year. The average cost of debt still keeps trending downwards. This number is obviously also excluding any debt in the joint venture of Cielo, which would lower the nominal rate further. As you know, most maturities are in 2024 or later, such that there's limited further potential to lower the average cost of debt. Before we open Q&A, a few words on what we did over the last two years, and especially during the coronavirus pandemic.
I think the team did a fantastic job. We increased the transparency of the company a lot. We increased the reporting power. We are reporting faster. We do monthly IFRS numbers. We report a lot of KPIs. We became part of the compliance organization of the real estate industry. This also, everything helped us to, as Ingo elaborated already on, reach the EPRA Gold Award with our first set of EPRA numbers, ever published last year. I think that is something a rather small firm like ours can be really proud of. Ingo and I would thank the team a lot. They did a great job, and I think that sometimes also needs to be said in such an environment. Now, let's not become pathetic. I hand back to Ingo, and then we jump to Q&A. Ingo?
Thank you, Tim. Very good. After all, to conclude, we delivered very satisfying results driven by a strong and motivated team and a smooth- running organization, as Tim said. Internally, we remain focused on our costs and sticking to our REALize Potential strategy. Improved financial results and the strong asset management performance make us optimistic for the remaining weeks of 2021 and the near future. Thank you very much for listening so far. We are now happy to answer questions you may have. I hand over to the operator.
Thank you, gentlemen. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Our first question today comes from Philipp Häßler from Pareto. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning. Philipp Häßler from Pareto. I have three questions, please. Firstly, on your guidance. You have reached an FFO of EUR 30 million after nine months, and you are targeting to reach EUR 34.5 million-EUR 36.5 million for the full year. Given the strong performance of the nine months, that sounds quite conservative to me. Or are there any factors we don't know that you expect for Q4, that you are so conservative for Q4? Secondly, on the financial earnings contribution from Cielo, am I assuming right that that's around EUR 1.6 million? And if so, is this the quarterly run rate for the next quarter? Or do you book that only every second quarter? Or maybe you could elaborate a little bit on this. Last but not least, could you remind us again of your dividend policy? Thank you.
Okay, thank you. Maybe first on the guidance, it may look conservative, but we agree to that. As you know, we are reaching the highest coronavirus numbers every day now, so we don't really know what's happening over the next eight weeks of the year. Based on our Q3 numbers, we have obviously looked very closely at our business plan. We, as you might have seen when you compare the half- year numbers and the Q3 numbers, see that maintenance spend was quite low in that quarter. We expect some catch-up effect in Q4 here.
We expect some more Corona effects, and we are obviously looking at our guidance constantly, but we'll review that based on October's actual numbers and expect to have more clarity within the next two to three weeks. If there's a necessity to update the guidance, then we would obviously do so. The second question was on the Cielo and the P&L effects. I guess the numbers you stated for the current quarter were quite right. The overall positive FFO effect pre-tax in the future will be between EUR 6 million and EUR 7 million. In 2021, we would expect EUR 2.5 million to EUR 3 million overall positive FFO effect, and most of that is basically coming from interest income. Maybe the last question on the dividend strategy.
Well, as I said before, there is no precise dividend strategy formulated yet. We've paid a very high dividend for the last two business years. This is certainly paying a 10% plus dividend yield, which is not operationally sustainable. We have not decided yet on formulating a strategy, but it has always been part of our strategy to be able to pay a dividend. We are now able to pay a dividend for two years, and we will be able to pay a dividend in the future, but there is still no strategy formulated.
Okay. Very clear. Thank you.
If you would like to ask a question, please press star one now on your telephone keypad. Gentlemen, we do not seem to have any further questions. I'd like to turn the call back over to you for any further remarks. Thank you.
Thank you very much for listening and again for dialing in, and stay healthy. Take care. Bye.