Welcome to the presentation of the first half year of 2024. My name is Susann Linde, CFO and Head of Investor Relations here at Wallenstam. I'll start with some events. During this second quarter, we acquired land in April in Älta from Nacka Municipality for a price of SEK 136 million and SEK 50 million more in April 2026. This is in our urban development project here in Älta. We have also sold three ready-to-use building rights in Umami Park, Sundbyberg, for an agreed price of SEK 147 million. It was vacated at the end of May. You can see here on the picture Östermalmshallen. We received more awards from this reuse project in Mölnlycke. In 2022, we took down the temporary market hall on Östermalmstorg in Stockholm and erected it as a padel hall in Mölnlycke, which you can see here on the picture.
With competition entries from 80 countries, it is now clear that our fantastic reuse project is a winner in two categories in the Architizer A+Awards. It's both for sustainable adaptive reuse or renovation and also gyms and recreation centers. So we are very proud of this reuse project. So if you visit Mölnlycke, go there and play some padel. So what is Wallenstam today? A summary of the company, and it's almost the same as last quarter. But you who are new listeners, I can go through it. We have properties in both Stockholm and Gothenburg region. Residentials have a volume of 51% of the rental value, and we have our residentials in both regions. The commercial part is mainly Gothenburg and CBD of Gothenburg. We have a good demand for our product with an occupancy rate of total 96%.
We are self-sufficient and also a net producer of renewable energy by our 53 wind turbines, and we have also 12,000 solar panels which produce the same as two wind turbines, or it has an effect as two wind turbines. When I talk about energy, I can summarize our work with sustainability this quarter. First, I will tell you about our status regarding the implementation of CSRD. We are not legally forced to report this until financial year 2025. We have completed the dual materiality, and the board and group management has adopted it. It shows what sustainability risks and possibilities we think affect most, both regarding people and environment and also financial. One thing that we can see that we think is important and a risk is security. In this new environment with a lot of bad things happening, it makes people feel unsafe.
We think and hope that we can help to make that better and make our areas a safer zone to live and have your business in. So because of that, we arranged meetings with tenants in two residential areas to increase collaboration and security. We were some employees from us, for instance, our security department, which we have in our company, but also the police. It was two events which were very appreciated by the tenants. So hopefully we can do the same in other areas. We have also joined the recycling hub in Gothenburg, Re:bygg. It's a recycling hub for the construction industry with a focus on the reuse of building materials for local adoptions to minimize the amount of waste and promote sustainable constructions.
We have also planted some new trees and plants in Umami Park in Sundbyberg, which you can see here on the picture to help biological diversity. But it's not just this that I talked about on this page that we work with. We are also doing a lot of sustainable activities in our property holding, like decrease energy consumption and so on. So let us go forward and talk about the result for this half year. If we start with the net operating income, it has increased by 14%. It's up to SEK 1.1 billion. We recognize a surplus ratio of 76.2%, and that is now on the same level as before the energy crisis. But as always, I will go through what happened on the next slide. And if we go into more detail, the rental income has increased by SEK 118 million.
It's 9% up compared to last year for the same period. Two-thirds of the increase, SEK 77 million, comes from the completed new construction, both the 250 apartments which we completed this half year, but also the one which were completed the second half of last year. The transactions give us a minus of SEK 8 million, and in the comparable holdings, it is up by SEK 49 million. The commercial base rent has increased by almost 6%, and the negotiation with the tenants' association about the residential rent ended with a total growth on average for the group of 4.5%. And as I said, last quarter, we made a two-year deal, and there will be almost the same growth next year for the residentials. And then we go down to the operating expenses, which has gone down by net SEK 21 million.
The main reason to lower operation expenses is lower electricity price. Last year, we had an electricity price of an average just about SEK 2 per kWh, and now we have SEK 0.90 per kWh. The effect is SEK 44 million lower expenses, but as you know, we are self-sufficient. So in total, for the group, it's a zero-sum game on the total result. But we also work hard with energy-saving projects, as I said in the last picture, but the rates and charges for water and sanitation and cleaning are higher. And also, the weather-related expenses were higher compared to last year by SEK 4 million. So in total, the NOI grew by SEK 139 million or by 14%. We have a stable demand for our commercials in Gothenburg, but we also try different ways of letting.
Our next page is a new concept that we have tried in one property. It's Kaserntorget 6 in Gothenburg. It's a full-service green contract offices ready for occupation. Everything is in place for the tenant at contract signing. For example, it always includes wireless connection in all rooms, meeting technology, alarm system, fire protection, and cleaning. The contract and access times are shortened, and we reuse material. And this was completed during the second quarter, and we have just one office left to let out here in this property. Since each premises is already optimized, no major interventions and extensive renovations are required in case of possible relocations. In this way, both agreement and access times are shortened, but above all, also our CO2 footprint. And if we go further down in the income statement and administrative expenses and net financial items, we get the income from property management.
It has increased by 6% and amounts to SEK 563 million. You can see that the financial expenses are still up, but at the closing day, the average interest rate was 3.17%, which is 10 basis points lower compared to last quarter. The effect of lower interest rates is coming now after this quarter. The total profit after tax is SEK 408 million, which is almost SEK 600 million better than last year. The interest rate could have been higher if it wasn't for our interest rate derivatives. We use that as a hedge. We have no new interest rate derivatives during this period, which means 53% of the total loan volume has fixed interest rate, which is some lower compared to last quarter because of increased volume of interest-bearing liabilities. The total average fixed interest term is 35 months.
For the 12-month rolling period, we report an ICR of 2.2x . So let us move on to the balance sheet. If we start with the properties, the total value of investment properties is SEK 64 billion. We have a volume of almost SEK 5 billion, which are either under construction or land for future construction, which means that just about SEK 59 billion is the value of the properties in operation and gives us a cash flow. The value of SEK 64 billion is distributed as follows: 57% are residential properties and the rest commercials. We haven't changed any direct yield requirements during this first half year, which means that we have an average direct yield requirement still at 4.6% for commercials and 3.6% in residentials.
The value increased, the value from the properties increased during this first half year by just over SEK 1 billion, and the net reason is the investments, as you can see here on the table. Now, we look at the investments. We have invested SEK 1.1 billion this first half year, and it is around SEK 215 million lower compared to the same period last year. It feels very gratifying to say that we have started one big project this quarter. This is Årstaberg in Stockholm, close to Marievik. It's a project of total 408 apartments in total, and it's in a very city-close location and close to the local traffic. The completion starts in 2026, and we will do this in different phases, of course, because it's a huge project. We haven't completed any apartments during this second quarter, so now we have 1,238 apartments under construction.
Next project to start occupation is Nacka Grace. This is a very popular property to live in, and when we released the first 23 apartments, our web went down, and Bostadsförmedlingen i Stockholm received several thousands of applicants to these 23 apartments. We can see that the demand in the right locations is still there. We hear about vacancy in residential holdings, but we can't see that in our areas. It is very important to construct in the right locations where people both want to live and can pay for it. Hopefully, we can start more projects during the year, but there are a lot of things to have under control before we start. For example, we do background checks on all our suppliers, both because of criminality and also to see the financial stability.
You don't want a bankruptcy in the middle of a project. So it takes time before we can start. Our goal to reach up to SEK 100 per share in net asset value until 2030 is still there. The profit from the period affected positively, but the first dividend of SEK 0.25 per share affected negatively. So at closing day, we recognized an NAV of SEK 56.7 per share. And if we look at our interest-bearing liabilities, it amounts to SEK 30 million, and the LTV and equity ratio is on the same level as last quarter. It's SEK 30 billion, of course. The LTV is 46%, and the equity ratio is 45%. We have increased our interest-bearing liabilities during this half year by SEK 1 billion. The bond market has started to work again, and during the quarter, we have issued one new green bond of total SEK 300 million.
We had a bond maturity of SEK 334 million. So now we have SEK 1 billion in total, and we use this money to refinance the wind turbines. The volume of commercial papers has also increased, but so did even the bank loans, and the distribution is the same as last quarter. 95% of the total financing is from banks. Yes, a summary: all our figures are going up, and we think that we have an exciting future ahead of us, and also hopefully a sunny summer. So this was all for today, and thank you all for listening. And if you have any questions, please send me an email, or maybe you can attend to our other live recording in Swedish, which has started right now. So, or otherwise, you can send me an email.
Have a nice evening and also a nice summer, so we can hear for the next third quarter. Thank you very much for listening.