91视频

Industrial real estate continued to hum along in 2021, with fewer vacancies, active leasing and growing rents, Kidder Mathews reported.

In the Portland area, industrial space continued to enjoy strong demand as retailers responded to consumer demand for shipping. Developers, meanwhile, pushed ahead with real estate plays north and south of Portland.

鈥淚ndustrial has been sort of that one product type that’s been most resilient and has seen the most growth,鈥� said Chris Nelson, principal of Capstone Partners, a Portland-based developer.

Asking lease rates grew 4.4 percent from $0.69 per square foot on a triple-net basis to $0.72 per square foot in 2021 compared to a year earlier, Kidder Mathews reported in a fourth-quarter update. Among other findings:

• Vacancies fell from 4.0 percent to 3.2 percent.
• Leasing activity jumped 15.6 percent from 9.9 million square feet in 2020 to 11.4 million square feet in 2021. The most active submarkets were Southeast Portland and the I-5 corridor with 35.8 million square feet and 29.4 million square feet leased, respectively.
• 6 million net square feet were absorbed 鈥� most of which occurred in the fourth quarter.
• Sales volume fell 24.2 percent from 10.4 million square feet in 2020 to 7.9 million square feet in 2021.
• Projects totaling 4.9 million square feet were under construction in the fourth quarter, while 1.8 million square feet were completed in 2021. The Bridgepoint I-5 development delivered 677,568 square feet to the Airport Way submarket, and Portside Industrial Park added 192,960 square feet to the Central Business District/West Vancouver submarket.

The industrial market has seen more mega-deals as users led by Amazon locked up space near cities. Specht Properties sold a parcel near Woodburn for $23.3 million in June. Amazon plans to build a five-story, 3.84-million-square-foot shipping warehouse on the Specht parcel and two neighboring parcels, for which it paid a total of $27 million, The Oregonian reported.

鈥淲hat’s really pretty spectacular from a market perspective is how strong demand has been, particularly from large users,鈥� Nelson said.

While Amazon gets the headlines, other retailers such as Walmart and Target have moved aggressively into e-commerce, buttressing demand for logistics facilities.

鈥淲hat you’re seeing is that traditional retail businesses that would have distributed out of a warehouse to bricks and mortar 鈥� they’re all pursuing an omni-channel strategy,鈥� Nelson said.

Capstone Partners is looking for a build-to-suit user for a potential 750,000-square-foot facility in Salem. 鈥淲e’re hoping that will be a start (in 2022), but we’ll have to see,鈥� Nelson said. 鈥淚t depends on demand.鈥�

Specht is building a 468,793-square-foot industrial building in Ridgefield, Washington, on speculation. (CEO Greg Specht could not be reached for comment). Completion is expected in August. Mackenzie is the architect and Perlo Construction is serving as general contractor.

鈥淵ou’ve seen bigger sites and bigger development projects both north of Portland and down in Salem,鈥� Nelson said. 鈥�(2022) in my opinion will be very much like ’21: another growth year.鈥�