Industrial Development
In 2025, the country’s industrial market is experiencing a rebalancing in the wake of surging demand and record new supply that marked the early pandemic years. New opportunities in fast-growing markets are emerging, and demand drivers are shifting. New space demand will grow the most, especially for small-bay industrial assets, according to a Q3 2025 report from the business advisory and accounting firm Plante Moran.
Birmingham’s Urban Supply hints at what the next chapter of downtown life could look like. Once-quiet brick warehouses are being reimagined into patios, storefronts, and gathering spaces along a new pedestrian alley.
What trends are shaping the future of the industrial sector? Four experts from ULI’s Industrial and Office Park Development Council talk about the industrial submarkets and property types that offer the greatest opportunities, challenges developers face in bringing new projects to market, ways artificial intelligence and emerging technologies are reshaping the sector, tenant priorities, and other key trends.
After a quiet first half of 2024, CMBS originations increased 59 percent in Q3 on a year-over-year basis, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Quarterly Survey.
The outlook for the European real estate market is cautiously optimistic despite growing geopolitical uncertainty and concerns about economic growth, with London, Madrid, and Paris emerging as the standout performers, according to a new report by PwC and the Institute.
Northern Mexico has experienced a significant expansion in the Mexican industrial real estate sector since its major decline from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, due, in part, to low-cost production in China. During the pandemic, that trend began to shift.
Spanning 80 acres (32.4 ha) and 1 million square feet (93,000 sq m) of industrial space, The Works is located off Chattahoochee Avenue, a once-quiet industrial corridor on the west side of Atlanta. This pocket of the city—now known as the Upper Westside with a new CID to prove it—has seen explosive growth since plans for The Works were announced in 2017.
It’s tough to view a strong economy as bad news. Yet a firmly positive economic projection in ULI’s Real Estate Economic Forecast does not bode well for commercial real estate participants who are hoping for relief in rate cuts from the U.S. Federal Reserve.
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Once overlooked as little more than open-air spaces for trailer parking, industrial outdoor storage (IOS) sites are emerging as a promising niche for their increasingly significant role in the e-commerce and logistics sectors and their potential to earn strong returns for investors.
Demand for industrial space has pushed vacancies to historically low levels. But the high tide may no longer be lifting all boats. A surge in new supply along with a growing appetite for more modern facilities is putting more pressure on the sector’s aging building stock. Legacy buildings are having a tougher time keeping up with the changing demands of today’s space users.
A confluence of economic and geopolitical trends is changing global supply chains and driving increased demand for industrial and logistics real estate in Southeast Asia, according to industry leaders at ULI Asia Pacific’s REImagine conference.
The COVID-19 pandemic made 2021 a historic year for the shipping and logistics industry, as rising e-commerce sent large retailers and general merchandisers scrambling for warehouse space to hold their inventory, supply-chain issues delayed shipments, real estate developers strained to keep up with demand, and local governments struggled to issue permits quickly with employees working from home.
Solar energy solutions provider Wunder has closed a deal with Blackstone Credit portfolio company ClearGen to fund solar energy systems on commercial properties.
ULI MEMBER–ONLY CONTENT: The dramatic increase in online shopping in the United States has only further increased the appetite for properties close to population centers.
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Global growth in e-commerce spurred by the coronavirus pandemic is boosting investor interest in a “new economy” asset class dominated by data centers and logistics facilities, speakers said in early September at a session during the ULI Asia Pacific REImagine conference.
A recent ULI Europe webinar looked at the “new normal” for urban logistics including the possibilities of drone delivery and how a downturn and changes in regulation could free up more locations in central business districts.
The Punggol Digital District, set to launch in 2023, will form a fresh nexus between higher education and industrial innovation, with its two anchor institutions being the Singapore Institute of Technology and a new business park developed by JTC Corporation, an industrial property developer and manager.
Developers are under more pressure than ever to include features in their buildings that are good for the environment, good for their workers, and good for the surrounding community, said experts speaking at the ULI Fall Meeting.
Demand from growing cloud-computing providers has set the U.S. data center market on pace to break 2017’s record leasing activity, according to CBRE’s latest U.S. Data Center Trends Report. Northern Virginia and Phoenix are also seeing significant new construction to meet demand.
Prime logistics rents increased globally during the 12 months ended March 31, accelerating their growth in many markets due to strengthening economies around the world and greater demand for distribution of goods bought both online and in stores, according to a report from CBRE. Prime rrents increased by 3.2 percent across the globe in this year’s first quarter from a year earlier, exceeding the previous 12-month period’s 2.2 percent global increase.
The growing popularity of online grocery shopping could result in demand for up to 35 million square feet (3.25 million sq m) of U.S. cold-storage space shifting from retail stores to warehouses and distribution centers within the next seven years, according to a report from CBRE.
With e-commerce players remaking the retail sector, industrial real estate developers are hustling to provide the infrastructure needed to get packages to doorsteps in hours instead of days.
Driven by an e-commerce boom, industrial real estate is in the midst of a golden age that shows no signs of waning, despite lingering concerns about the long-term health of traditional retailers, a group of industrial property managers said during a panel discussion at the 2017 Fall Meeting in Los Angeles.
The latest ULI Real Estate Economic Forecastis predicting more positive momentum ahead for both the economy and the commercial real estate industry through 2019. That being said, the pace of growth is slowing and the survey of 48 economists and analysts clearly reveals some lowering of expectations.
A year after the opening of the Panama Canal expansion, rents for industrial space around the Port of Los Angeles are at an all-time high and vacancy rates are hovering around 1 percent.
For more than 20 million passengers annually, Tegel Airport is the gateway to Berlin. As a new international airport is being built, an ambitious project is intended to transform Tegel into an “urban tech republic.”
This year, global investors should be keeping an eye on politics in China, Japan’s outbound investment, and the logistics sector, said a panel of senior industry figures speaking at the recent ULI Asia Pacific Summit 2017.
There was a time before Prohibition when St. Louis had more than 40 breweries. By the 1980s, however, that number had dwindled to just two. Today, experts speaking at a ULI panel said St. Louis’s smaller brewery scene is again thriving, with 50 separate breweries operating locally.
Commercialized marijuana is big business and is expanding as a new asset class at an astronomical rate, according to a ULI Spring Meeting panel of industry investors, operators, and legal experts on the state of the cannabis business and real estate opportunities being created in the sector. Twenty-eight states have legalized the sale of medical marijuana, and eight states plus the District of Columbia allow recreational marijuana to some degree.
Breweries have an almost magical ability to revitalize neighborhoods and even entire towns, according to panelists speaking at ULI’s 2017 Carolinas Meeting.
