Seattle’s Industrial Market Running Hot: CommercialEdge

The industrial real estate market has generated so many headlines it’s almost easier to just mention how “hot” the market is in a) Inland Empire or b) Los Angeles or c) Orange County or d) Seattle/Puget Sound. 

A new report and analysis from CommercialEdge shows how Seattle is actually the “hottest” market with one data point: cost per square foot. 

For the first two months of 2022, industrial properties in the Seattle area sold for an average of $357 per square foot. That may surprise some readers, but it has the benefit of being true, from CommercialEdge’s crunching the numbers. 

That $357/psf is well above the Bay Area and Los Angeles, the next two highest-priced markets, where the year-to-date sales averaged $311 and $258 per square foot, respectively.

A couple other high-level takeaways from CommercialEdge regarding the Seattle area’s industrial market:

• Average rent was $9.13 per square foot in February – fourth nationally
• Those rents are showing an increase YOY of 4.7 percent
• The vacancy rate is 7.2 percent – and that’s with 9.9 million square feet of industrial space currently under construction.