Amazon Growth Slowdown and Space Givebacks Prompt Fears Sector Has Topped
After growing at roaring speed for what seems like forever, e-commerce pioneering giant Amazon reported its first major slowdown in decades last quarter and other retail giants with big e-commerce presence like Walmart and Target also reported substantial growth slowdowns.
Now the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Amazon is no longer in warehouse development expansion mode and has in fact begun to add supply to the warehouse sector by offering sublet arrangements from its massive warehouse capacity, which swelled from 275 million square feet at the end of 2020 to 374 million square feet at the end of 2021 in one of the biggest examples of a CRE sector expansion in U.S commercial real estate history.
WSJ says CBRE is projecting a lease growth slowdown in the warehouse sector for the first time in years, forecasting 2022 sector leasing of 875 million square feet, down from last year’s record one billion square feet.
- ◦Lease
