Dive Brief:
- Pennsylvania is experiencing high demand for warehouse space, with the I-78/81 passage becoming especially popular, CBRE reported to the Central Penn Business Journal Tuesday. A growth level of approximately 70% in the area contributed to fourth quarter real estate gains.
- The Greater Philadelphia region, which includes Central Pennsylvania and the Lehigh Valley, offers 74.2 million square feet of industrial real estate, of which 11.3 million square feet was occupied at the end of 2016. Rents increased from $4.63 per square foot to $4.70 in the fourth quarter.
- Real estate firm CBRE attributes the desirability of the area to its proximity to New York City as well as its correspondingly low land and wage prices versus those in New Jersey.
Dive Insight:
Central Pennsylvania isn't the only state benefiting from the boom in industrial real estate.
Another CBRE report reveals that more than 25 million square feet of warehouse and industrial leasing was reported in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in 2016. This amount exceeds the previous record set in 1999 by more than 2.6 million square feet. The strongest growth occurred in Dallas County, where there was roughly 5.5 million square feet of warehouse property leased. North Fort Worth came in second at 5.4 million square feet.
Unsurprisingly, purveyors of consumer goods and e-commerce occupiers grabbed the lion's share of space. Companies such as American Tire Distributors, Chewy.com, TriMark USA, Frontier Logistics, United Technologies and Amazon were in the forefront of leaseholders.
