By Taylor Williams The meteoric rise of industrial real estate over the past decade will forever stand as one of the remarkable growth stories in the annals of commercial real estate, a quasi-rags-to-riches tale of an asset class that has become a preferred use for highly valuable sites and penetrated the portfolios of institutional-grade investors around the country. But after surging to all-time highs in the immediate post-COVID era, industrial rents have moderated in most major markets. Slowing rent growth has coincided almost perfectly with interest rate hikes, all while land and construction costs have continued to do what they always do: go up. For these reasons, industrial developers, who still overwhelmingly build on spec, tend to need a little more help these days than they did in recent years. Or in some cases, these developers may be perfectly well-capitalized to acquire land, secure financing and deliver buildings, but simply aren’t motivated to do so in the current financial environment. Enter incentives — of both the tangible and intangible variety — as the missing link that could mean the difference between a project being shelved or delayed and being executed. Incentives can take many forms, from tax breaks granted by …
