Denver’s industrial real estate market continues to fire on all cylinders with 37 consecutive quarters of positive net absorption, record amounts of new supply and record-low cap rates for investment properties. The region’s industrial product has benefitted greatly from a strong and diversified economy, significant population growth both locally and regionally and the continued trend by companies to modify their supply chain to accommodate same-day deliveries. Demand has come from existing businesses that have grown organically and are now serving a larger market and carrying increased inventories. It has also come from new companies that hadn’t previously had distribution centers here but now need to serve the Colorado Front Range and the Rocky Mountain region. A new phenomenon that impacted the market recently is increased demand by tenants and users seeking build-to-suits rather than leasing or purchasing speculative buildings. One reason has been affordability, as some new developers and their capital partners have accepted significantly lower yields on cost in order to “build into” the market, compared to existing local developers that have historically commanded higher yields for speculative product. An example of this was a project built by Becknell/UBS that contained a 541,000-square-foot, cross-dock building. Haier (GE) Appliances pre-leased …
