By Noel Liston, Core Industrial Realty The 10 major submarkets that comprise the broader Chicagoland industrial market all performed at or above expectations in 2023. While absorption was not as robust as the pandemic boom that saw back-to-back record years, 2023 was a solid year for absorption and a strong year in rental growth throughout the broader market. Significant deliveries of speculative developments were offset with solid absorption by manufacturing, assembly and food & beverage-related industries that picked up the slack left from a less enthusiastic e-commerce market. Broadly speaking, the greater Chicagoland industrial market started 2024 with a vacancy rate of ±7.3 percent. This vacancy rate is up from the low 5 percent range the market averaged for the second half of 2023. Assuming equilibrium (a market that favors neither tenant nor landlord) for the market is historically a ±6 percent vacancy rate, the current vacancy rate can be deceiving. This is, in large part, due to the jump in vacancy as a result of the delivery of a significant amount of larger, speculative industrial developments in certain submarkets where land zoned for industrial with relatively good access to a major highway or interstate was still available. Further, …
