Industrial

The U.S. industrial vacancy rate dropped 20 basis points (bps) to 8.8 percent during the second quarter of 2016, largely driven by companies building or leasing warehouse space to meet continued demand for e-commerce shopping, according to CBRE. The decline marked the 25th consecutive quarterly drop in available U.S. industrial space. “Plummeting U.S. industrial vacancy rates signify that this sector of the commercial real-estate market is benefitting from increasing acceptance of the e-commerce model,” says Chris Roach, president of BBG Valuation, an independent national commercial real estate valuation and assessment firm headquartered in Dallas. “We anticipate this downward trend in vacancy rates will continue for at least the remainder of this year.” According to CBRE’s second-quarter U.S. industrial and logistics report, the national industrial market expanded for a 25th consecutive quarter, logging 66.2 million square feet of positive net absorption. This was up 8 percent over the previous quarter. At the same time, a total of 41.6 million square feet of new supply was added nationally, which failed to keep up with demand. The growing trend in e-commerce shopping is expected to continue to fuel demand for warehouse space, which is needed to store inventory for shipping directly to consumers …

A new research report from CBRE says that despite the global collapse of commodity prices — including many key inputs to construction — overall construction costs continue to rise nationwide. This is largely because of worker shortages that have driven up labor costs, offsetting any savings on materials. In January, average total construction costs in the United States registered a year-over-year increase of 1.8 percent, according to the RSMeans Construction Cost Index (CCI). Since January 2011, the national CCI has increased by an annual average of 2.3 percent, resulting in a cumulative 11.8 percent increase during that period. “The price of materials is just one driver of overall construction costs,” says Andrea Cross, head of research for the Americas at CBRE and co-author of the report. “The cost of construction labor tends to be much more variable across geographies and over time, so it typically has a larger impact on overall cost trends.” Cross also notes that the collapse of the housing market and subsequent recession affected supply-side dynamics for new construction throughout the country, as a substantial number of construction workers left the industry during the downturn and never returned. Nationally, the number of workers employed in construction-related occupations …