Middle Market Digest: This Week in the South and Mountain Regions

Cushman & Wakefield recently reported that US industrial markets absorbed 63.6 million square feet of space in the final quarter of 2016, which propelled net absorption for the year to a record-setting 282.9 million square feet. The current industrial expansion is one for the record books. As of January 2017, the industrial sector has registered 27 consecutive quarters of net occupancy gains, placing this expansion among the longest ever. It is also among the strongest, with net absorption for the past three years (825.5 million square feet) surpassing the strongest period of occupancy growth in the prior cycle, 726.8 million square feet from 1997 to 1999. The national industrial vacancy rate for all product types continued to decline in the fourth quarter, falling 30 basis points from the prior quarter and 100 basis points from the prior year to 5.5%. During the past year, logistics-related warehouse vacancy has declined 130 basis points, from 6.9% to 5.6%, despite the delivery of 156.8 million square feet of new speculative product.—Lisa Brown

NEWS AND NOTABLES