ATLANTA—No one would argue that the Great Recession hit the Southeast, and particularly Atlanta, hard. While California and Texas were among the first to recuperate and launch new construction, the Southeast was the slowest to recover.

“The area has recovered nicely over the past two to three years and is seeing strong population growth, job growth and business expansions and relocations like the recently announced Mercedes headquarters relocation from New Jersey,” Mark Dishaw, senior vice president of Trammell Crow Company's Atlanta Business Unit, tells GlobeSt.com. “Georgia and the Atlanta metro area have been steadily growing and there are now more than 5 million people in the metro Atlanta area. It's a great place to do business.”

Dishaw is taking a close look at industrial. His research shows Atlanta is the fourth-largest industrial market in the country.

From his perspective, the industrial market has a huge number of users because of population and transportation platforms like the multiple interstates, airport and rail systems. From 2008-2010, he notes, Atlanta witnessed negative absorption because a majority of the buildings built in 2007 suffered from a lack of demand.  

“Atlanta had four or five years where few projects were built because there was not a need for it,” Dishaw says. “Since then, the area has revived and absorption numbers have been rising as Atlanta tenants have now occupied almost the entire product available during the recession. For the first time in over 14 years, the vacancy rate is below 10% for the Atlanta industrial market.”

There has been limited industrial supply delivered in Atlanta in the last three years as companies were cautious due to past market trends. Absorption in Atlanta was 10 million square feet in 2013, which Dishaw calls a solid number.

“The overall Atlanta market delivered approximately 2 million square feet of speculative space over the past two years, small numbers compared to what the supply and demand historically has been in Atlanta,” Dishaw says. “In the fourth quarter of 2014 alone, market reports revealed more than 8 million square feet of net absorption activity. This represented the third-highest net absorption in recorded history for Atlanta's industrial market. It was off the charts, with no appreciable development activity through mid-2014.”