LOS ANGELES—Finding well-located and developable land sites isstill the biggest challenge for industrialdevelopers, and that won't change in the coming year, according toLarry Lukanish, SVP of commercial development andinvestment at the Sares-Regis Group. Lukanish isspeaking on the Deals and the Dealmakers panel at the upcomingRealShare IndustrialWest conference. Before the big day, we sat down withLukanish to get his market insight and see what he expects in 2016.His answer: tighter supply and more competition.

"The hardest part of our job is finding the land sites, and alot of it is broker driven. In an auction process, there could be20 to 40 people bidding on a site, so it is very competitive to getany new projects," Lukanish tells GlobeSt.com. "In the biddingprocess, often developers are outbid by users, who can usually paymore than a developer can pay. Other times, we get lucky and findan off-market deal, but those are harder and harder to find."

While some developers and investors are claiming that otherattractive deal terms will allow for flexibility on pricing,Lukanish says that isn't the case. Top bidder always wins."Unfortunately, all buyers go through the same thing. You are wellqualified, you have a great track record, you have discretionarycapital and you have the highest price," he says. "Some propertieswill have environmental expertise that you have to bring to thetable, and some companies don't have that expertise. We specializein that, so that helps in the bidding process, but you still haveto be the highest bidder. It doesn't matter if you understand theproblem better. You still need to get to the price. We wish therewas a discount for expertise."