Smaller and Mid-Sized Industrial Real Estate Deals on the Rise, JLL Says

The latest edition of the Nareit REIT Report podcast looked at industrial real estate trends with George Cutro and Chad Buch from JLL’s Chicago industrial research team. Cutro and Buch also co-host JLL’s Chicago Industrial-Real Time Podcast.Buch said JLL is “cautiously optimistic” for industrial real estate in 2019. Despite global uncertainty, “the fundamentals are really healthy,” driven by consumer consumption, e-commerce, and supply chain innovations.Cutro noted that e-commerce has changed the supply chain cycle, with the advent of smaller sized distribution centers replacing a traditional hub-and-spoke system. “We’re seeing a lot more demand in that smaller size, call it under 500,000 square feet, that’s really driving today’s numbers,” Cutro said.“The big deals all happened a couple of years ago in the coastal and core markets…now this is the second round of smaller and mid-sized deals happening in some of the secondary markets,” Buch said.