BOSTON – According to Richards Barry Joyce Partners, the Greater Boston industrial property market had a positive start to 2012, with many properties seeing occupancy gains over the prior period, as conditions continued to improve for industrial tenants.
The findings were released in “indSTATus – Spring 2012”, RBJP’s quarterly research publication highlighting Greater Boston’s industrial market. The report covers warehouse, flex and manufacturing properties across the region.
Buildings with positive absorption of at least 5,000 square feet outnumbered those losing that amount of occupancy 51 to 32. Additionally, there was 71,000 square feet of positive absorption across Greater Boston in all three industrial property types combined during the quarter. The number would have been higher, though it was offset by two singular, one-time consolidations in the warehouse market. The market has had five consecutive quarters of positive absorption across the three combined property types.
“The Greater Boston industrial market is in the midst of an extended period of positive momentum,” said Brendan Carroll, senior vice president of research for Richards Barry Joyce Partners. “Some of the numbers from the first quarter belie the optimism, simply due to certain one-time events that took place. However, indicators from the Institute of Supply Management point to increased production and space needs for the remainder of the year.”
Following are highlights from Q4 for each of the industrial property types.
The Warehouse market closed the quarter with 19.6 percent vacancy on 129,000 square feet of negative absorption. While this represents a vacancy increase of 2.7 percentage points over Q4 figures, two singular consolidations and necessary statistical adjustments obscure what would have been 478,000 square feet of positive absorption for the past two quarters. Asking lease rates were up $0.18 to $5.51 for the quarter.
The Flex market had positive absorption of 36,000 square feet, dropping vacancy by 0.7 percent to 17.6 percent. Asking lease rates were up $0.14 to $7.64.
Positive absorption of 164,000 square feet in the Manufacturing market brought vacancy to 17.8 percent, down negligibly from last quarter’s 17.9 percent. The market is enjoying a two-quarter positive absorption run of 273,000 square feet, with vacancy down 0.7 percent during that time. Asking lease rates were up $0.14 to $6.55.