News
INDUSTRIAL KING-DOM
June 2, 2011
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| We spent this morning with the legendary Charlie King, founder of King Industrial Realty, at his Buckhead office for his take on the industrial market. Charlie, whose firm has been tracking industrial data for 20 years, says we're still giving up more space than we're leasing here, and we haven't had positive absorption since '08. Atlanta—historically a positive absorption market—actually lost absorption for the first time during the '01 recession, but the scale of the problem was nothing compared to this recession. Atlanta's still more than 20M SF of negative net absorption for the past three years. ?We never had anything like this in my career,? Charlie says. He pins the malaise almost directly on housing. In metro ATL, historically most of the industrial deals were either over 100k SF or under 20k SF. Now the under 20k SF deals account for 80% of the annual absorption. And Charlie says it was those companies that fed on the housing industry. Though the Fortune 500 world has shown signs of life, rents continue to feel downward pressure ?which is brutal on the landlords and incredibly uncomfortable on the brokers.? Read more about Charlie and the industrial market in an upcoming issue of Industrial Focus, coming this month to a Bisnownear you (Atlanta that is). |
