![\"Market](\"https:\/\/hughesmarino.com\/inland-empire\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/Market-Report-Chart-2025-Inland-Empire-Industrial-Availability-Rate-1024x634.png\" "\\"Market")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDigging into major submarket detail, the bar chart below represents each submarket\u2019s pre-Covid availability rate, relative to today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Riverside and San Bernardino are both up 50% compared to pre-Covid. The Ontario Airport area has doubled compared to pre-Covid, and Chino\/Chino Hills, Redlands\/Loma Linda and Moreno Valley\/Perris are all 250% over their pre-Covid rate. Corona\/Eastvale has returned to their pre-Covid level, and only Temecula is less than the pre-Covid availability rate simply because there was less development interest in the Temecula area during the 2020 to 2022 speculative construction boom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019re probably asking, \u201cHow come I didn\u2019t know this until now?\u201d Commercial real estate landlord brokers distort the measure of the market by using \u201cvacancy rates\u201c instead of \u201cavailability rates.\u201d If you\u2019re looking through the tenants\u2019 lens, which we have done for over three decades, you need to include all space for lease or sublease that a tenant has to consider, including buildings under construction, occupied subleases and space for lease that\u2019s not yet vacant\u2014all categories of available space that the landlord brokerage industry conveniently excludes from \u201cvacancy.\u201d This is just one of many ways that the big landlord brokerage firms rig the market in favor of landlords to the detriment of tenants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What also has been hidden from business owners is the extent to which sublease inventory is dragging the market down. While sublease inventory in the Inland Empire was relatively tight at 5,000,000 square feet before Covid, as e-commerce companies and 3PLs began a feeding frenzy for space at the end of 2020 through the middle of 2022, sublease inventory virtually evaporated from the market with a low of 2,000,000 square feet. However, as the same industries begin rationalizing their portfolios and space over-commitments in 2023, sublease inventory begin spiking well beyond the pre-Covid rate, hitting a historic high of 18,000,000 square feet at the beginning of 2024\u2026and is stuck there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These subleases can generally be had at 20% to 30% below market, for shorter terms than landlords might be demanding, and are often offered plug-and-play, fully furnished and racked. The reality is that until this flood of space comes off the market, landlords simply don\u2019t have any pricing power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To put some real numbers around this, a tenant needing 25,000-50,000 square feet of industrial space has 132 options in the Inland Empire today (28 are subleases). A tenant needing 50,000-100,000 square feet has 123 options (32 are subleases). A tenant needing 100,000-300,000 square feet has 136 options (39 are subleases). A business owner needing 300,000 square feet or more has 72 options (19 are subleases). Never in history have Inland Empire tenants, of any size, had more building options for lease and sublease.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019re probably wondering why prices haven\u2019t come crashing down given all of this resetting of the market\u2014shouldn\u2019t rents be back down to their pre-Covid level, or less? While we\u2019re seeing slight decreases in asking rents, the landlord brokerage firms have found another way to rig the market against the commercial real estate tenant. While landlords don\u2019t formally collude, they indirectly share a tremendous amount of information and anchor off each other\u2019s pricing. With the brokerage community working as landlords\u2019 proxies, and too frequently acting as conflicted dual agents representing both the landlord and the tenant in the same transaction, landlords have full transparency as to what each other is doing in real time, and often what buildings a tenant is looking at. Brokers publish every lease transaction within their company internal databases, and that data is commoditized and traded with other brokers, and shared with other landlords the same big brokerage firms represent. Tenants\u2019 confidential information rarely stays that way for very long, and landlords know who\u2019s doing deals, and at what terms, while tenants are lured into thinking prices are the same as they were back in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Any serious negotiation requires accurate information, leverage and the right mindset. Trying to represent yourself in this dynamic market with the flood of options\u2014and landlords and their landlord listing brokers working against you\u2014is a fool\u2019s errand. Tenants need to engage a tenant representation company as their business partner, and as their advocate whose interests are aligned with theirs when considering expansion, relocation or lease renewal\/restructuring. Ultimately, the \u201ccustomer\u201d in a relationship is the party that pays for a good or service. The tenant writing a rent check is the customer in the landlord\/tenant relationship, but tenants have never been treated where \u201cthe customer is king.\u201d It\u2019s time for tenants to take their power back by fully vetting and understanding the realities and extraordinary opportunities that today\u2019s market presents for you. At Hughes Marino, with one of our co-founders being from the Inland Empire, we have a three-decade track record of delivering results for tenants, as they are our entire firm\u2019s customer, and not being conflicted with trying to represent landlords with any kinds of services at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes. Availability is more than double its pre-Covid rate, sublease inventory sits at a historic 18 million square feet, and tenants in every size tranche (25K SF up to 300K+ SF) have more building options than at any time in Inland Empire history. With landlords lacking pricing power, 2026 is decisively a tenants’ market, but that leverage only translates into better economics when tenants run a real, competitive process.<\/p> <\/div> When measured through the tenants’ lens, including buildings under construction, occupied subleases and space for lease that isn’t yet vacant, Inland Empire industrial availability is running at roughly double its pre-Covid baseline of 7%. This is materially higher than the “vacancy rate” landlord brokers publish, because vacancy excludes several categories of space a tenant can actually lease today.<\/p> <\/div> Vacancy counts only buildings that are physically empty. Availability counts everything a tenant can actually lease right now: vacant space, occupied space being marketed, subleases and buildings still under construction. Availability is the honest measure of tenant choice. Landlord often quote vacancy numbers because they can make the market look tighter than it actually is.<\/p> <\/div> Sublease inventory in the Inland Empire hit a historic 18 million SF at the beginning of 2024 and is stuck there. That is more than three times the pre-Covid baseline of 5 million SF and nine times the 2021 low of 2 million SF. Subleases typically price 20%\u201330% below direct asking rents and are often offered plug-and-play, fully furnished and racked.<\/p> <\/div> Chino\/Chino Hills, Redlands\/Loma Linda and Moreno Valley\/Perris are all running at roughly 250% of their pre-Covid availability. The Ontario Airport submarket has doubled. Riverside and San Bernardino are up 50%. Corona\/Eastvale is back to its pre-Covid baseline, and Temecula is actually below pre-Covid, because it saw less speculative construction during the 2020\u20132022 boom.<\/p> <\/div> A tenant needing 25,000\u201350,000 SF has 132 options (28 subleases). A tenant needing 50,000\u2013100,000 SF has 123 options (32 subleases). A tenant needing 100,000\u2013300,000 SF has 136 options (39 subleases). A business owner needing 300,000 SF or more has 72 options (19 subleases). No historical market has offered Inland Empire tenants this much choice at every size band simultaneously.<\/p> <\/div> Asking rents have softened modestly, but they haven’t collapsed to pre-Covid levels because landlords informally anchor off each other’s pricing. Landlord brokers share deal data across internal databases, and the same brokerage firms often represent multiple landlords, giving landlords real-time transparency into each other’s moves, and often visibility into which buildings a specific tenant is touring. Unrepresented tenants get anchored to 2022 pricing.<\/p> <\/div> If you have a lease decision in the next 12\u201324 months, the market is working in your favor in a way it hasn’t in a decade. With 18M SF of sublease space, doubled availability and softening landlord posture, tenants who run a competitive process, or restructure an existing lease with real leverage, can capture meaningful savings. Engaging tenant-only representation is the single highest-leverage decision in that process.<\/p> <\/div> Landlords and their brokers share market intelligence, anchor pricing against each other and frequently act as dual agents on the same deal. Representing yourself in that environment means negotiating without the comparable data, leverage or conflict-free advocacy the other side has. A tenant-only firm like Hughes Marino specializes in representing tenants, we don’t represent landlords on any side of any service line.<\/p> <\/div> Hughes Marino represents commercial real estate tenants exclusively across the Inland Empire and has a three-decade track record in the region, with one of our co-founders from the Inland Empire. If you’re evaluating expansion, relocation or a lease renewal\/restructure for industrial distribution or manufacturing space in Riverside or San Bernardino Counties, request a current market analysis through hughesmarino.com.<\/p> <\/div> <\/div>\n\n\n\n Market statistics provided by CoStar Group.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you are a business owner or executive team member operating an industrial distribution or manufacturing company in the Inland Empire, you\u2019re probably still picking off the scar tissue from the run-up of industrial rents from 2020 through 2022. The outbreak of Covid in second quarter of 2020 created a run on industrial real estate in the fall of 2020. This was caused by consumers going online to shop and the ports flooding with inbound consumer products that needed to be pumped out of our Southern California warehouses. Pre-Covid, industrial availability rate in the Inland Empire was a healthy 7%. In less than a year and a half, availability rates had gone down to a historic low below 4%, rental rates increased 50% to 90% depending which submarket you\u2019re in, and competition for large blocks of space forced many tenants to sign 7 to 10 year leases where companies were conventionally signing five-year terms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":31989,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1020],"tags":[],"publication":[],"video_type":[],"coauthors":[1134],"class_list":["post-31985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-market-reports"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"Market](\"https:\/\/hughesmarino.com\/inland-empire\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/Market-Report-Chart-2025-Inland-Empire-Industrial-Availability-Rate-from-Q1-2020-1024x634.png\" "\\"Market")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nHow Landlords and Their Brokers Often Hide the Real Market: “Vacancy” vs. “Availability”<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Inland Empire Sublease Inventory Has Hit a Historic 18 Million SF<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"Market](\"https:\/\/hughesmarino.com\/inland-empire\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/Market-Report-Chart-2025-Inland-Empire-Industrial-Sublease-Space-1024x634.png\" "\\"Market")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nTenants Have More Options Than Ever<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Why Industrial Rents Haven’t Fully Reset Yet<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
What Business Owners and Executive Teams Need to Do Now<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Frequently Asked Questions: Inland Empire Industrial Market 2025<\/h3>\n\n\n\n