Posts by Tucker Hughes

A Quiet Surge in Demand: Industrial Real Estate in Orange County, Inland Empire & Los Angeles

Tucker Hughes on April 05, 2021

It is widely accepted that the commercial real estate market, as a whole, has taken a hit during Covid-19. Restaurants and brick-and-mortar shops have faced the worst of it as retail properties everywhere shut down. Office buildings have not fared much better as most companies sent their employees to work from home. The drop in demand for those two property types has dominated headlines across the country but, all the while, a quiet surge in demand has occurred in the industrial real estate market. Unlike other asset classes in the greater Los Angeles region, the industrial real estate market has been incredibly resilient through the Covid-19 pandemic. Combining Orange County, Inland Empire and Los Angeles, we see that together an already-low vacancy rate of 3.4% in Q1 2020 only shrunk further to an even tighter 3.1% today. Essential businesses in e-commerce, manufacturing, and biotech have all seen their demand–and need for space–soar as consumers and businesses stay at home throughout the pandemic. For these industries there is no possibility of sending their operations off-site, and the result of this increased demand is a tightening market met with an increase in development of new properties where available land exists.