Industrial Real Estate Is Red Hot. But Where to Invest?

As e-commerce continues to become a more important part of retail sales, competition for industrial space won’t be abating anytime soon. The war for “last mile, last touch” locations is just starting, and it is in these locations that land and space are especially scarce. But whether it is for regional distribution centers or properties used for last-mile delivery, investors will find themselves increasingly in markets that they previously did not operate in. Local knowledge sourced through brokers is useful, but hard to scale and often hard to quantify.

Relevant data can help investors and lenders objectively assess the merit of locations, supporting location selection as well as underwriting decisions. Of course, the use of a property may require being in close proximity to an urban area, such as in the Olathe example above, or it may rather require the presence of a large workforce that may be available to work in the industrial facility. In the era where bricks-and-mortar retail is replaced by data-driven e-commerce platforms, using data for investment, lending, and location decisions for industrial and logistics real estate is the best way forward.

Read the blog here.