Vacancy Rates Hit an All-Time Low for Chicago Area

Similar to our blog post from August 2021, the vacancy rate for Chicago-area industrial properties has hit an all-time low. If your business needs warehouse space today, you better move quickly when you find it. What is going out there is going fast!

The vacancy rate for Chicago-area industrial property dropped to 4.91% in the first quarter, down from 6.68% a year earlier and an all-time low for the local market, according to Colliers International. E-commerce, logistics, manufacturing, and other companies continue to gobble up warehouse space faster than developers can build it. 

The industrial real estate market, already strong before the COVID-19 pandemic, has soared to new heights since the early days of the health crisis, emerging as the hottest sector in the commercial real estate market. 

No company has had a bigger impact on the market than Amazon, which went on a real estate binge to expand its distribution network and speed up delivery times. The Seattle-based online retailer, now the Chicago area's biggest private-sector employer, signed the two (2) biggest industrial leases in the Chicago area in the first quarter for warehouses totaling one (1) million square feet each in Joliet and Kenosha. 

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