News and Analysis

Since the invention of wheels, we have come a long way. We now have driverless cars that can pick us up and drop us at our destination, and we can shop online by just reading out the grocery list using speech-recognition technology such as Alexa. Automated technology has transformed and reshaped our lives, and the warehouse industry has also received the Midas touch of automation.

As the U.S. prepares to add 100 million more people this century, the “2100 Project: An Atlas for the Green New Deal” provides a snapshot of U.S. land use (as of 2017), aimed at managing resources to support this future.

For the first time in the last nine years, new supply is on course to outpace overall demand by nearly 70 million square feet. Tray Anderson, logistics and industrial lead for the Americas at Cushman & Wakefield, discusses why this will not negatively impact the market and what we can expect from the industrial sector for the next 12 months.

Earlier this week, Walmart unveiled Alphabot, a product of Massachusetts-based startup Alert Innovation. Using 20,000 square feet in Walmart’s Salem, Massachusetts, store, Alphabot holds about 20,000 grocery items, including fresh, frozen, refrigerated and shelf-stable products.

A growing truck driver shortage, along with improved efficiency of U.S. rail operations, has more shippers considering rail transportation as a viable alternative to long-haul trucking. As a result, some developers are placing new industrial development projects adjacent to rail access sites.

Dallas-Fort Worth is one of the country’s biggest industrial construction markets, with more than 23 million square feet of buildings on the way. The good news is that more than 60% of the new warehouses that hit the market in the fourth quarter were already leased to tenants.

This article is part of a Property Report series looking at small investors and real estate, from new ways for individuals to buy slices of office towers to how to buy a stake in an investment home for as little as $50.

While we’ve come a long way since the Wild West days of 2006, more than a decade later cov-lite is one hard lesson from the crisis that’s apparently being unlearned. Today’s competitive lending environment, buoyed by the proliferation of debt funds post-crisis, has created a borrowers’ market and the resurgence of cov-lite — and, some say, almost cov-free — loan structures.

Commercial property policyholders will see ongoing price increases and cuts in capacity through 2020, as insurers maintain discipline, making for a difficult market, industry experts say.

One of the most important aspects of China’s recent economic development is the profusion of new cities being built from scratch. These aren’t expansions of existing communities but fully master-planned, manufactured centers of economic and social life, often built on newly developed land such as artificial islands or reclaimed desert. On some estimates, China has built more than 600 new cities since the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949.

High net worth individuals (HNWIs) have emerged as an avid group of commercial real estate investors in recent years. Yet even as allocations to the asset class remain strong, investors are treading carefully amid concerns about slowing growth and the near-term economic outlook.

As the lure of urban living pulls more residents from the suburbs, developers are scooping up prime real estate in downtowns across the United States. Soaring property values have created opportunities for owners of an overlooked, underdeveloped asset: the surface parking lot.

Food retailers are making big bets on small warehouses to bulk up their growing delivery businesses, as supermarkets try different approaches to get groceries to customers more efficiently.

The situation raised the question of whether the troubles in the retail sector might cause some serious damage on the industrial side as well, as downsizing and disappearing retailers abandon their warehouses. But industry experts say retail bankruptcies have had a minimal effect on the industrial sector.

From light-industrial properties to large multistory facilities, the urban logistics real-estate landscape is changing as shippers get a handle on the best warehousing strategies to tackle their "last-touch" challenges.

Armed with algorithms, robotic warehouses and cashier-less stores, Amazon.com Inc. is commonly seen as an existential threat to traditional grocers. In recent weeks alone, Amazon confirmed plans for a mainstream supermarket to complement its pricey Whole Foods Market chain, and the company plans to bring its automated checkout technology to full-size supermarkets.

“The DFW industrial market continues to outperform the rest of the country in both construction and absorption,” said Kurt Griffin, Cushman & Wakefield’s executive managing director. “The market has been fueled by the fact that D-FW has led the country in job growth and population growth, a trend we see continuing in 2020.