A banner year. That’s how Cushman & Wakefield describes the Louisville industrial market in 2018. And why not? The market set records for industrial leasing activity, construction and absorption last year.
According to Cushman & Wakefield’s most recent report, the Louisville industrial market saw more than 2.7 million square feet of leasing activity in the fourth quarter. That pushed the year-end total to more than 8 million square feet. This easily breaks the previous record for this market of 7.4 million square feet set in 2008.
The South, Southern Indiana and Bullitt County submarkets can be credited for much of this record, accounting for 70 percent of this total, according to Cushman & Wakefield.
The news was good regarding vacancy rates, too. In the fourth quarter, the overall industrial vacancy rate fell 20 basis points in the Louisville market to 5.7 percent. Warehouse/distribution vacancy dropped from 8.5 percent last quarter to 7.6 percent in the fourth. The manufacturing sector saw an all-time low vacancy rate of just 3.4 percent in the quarter, Cushman & Wakefield reported.
The submarket with the lowest vacancy rate in the Louisville area? That’s the East submarket, which ended the year with an impressive industrial vacancy rate of just 1.3 percent.
And industrial absorption? Those numbers were impressive, too, with Cushman & Wakefield reporting that the Louisville industrial market absorbed 2.6 million square feet in the fourth quarter. That brought the year-end total to a record high of 9.7 million square feet in 2018.
This level beat the previous record of 4.2 million square feet in 2008 by more than 129 percent.
