MissouriIndustrial Colliers: St. Louis industrial rents hit 13-year high Dan Rafter May 17, 2019 Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on LinkedIn Share via email Vacancies are down, new construction up and rents on the rise. That’s the good news from the first quarter 2019 St. Louis industrial report recently released by Colliers International. And even as developers continued to bring new industrial product to the market, the St. Louis industrial sector saw positive absorption in the first quarter of the year, according to Colliers’ research. According to Colliers, the first quarter of the year ended with 442,819 square feet of positive absorption. The overall industrial vacancy rate for the St. Louis market ended the quarter at 6.18 percent, the lowest this rate has been since 2006. For comparison’s sake, the five-year average industrial vacancy rate in the St. Louis market is 6.5 percent, and the market high was 10.2 percent in 2011. With these positives, it’s not surprising that industrial rents are on the rise, too. Colliers reported that the average direct asking rental rate for the St. Louis market rose to $4.57 a square in the first quarter. That is an increase of 5 percent from one year ago. That average rental rate is also a jump of nearly 9 percent from the five-year average of $4.19 a square foot.