Investors slowed on buying warehouses in Metro Atlanta in the first half of 2025, but the pace may soon pick up.
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Industrial property values are pushing up, thanks to a narrowing construction pipeline and a reemergence of Fortune 500 tenants. This could lead to increased activity among buyers and sellers next year, a panel of industry experts said during Bisnow’s Industrial Southeast Summit on Wednesday.
JLL Managing Director Bobby Norwood said many warehouse owners have seen values rise this year and will put their properties up for sale. Those properties will enter a market filled with hungry investors who are motivated to deploy debt and capital in what has proven to be a resilient asset class.
“There are a ton of folks who are looking to deploy and are looking to get some liquidity. And industrial, consistently the last five years, is the most liquid asset class and the safest rock in the harbor in the storm,” Norwood said during the event at Twelve Midtown.
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In the third quarter, industrial investment activity showed signs of recovery, with total sales reaching $1.65B, the highest quarterly figure since Q3 2024, CBRE reported.
President Donald Trump’s shifting tariff and trade policies weighed on industrial investors in the first half of 2025, with buyers placing more scrutiny on potential tenants before agreeing to buy distribution centers.
Tenants with better credit are a hedge against the uncertainty for investors, Norwood said.
“More and more buyers are deeply underwriting: What is that tenant’s foreign exposure? What is their supply chain?” Norwood said. “That's coming into play.”
Investors’ return to the market comes as industrial fundamentals also demonstrated signs of improvement. Companies absorbed 2.7M SF of industrial space in the third quarter, Colliers reported.
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Food and beverage companies, third-party logistics operators, and air cargo and air freight handlers have been seeking warehouse space in recent months, Prologis Senior Vice President Kent Mason said.
The activity is picking up despite continued uncertainty.
“While some users might be waiting for more certainty with tariffs and trade policy, the Fortune 500s of the world ... can’t wait forever,” Mason said.
Tariffs have made warehouse tenants sensitive to pricing and desirous of shorter lease terms, Portman Holdings Executive Vice President Charles Pinkham said. Landlords are funding elevated levels of tenant improvement allowances to build out warehouse spaces.
“It’s a little bit of a tenant’s market at the moment,” Pinkham said. “But that will change. That’s coming.”
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The industrial market has had a glut of big-box warehouses of 500K SF and larger. Atlanta’s industrial market has thrived on smaller users over the past year, with more than half of the nearly 10M SF of leases signed in the first six months of this year for spaces 50K SF or smaller, Bisnow previously reported.
Between Q3 2024 and now, the number of warehouses with 500K SF or more available rose from 23 to 35 locations, and the square footage available in those spaces rose from 18M SF to 27M SF, according to CBRE data provided to Bisnow.
In that same period, available distribution centers of 1M SF or more rose from six locations totaling 6.2M SF to nine locations comprising 9.7M SF, according to CBRE.
McCraney Property Co. CEO Steven McCraney said he has seen a shift in the size of tenants over the past six weeks.
“In the last week, out of the blue, I get a call for a 2M SF big box in Charlotte,” McCraney said. “It’s always cyclical. And it’s time to see some big boxes come back into the market.”
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