The industrial real estate market continues to lead the way in southeastern Wisconsin commercial real estate, boasting positive absorption, low vacancy and more than 10 million square feet of new space under construction during the second quarter of the year.
But the amount of industrial space absorbed in the region slowed during the second quarter to the lowest amount during the past year.
The southeast Wisconsin industrial real estate market had 385,000 square feet of positive absorption in the second quarter for a total of 1.1 million square feet year to date, according to new data from the
Commercial Association of Realtors Wisconsin (CARW). But the second quarter absorption was down from more than 500,000 during the first quarter, and about 4.5 million during the fourth quarter of 2022, and nearly 1.5 million during the third quarter of 2022.
Walworth County topped all counties in the region for positive absorption during the second quarter, resulting from Zero Zone leasing 183,000 square feet there.
The southeastern Wisconsin region's industrial space vacancy rate was 3.6% during the second quarter. That's up from 3.2% this time last year, the report shows, but the market has absorbed about 6.9 million square feet of industrial space during the last year.
Industrial real estate absorption by county, year to date:
- Milwaukee: 297,055 square feet
- Kenosha: 271,749 square feet
- Waukesha: 204,930 square feet
- Washington: 182,231 square feet
- Walworth: 144,200 square feet
- Ozaukee: 50,911 square feet
- Racine: -12,786 square feet
- Sheboygan: -23,687 square feet
Industrial real estate vacancy rate by county:
- Sheboygan: 0.1%
- Walworth: 0.7%
- Waukesha: 1.1%
- Washington: 1.5%
- Ozaukee: 1.9%
- Milwaukee: 4.7%
- Kenosha: 6.9%
- Racine: 7.6%
At the close of the second quarter, the Milwaukee industrial market had 59 lease transactions with 1.08 million square feet of leasing activity, the CARW report says. 41 properties were sold topping $58 million with over 1.67 million square feet.
There's currently over 10 million square feet of industrial space under construction; more than half is in Kenosha County as companies like Uline continue to expand in the area.
Year to date, construction of 14 new industrial buildings were completed in the region, with a total of 2.94 million square feet of space.
