Commercial real
estate continues
upward trend
By Brent Miller
Senior Vice
President
FM Stone
Commercial
The question
I get asked on an almost daily basis is,
“How is the industrial market doing in
Elkhart County?” My short answer right
now is: “It is good.”
The year 2013 ended on a good note,
which was a little surprising coming
off the huge year we had in 2012 and
the lack of industrial inventory in the
market. According to our calculations,
we are now below a 3-percent vacancy…
something I haven’t seen since 2005-06,
which was one of the strongest markets
on record in Elkhart County.
We were surprised to see a positive
absorption of just more than 1 million
square feet of space last year in the
market. If you would have told me in
2009 when vacancy was over 9 percent
that in less than five years we would
absorb more than 5 million square feet of
space, I would have called you crazy.
We still have an ample supply of
buildings under 20,000 square feet
in size. But we are severely lacking in
buildings larger than 40,000 square feet,
especially anything north of 100,000
square feet. There was more interest in
smaller spaces last year, which is a good
sign for the economy in Elkhart County
– typically, that means more start-ups
and growth.
Due to lack of inventory, we did see
land sales increase during the last half of
the year. We look for new construction to
increase in 2014.
We didn’t have a big increas