Latest / Industrial Advisors / 2026 Industrial Outlook: Market Rebalancing, Big Box Demand & Nearshoring

Transcript

2026 Industrial Outlook: Market Rebalancing, Big Box Demand & Nearshoring · Industrial Advisors

• 0:00
  What's your favorite thing that you do at Hawk?
• 0:02
  I would say just being with our clients, being with our team.
• 0:06
  I'm definitely a people person.
• 0:07
  I get energy from interactions with humans.
• 0:11
  Uh, don't like working from home.
• 0:13
  Like, I am one of those people.
• 0:15
  I like to be surrounded at all times, and I think that's the most fun, is
• 0:20
  being able to help people execute on their strategy, build their businesses,
• 0:24
  maintain those good client relationships.
• 0:26
  That's the most fun for me.
• 0:28
  Yeah.
• 0:28
  Yeah.
• 0:28
  We do a good job.
• 0:29
  Our clients, all of our clients love you, so it's helpful-
• 0:32
  Great … for running the platform.
• 0:33
  Good.
• 0:34
  Good.
• 0:34
  For sure.
• 0:35
  Yeah, your connectability with people is amazing.
• 0:37
  Like, just seeing you work the conference, and everybody knows you and loves you.
• 0:55
  Welcome to our Industrial Advisors podcast.
• 0:58
  We're live at IAMC in Little Rock.
• 1:00
  Myself and Matt, and we have Stephanie Rodriguez joining us today.
• 1:03
  Stephanie runs our entire industrial platform in addition to 20 other
• 1:08
  jobs, managing- At least … Florida and Atlanta and- A few.
• 1:11
  Yeah.
• 1:12
  No, I don't wanna get bored.
• 1:13
  I think you're the best of the best at what you do in the industry.
• 1:15
  There's no question.
• 1:15
  So thanks for joining us.
• 1:16
  Thank you.
• 1:17
  Yeah.
• 1:17
  Thanks for inviting me.
• 1:18
  By the way, my first question, if you don't mind, is gonna
• 1:20
  be to Bill, the guest.
• 1:21
  How many airline miles do you think she did last year?
• 1:25
  Last year?
• 1:25
  Yeah.
• 1:27
  250,000. On American I had over 300.
• 1:31
  Wow.
• 1:32
  Yeah.
• 1:32
  That's the highest person I've ever heard- That's just one airline
• 1:33
  in my entire life.
• 1:34
  Yeah.
• 1:34
  The app Flighty is great because it summarizes your mileage and how many trips
• 1:40
  around the world you've done in a year.
• 1:42
  Incredible.
• 1:42
  Last year I think it was three.
• 1:44
  That's a lot.
• 1:44
  All the different things that you do, what's your favorite
• 1:46
  thing that you do at Collier?
• 1:47
  I would say just being with our clients, being with our team.
• 1:51
  I'm definitely a people person.
• 1:53
  I get energy from interactions with humans.
• 1:56
  Uh, don't like working from home.
• 1:59
  Like, I am one of those people.
• 2:00
  I like to be surrounded at all times.
• 2:03
  And I think that's the most fun is being able to help people execute on
• 2:07
  their strategy, build their businesses, maintain those good client relationships.
• 2:12
  That's the most fun for me.
• 2:14
  Yeah.
• 2:14
  Well, you do a good job.
• 2:15
  Our clients, all of our clients love you, so it's helpful- Great … for
• 2:18
  running the platform like that.
• 2:19
  Good.
• 2:20
  Good.
• 2:20
  For sure.
• 2:20
  Yeah, your connectability with people is amazing.
• 2:23
  Like, just seeing you work the conference and everybody knows
• 2:26
  you and loves you, so thanks for you- what you do for our platform.
• 2:28
  No, my pleasure.
• 2:29
  Yeah.
• 2:29
  My pleasure.
• 2:30
  Speaking of our platform, tell us, like, how Colliers is
• 2:33
  doing, how we're positioned, how the company's doing overall.
• 2:35
  Sure.
• 2:36
  Well, I mean, in general, Colliers is known for our industrial strength,
• 2:40
  so I feel very privileged that I get to lead this service line for us.
• 2:45
  We are still very much focused on our industrial business and
• 2:48
  growing it, and doing very well.
• 2:51
  We've had… After the first quarter, we've seen an uptick in the deal count
• 2:55
  and in our revenue count for industrial, which is always a wonderful thing to see.
• 3:00
  We had a slow start last year, so it was much more encouraging to look at
• 3:03
  the books this year and, and see an improvement in our start for 2026.
• 3:08
  So I think our future's bright.
• 3:10
  We're attracting some really strong talent across the country, which is very
• 3:15
  fun for me to onboard them and get them sort of into the loop with our platform.
• 3:20
  But yeah, I'm very excited about the future for us.
• 3:23
  Agreed.
• 3:23
  It's the strength of our company for sure- Yeah … on the industrial side.
• 3:26
  So you have exposure to industrial across the US.
• 3:31
  What are some of the markets that are standing out to you right now?
• 3:34
  I mean, we're in this state of sort of equilibrium and rebalancing at the moment
• 3:39
  with the industrial market in general.
• 3:41
  So if we look at it by region, the central region has very low vacancy.
• 3:45
  It's already in a rebalance state, believe it or not.
• 3:48
  But I think a lot of that is because the investors and developers
• 3:51
  in that particular region are a little more conservative.
• 3:55
  They don't go crazy with building.
• 3:57
  It's just slow and steady wins the race.
• 3:59
  So their fundamentals are still very strong.
• 4:01
  They have, you know, rent growth.
• 4:02
  While it's not crazy like it had been historically following the
• 4:06
  pandemic, it's been very solid.
• 4:08
  The southeast continues to be very strong.
• 4:11
  It's strong.
• 4:11
  Population growth is a big driver of that.
• 4:15
  And then, you know, just onshoring and nearshoring has really driven demand in
• 4:19
  the industrial sector in the southeast West Coast is still, you know, kind of
• 4:23
  recovering from a blip in the radar that we experienced a couple of years ago.
• 4:28
  But, you know, things are stabilizing there, especially
• 4:30
  with the West Coast ports.
• 4:32
  Yeah.
• 4:32
  And you guys sit in the West Coast, so you know better than anyone.
• 4:35
  But I would say the central region is, you know, just chugging right along, and then
• 4:39
  the Southeast continues to be very strong.
• 4:41
  Yeah.
• 4:42
  And that includes Texas, I would say.
• 4:43
  Yeah, includes Texas.
• 4:43
  Even though that's not in our map of the Southeast.
• 4:46
  Right.
• 4:46
  Yeah.
• 4:46
  But still.
• 4:47
  Where do you see growth in the industrial sector?
• 4:49
  'Cause through COVID we saw, you know, household goods, everybody was working
• 4:53
  from home And doing a lot of home improvements, and then we kind of hit,
• 4:57
  you know, down where vacancy went up.
• 4:58
  Where are you seeing the growth sectors?
• 5:00
  You know, e-commerce is still pretty steady, though the demand- A lot … it
• 5:06
  spiked a lot in 2020 to 2022.
• 5:09
  So that's stabilized a little more, and we have incremental growth there.
• 5:12
  But still our main drivers are 3PLs.
• 5:15
  So third-party logistics providers still continue to take at least a
• 5:18
  third of the market share in the leasing activity for industrial.
• 5:23
  We are seeing a lot more in manufacturing, so there's a, a
• 5:27
  good growth story there compared to where we have been historically.
• 5:31
  And- Is that new manufacturing or is that just coming reshoring-
• 5:34
  That's reshoring- … onshoring?
• 5:35
  … you know, and that's more specialized advanced manufacturing.
• 5:39
  We're not building toasters in the US.
• 5:41
  Yeah.
• 5:41
  It's just cost-prohibitive for the consumer.
• 5:44
  But, you know, pharmaceuticals, the administration has been very
• 5:47
  pro bringing some of those things back to the country, so chips,
• 5:53
  pharmaceuticals, things like that.
• 5:54
  So seeing a good uptick in that, and then of course data centers-
• 5:57
  Yeah … which, you know, is the big buzzword with, you know, flocks of AI.
• 6:01
  Everybody's an expert suddenly.
• 6:01
  Suddenly.
• 6:02
  And it's, and it's a really challenging sector because
• 6:05
  it's very capital intensive.
• 6:07
  Yeah.
• 6:08
  So only, you know, a certain number of players can actually
• 6:11
  really dabble in that space.
• 6:12
  Right.
• 6:12
  Well, you have exposure on, you know, the landlord side of the business, too.
• 6:15
  You're interacting with our institutional clients on a, on a daily basis.
• 6:19
  Yeah.
• 6:20
  The market's softened a bit on the industrial side over the,
• 6:23
  you know, past couple of years.
• 6:24
  What are you hearing from institutional owners right now?
• 6:27
  You know, I think they're still pretty heavily focused on the
• 6:30
  build to suit environment.
• 6:31
  You know, their, the development pipelines in the last few years
• 6:35
  have veered away from spec- Yeah
• 6:38
  and really focused more on that build to suit, and, and growing those existing
• 6:42
  client relationships that they have across the US or even the globe.
• 6:46
  And that still continues, but we're starting to see more in certain
• 6:50
  markets where the vacancy is still low and there's strong demand that
• 6:54
  they are going spec on these buildings again, which is great to see.
• 6:57
  Yeah.
• 6:57
  Yeah.
• 6:58
  We're starting to see, especially in the bigger box- Yeah … ar- arena
• 7:01
  where it's, it's getting tight again.
• 7:02
  Yeah.
• 7:02
  That's right.
• 7:03
  Yeah.
• 7:03
  We had, we had a significant lull in big box- Yeah … for a, for a period of time.
• 7:08
  Mm-hmm.
• 7:08
  And, uh, that seems to be coming back quite nicely.
• 7:10
  And- Yeah.
• 7:11
  The demand's definitely there now.
• 7:12
  Yeah.
• 7:12
  Yeah.
• 7:12
  Our big box report will be out shortly, so- Yeah.
• 7:15
  Yeah … yeah.
• 7:15
  Love the big box report.
• 7:16
  The big box report.
• 7:16
  We heard yesterday from a guest that there's, like, 82 million footers
• 7:20
  in the US completed or about to be, and Amazon's taking half of them.
• 7:23
  Yeah.
• 7:24
  So crazy numbers.
• 7:25
  Yeah.
• 7:25
  They, they pulled back for a while there, and now they're ramped up again.
• 7:28
  Yeah, they are.
• 7:28
  Ramped back up.
• 7:29
  Yeah.
• 7:29
  Absolutely.
• 7:29
  That'll help vacancy.
• 7:30
  Yeah.
• 7:30
  Yeah.
• 7:31
  So we're in Little Rock.
• 7:32
  My last question is what's your opinion of it?
• 7:34
  Have you enjoyed your stay here?
• 7:36
  Yeah, I mean, it's a nice place.
• 7:37
  I will say I wasn't very excited about coming.
• 7:40
  I was like, "Little Rock? Really?" Yep, yeah.
• 7:43
  But I'd never been here.
• 7:44
  Yeah.
• 7:45
  So I shouldn't be so judgemental.
• 7:47
  I felt the same way about Detroit when IAMC went to Detroit- Me too.
• 7:50
  I, I was surprised with Detroit … a few years ago, and very pleasantly surprised.
• 7:53
  Yeah.
• 7:53
  Yeah.
• 7:53
  So Matt and I did a boot camp this morning at the- We did … Clinton
• 7:56
  Library- Yeah … in the front of the library, and it was a beautiful
• 7:59
  sunrise, and very welcoming locals in the group as well, so it was good.
• 8:04
  I've enjoyed my time.
• 8:05
  Yes.
• 8:05
  I'm excited for our national conference this year because
• 8:08
  we're doing it in Nashville.
• 8:09
  Yes.
• 8:09
  It's gonna be fantastic in Sep- September or October?
• 8:12
  September.
• 8:12
  September.
• 8:13
  Yeah, so.
• 8:13
  I'll probably get a text from you, like, again asking, "When's the
• 8:16
  conference?" Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 8:17
  Yeah.
• 8:17
  At least you know where it is.
• 8:18
  I've already texted this three times.
• 8:19
  Yes, yes.
• 8:20
  Yeah, like, ah, yeah.
• 8:21
  Do you have a role there, or is it she asks you- I don't know.
• 8:24
  Not yet Am I doing anything?
• 8:24
  No, we're, we're still putting the, the agenda together and hiring our
• 8:28
  keynote and all that good stuff.
• 8:30
  Nice.
• 8:30
  So- Well, if you want me to be the keynote, I'll do it for free.
• 8:31
  We get through our supply chain conference is in May.
• 8:34
  Yeah.
• 8:34
  Once we get through that, we'll really focus our attention on
• 8:37
  finalizing the plans for NIC.
• 8:39
  Yeah.
• 8:39
  But it'll be great, and we look forward to welcoming all of
• 8:42
  our guests and clients there.
• 8:44
  It's such a good conference.
• 8:45
  It really is.
• 8:46
  So I always enjoy it.
• 8:47
  Yeah.
• 8:47
  Well, thanks for joining us.
• 8:48
  Thanks for what you do.
• 8:49
  My pleasure.
• 8:49
  Thank you very much.
• 8:50
  We got one more day left of this conference.
• 8:52
  Yes.
• 8:52
  So off we go.
• 8:52
  Well, off we go.
• 8:53
  Yeah.
• 8:53
  Thank you very much.
• 8:54
  Thank you