Cynthia J. Hoffman is editor of Real Estate Forum, from which this article is excerpted.

With a national vacancy rate in the single digits and a steady call for space from tenants, it's no wonder there's a flood of industrial development in the works. But there's a downside to every upturn, and a healthy market inevitably leads to increased competition, particularly when it comes to available land.

"There is a surge of new construction across the country, with everyone from the major national developers to the strong regional and local players active right now," states Whitfield Hamilton, Eastern regional partner for Panattoni Development Co. in Nashville. "The economy is good, and Fortune 500 firms down to smaller companies are growing their businesses and need more space."

A thriving economy is just one of the forces spurring the building boom, note the experts. Also in the market's favor are rising corporate profits, strong employment gains, continued supply-chain reconfiguration, increasing international trade (notably from the Pacific Rim) and an abundance of capital earmarked for industrial plays."Institutions like this product type and want it in their portfolios," relates Matt O'Sullivan, executive vice president and chief development officer at IDI in Atlanta. But so does everyone else, making acquisitions of existing product highly competitive. "You have investors trying to get deeper into the development cycle to gain industrial product, and they are willing to take on more risk to do that."