NEW YORK CITY-Industrial leasing activity across the country went from strength to strength in 2011, showing upticks in major markets and a decline in the overall vacancy rate, new research from Cushman & Wakefield shows. More than 417 million square feet of US industrial leasing was completed during the year, a 20% increase from the 345 million square feet signed in 2010 – a sign of improving fundamentals from coast-to-coast in 2012.

“It’s pretty dramatic,” says Jim Dieter, SIOR, who heads the national industrial brokerage platform at C&W, in an interview with GlobeSt.com. Dieter visited the company's Manhattan headquarters at 1290 Avenue of the Americas last week to discuss the firm’s latest fourth quarter data—and tells GlobeSt.com that the national industrial vacancy rate has dipped from 10.8% to 10%, nearly a 1% drop.

“That doesn’t sound like much, but the US size of its industrial market is around 12 billion square feet,” he says. “When you have a drop in vacancy rates of almost 1%, you can see that’s pretty dramatic.”