CINCINNATI—The steady recovery of the US economy and the simultaneous expansion of e-commerce has sent the vacancy rate for this region's industrial properties plunging to a historic low. And despite that record-low vacancy, positive absorption has been significant so far in 2015, and shows no sign of slowing down in the third or fourth quarters of the year, according to a new mid-year market study by DTZ.

“This is the lowest vacancy rate that we've seen, at least within the past ten years,” Skylar Stein, an associate in DTZ's Cincinnati office, tells GlobeSt.com. In the first quarter, vacancy sank to just 4.63%, but in the second it went even lower and eventually hit 4.37%. And the importance of distribution buildings to the metro area is illustrated by the fact that the rate for class A bulk warehouses now stands at just 1.3%.

“Net absorption was positive in the Cincinnati market for the 16th consecutive quarter, reaching 1.25 million square feet in the second quarter,” according to the DTZ study. Net absorption for the year now stands at 3.65 million square feet and “at this pace, 2015 figures will easily exceed the 4.8 million square feet of positive absorption seen in all of 2014.”