The Southeast is booming amidst pandemic unrest elsewhere in the country, with a growing share of employers packing up and heading to greener pastures in secondary gateway markets across the region and investors following suit. And that bodes well for the future of cities like Nashville, Raleigh, and Orlando, according to a recent CBRE podcast featuring brokers Frank Fallon and Will Yowell, Highwood Properties CEO Ted Klinck and Johnson Development's Geordy Johnson.

Whereas Atlanta was once (in the not-so-distant past) the center of population growth in the Southeast, today many recent college grads are heading for cities like Nashville, Raleigh, and Orlando, Fallon says. And capital is following suit, with investors previously focused on the West Coast or East Coast turning an eye toward the Southeast, with less regulations and lower taxes.

"We get kidded a lot about how simple it is," Fallon said. "Well, here's what it is. It's population growth, which means consumers in your market, which means consumers are buying goods out of these warehouses.  And that's what drives this primarily, is the goods coming out of the warehouses."