Industrial, Self Storage Lead CRE Market in Growth

The list of asset classes to lead the way out of the pandemic is filled with a lot of surprises—and the expected. Industrial leads in terms of occupancy and rent fundamentals as well as public sector asset value appreciation. Perhaps less expected, self-storage and manufactured housing are both enjoying a spot at the top of the list with industrial.

Recently, Green Street hosted Post COVID Deal Flow, a webinar to analyze transaction activity this year. The firm uses M-Rev PAF, a metric that combines occupancy growth and market rents to illustrates the fundamentals across asset classes. From 2020 through 2025, industrial’s M-Rev PAF growth is 6.8%. “We expect industrial to fair best on M-Rev PAF, largely due to the sizable rent growth that you have seen on the coast and in general throughout the industrial business,” Cedrik Lachance, EVP and director of research at Green Street, said in the webinar. Manufactured homes and self-storage were also in the top tier with 5.6% and 4.2% M-Rev PAF growth, respectively.

Likewise, the three asset classes also led in pricing appreciation. Lachance bifurcated the public and private asset value trends to look more analytically at pricing. In the public markets, self storage assets topped the list with values up 49%, while industrial values increased 37% since February 2020. Interestingly, niche asset classes populate the remainder of the list, with SFR pricing up 23%; life science up 21%; data centers up 19% and manufactured homes up 15%.

In the private markets, industrial and self storage continue to lead with 41% and 40% growth, respectively, followed by manufactured homes, up 31%.

On the other end of the scale, lodging, strip malls, malls and office have the lowest M-Rev PAF growth at .5%, .4%, -1.4% and -2.4% respectively. In the public markets, healthcare, lodging, net lease, cold storage and office asset prices are all down, falling -2%, -4%, -4%, -7% and -9% respectively. In the private markets, on the other hand, lodging, office and malls are in the negative, down -4%, -6% and -14%, respectively.

Despite the fundamentals, apartments still lead in transaction volume. In the first half of the year, apartment deals totaled $55 billion, compared to $32 billion in 2020, and industrial sales totaled $19 billion, compared to $10 billion last year. The geographic markets have also been shaken up. Last year, New York City led in terms of transaction volume with $10 billion in deals. This year, the market has only $6 billion in transactions, almost half the amount. Atlanta, however, has surged in popularity, leading the market with $7 billion in investment transactions, compared to $2 billion last year.