These areas were not previously those seen as highly desirable. "However, with land in great demand, valuations spiked last year on a price-per-acre basis," wrote Custer. "For example, barge served without rail service increased to $30,000 to $75,000 per acre. Yet the greatest increase in land sale pricing in 2022 occurred with properties that boasted all three categories – river front, barge served and rail served, with those transactions trading in a broader range from $75,000 per acre to $250,000 per acre."

There are a number of factors leading to the property growth, including "competitive manufacturing and infrastructure (particularly petrochemical & plastics industries), excellent logistics & transportation (Highway, Rail and Barge) services and proximity to half of the U.S. population and a third of Canada's, the CHIPS Act and Infrastructure Investment Act."

In addition, the region has strong infrastructure, availability of employees, trade and secondary education, and business-friendly state policies and economic climate.

"China has lost its manufacturing competitive advantage and the annual $25 billion of exported plastic-based goods from China represent a vulnerable and accessible market share opportunity for U.S. operations," NAI argues. "What has been a long-held belief – it is cheaper to import plastic based manufactured goods – is no longer true. The forces and trends that led to offshoring U.S. manufacturing operations have reversed course and are now favoring domestic production."

One argument experts have made for decades is that even as companies were attracted top outsourcing to Asia because of unit prices, they lost a harder-to-quantify but critical advantage in being close to customers, with the ability to react quicky to changes in demand rather than effectively keeping months of inventory on ships.