Industrial market heats up in some parts of the United States

Nationwide, industrial vacancies reached 7.2 percent by the end of third quarter 2014, lower than the prior trough in 2008, and the rate should continue to fall through the end of 2014, according to JLL. Furthermore, the sector’s sales volume is on pace to reach between $55 billion and $60 billion, just below the peak volume of $61.7 billion set in 2007, according to Real Capital Analytics.

But not all regions are created equally, and investors searching for higher yields in the sector have begun looking to the mid-Atlantic and Southeast regions, where the economic recovery has lagged the rest of the nation. Investors are beginning to catch on, as warehouse sales in the Southeast and mid-Atlantic were up 75 percent and 65 percent, respectively, year-over-year in the first half of 2014, but vacancies in the region are still above the national average, and asking prices are nearly half of what they are on the West Coast, according to JLL.

The increased act