CHART OF THE MONTH: INDUSTRIAL HISTORICAL SUPPLY AND DEMAND

Written by: Stephanie Morris

Stephanie specializes in research capabilities, providing support for the Colliers Columbus Office, Industrial, Retail and Capital Market groups. She is responsible for executing data reports, maintaining a commercial property database, reporting quarterly trends, performing data analysis, and utilizing statistical information to predict future behavior in the market. Keep reading for her take on industrial historical supply and demand in Columbus.

In 2025, absorption exceeded new supply for the first time since 2021, reflecting a normalization of demand alongside a sharp contraction in the development pipeline. Excluding the 2024 pause, the market has averaged approximately 8.2 million square feet of annual net absorption since 2015, underscoring its long-term capacity to absorb new product.

The 2024 pullback proved cyclical rather than structural. Elevated deliveries from prior years coincided with the 3.8 million square feet Big Lots vacancy added in Q4 2024, temporarily suppressing absorption and driving vacancy higher. That disruption followed an unsustainable construction cycle in 2022–2023, when deliveries averaged roughly 17.5 million square feet annually resulting in vacancy expansion through 2023 and into early 2024.

Supply conditions have since reset materially. Deliveries declined to 9.4 million square feet in 2024, nearly 50% below the 2022–2023 peak. New supply fell further to just 2.2 million square feet in 2025, the lowest annual total in a decade. This level of new supply sits well below replacement demand for a market that has averaged approximately 8.5 million square feet of absorption over the past five years.

With speculative construction limited and even a rebound in starts unlikely to translate into meaningful deliveries until late 2026 or 2027, absorption is once again outpacing new supply. This dynamic increases the risk of a near-term supply gap, particularly for tenants seeking modern space.