Five years ago, when the pandemic pushed e-commerce to new highs, the industrial warehouse space became the biggest commercial real estate play around. It began to slow in 2022, but now economic uncertainty brought on by constantly changing tariff policy and persistently high inflation is taking a greater toll on the previously hot real estate sector.

Just 27 million square feet of industrial space was absorbed in the first half of this year, and demand fell by 11.3 million in the second quarter alone — the first quarterly drop since 2010 — according to an August report from NAIOP, a commercial real estate development association.

Since the uncertainty is likely to continue through the end of this year, NAIOP projects that net absorption will be "nearly flat" over the second half of this

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