Thailand-based SVI Electronics is expanding its global footprint with its first production facility in the United States at the Vancouver Innovation Center. It’s one of the many new companies moving into Clark County’s industrial spaces.
The electronics manufacturing company looked across the Pacific Northwest for a facility before settling on 46,946 square feet for about 100 production workers at the east Vancouver location, according to a news release.
Clark County’s total industrial vacancy rate in the last quarter of 2024 sat around 6.7 percent, according to data from commercial real estate company Kidder Mathews.
That’s an increase of about 5 percent from the beginning of 2024, slightly higher than the Portland region’s rate, said Mark Childs, senior vice president at Portland-based real estate company Capacity Commercial.
The jump, Childs added, is mostly driven by the large number of industrial developments without predetermined tenants that came online last year. (Several of the mega warehouses announced in the past few years have been completed or are nearing completion.)
Still, the difference isn’t very noticeable for those seeking to lease industrial space, said Scott Murphy, executive vice president at Kidder Mathews in Portland.
Industrial tenants in the region have few options, so the vacancy rate is still tight, especially for those seeking less than 50,000 square feet.
“So rents have gone up,” Murphy said.
Their pace slowed in the fourth quarter, but they’re still swelling. And landlords are getting the rents they’re asking for, Murphy said.
Clark County’s total rental rate is 96 cents per square foot, according to Kidder Mathews’ data. That’s higher than nearly every other Portland market, except Yamhill County in Oregon.
“Portland’s worse off than Vancouver,” Murphy said. “No question.”
Murphy said Clark County is outperforming Portland’s largest industrial submarkets — North and Northeast Portland — in vacancy rates, rental rates and negative absorption (the metric used to track tenants leaving the market).
Clark County’s industrial areas differ from Portland’s, which are large, sprawling industrial zones.
Clark County’s industrial market consists of micro pockets of warehouse space, Murphy said. And they’re growing.
“There’s more new construction in Clark County in the last five years than probably the previous 20 years combined,” he said.
Clark County was home to the biggest lease deal in the Portland metro area last year, a 681,780-square-foot lease for a Grocery Outlet regional distribution center in east Vancouver.
Murphy called the transaction “the highlight of the entire 2024 industrial leasing world.”
The company, which is expected to move in later this year, is vacating its Portland facility.
Industrial leasing — regionally and nationally — was down last year, Murphy said.
Multiple new buildings in the county remain empty, he said. The election and general uncertainty contributed to that, as did high interest rates.
“That puts a lot of pressure on growth,” Murphy said.
The next year will be about getting the new buildings leased, he said. He doesn’t expect things to change substantially in the months to come.
Childs expects the county’s industrial vacancy rate to eventually drop back below the marketwide average.
“As long as there’s just enough demand, it’ll just be a slow, sluggish crawl to lease space,” Murphy said.
