The commercial sector, especially with regard to office buildings, is still recovering from the 2020 recession. Fortunately, the stats are showing a positive trend. The industrial market bounced back most readily, since warehouse space was still necessary even without storefront purchasing. Vacancy rates in the retail sector are still above pre-2020 levels, but it’s slowly dropping. Work-from-home has hampered recovery in the office sector, but the numbers are stabilizing.
The most significant changes over the year occurred in net absorption. Net absorption is the total amount of space that is occupied — regardless of how many separate properties that includes. For the industrial sector, net absorption is now in the millions of square feet across SoCal. It was already 3.9 million in the Inland Empire last year, but now it’s up to 6.9 million. Other areas were previously below 1 million. The largest increase, both in raw numbers and by percentage, was in Los Angeles county, which increased nearly ninefold from 417,900 to 3.7 million.
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