The City of Los Angeles has grown again! As of January 1, 2008, the population count equaled 4,045,873 residents. Population growth usually correlates with economic growth and thus bodes well for commercial real estate in Los Angeles such as warehousing and manufacturing properties.
Earlier this month, the six-year-old Alameda Corridor marked a six-digit milestone. The Los Angeles-area intermodal corridor logged the 100,000th train to use the high-speed freight-rail expressway since it opened in April 2002. The 20-mile corridor connects the ports of L.A. and Long Beach with downtown L.A. rail yards and the national rail system. The Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority owns and governs the corridor, which includes a 10-mile, below-ground and triple-tracked mid-corridor trench shared by BNSF Railway Co. and Union Pacific Railroad via trackage rights.
The vacancy rate stands at 2.1% while the availability rate is 5.4%. Both of these figures are slightly higher than a year ago. Los Angeles County is the largest industrial market in the nation, with over 1 billion square feet of industrial land, and the Central Los Angeles submarket maintains the lowest vacancy rate in the nation due to constant user demand for industrial warehousing space. Chicago #2, Dallas/Fort Worth #3, Philadelphia #4, Detroit #5. The five county area of Southern California maintained a three percent vacancy rate.
Investors and users have begun to exhibit cautionary behavior and thus the number of transactions have decreased.