Forget the brakes: Southern Nevada warehouse market keeps flooring it

If you want a glimpse of a heated real estate market, check out a cluster of new warehouses near North Las Vegas Airport.

SunPoint West, a newly built industrial park, sold last month for more than $140 million. Construction only finished in September, and the project was fully leased before it was completed, said Colliers International broker Michael Kendall, who worked on the sale.

Southern Nevada’s industrial real estate market has grown substantially over the last several years, and it accelerated even more after the pandemic hit, as increased online shopping fueled demand for distribution space.

Industrial vacancies are at all-time lows, landlords are charging higher rents and buying buildings, and developers keep launching projects, especially in North Las Vegas.

Kendall, vice chair of industrial capital markets at Colliers, said it’s been “fairly common” the last few years in Southern Nevada for developers to fully lease a project before construction is finished.

“The demand has continued to surpass the supply,” he said.

Developer SunCap Property Group and project partner Diamond Realty Investments announced plans for SunPoint West in early 2021. The six-building project, at Cheyenne Avenue and Coleman Street, occupies almost 40 acres and spans roughly 730,770 square feet.

Colliers announced the sale last week.

The complex traded for $143 million, property records show. Kendall, whose team represented the developers in the sale, confirmed to me that German asset manager DWS Group purchased the park, as property records indicate.

DWS did not respond to a request for comment.

Mike Orr, senior vice president with SunCap, said in a statement that it is “company policy not to comment on sales prices or parties associated with the disposition of our projects.”

He said that the project was fully leased at the end of the first quarter this year and that SunCap “continues to be bullish on Southern Nevada,” adding its next project is under construction in North Las Vegas.

Overall in Southern Nevada, the industrial vacancy rate was just 1.3 percent in the third quarter, according to Colliers, which reported more than 8.3 million square feet under construction. More than half of that was in North Las Vegas.

Underscoring all the activity: VanTrust Real Estate announced Wednesday afternoon that it started construction on the first two buildings of a 350-acre industrial complex it’s developing in North Las Vegas’ Apex Industrial Park.

One of the not-yet-built buildings has already been leased to Saddle Creek Logistics, which will occupy 580,000 square feet, the release said.

Just 40 minutes or so after I received the announcement, a news release from Link Logistics arrived in my inbox, saying the company broke ground on two industrial projects in North Las Vegas.

One will span 350,000 square feet while the other will consist of three buildings totaling 720,000 square feet.

A warehouse is hardly the most exciting type of real estate. As one developer put it to me years ago, it’s just four walls with a lot of air in between.

But in Southern Nevada, developers can’t build enough of them, investors keep loading up on them, and companies keep filling them.

Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter.