Excerpts from UBI:

A year after the opening of the Panama Canal expansion, rents for industrial space around the Port of Los Angeles are at an all-time high and vacancy rates are hovering around 1 percent.

Cargo traffic to Los Angeles and other West Coast ports was expected to drop in the wake of the much-anticipated canal expansion, as Asian shippers diverted cargo through the canal to the East Coast. In fact, container shipments through Gulf Coast and East Coast ports have soared since the new locks opened in June 2016. But the drop-off in cargo to the West Coast has not materialized.

The volume of TEUs (containers) to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach actually was up 5.2 percent in the first half of 2017, compared with a year earlier, according to a new report from Transwestern, the real estate advisory.

Los Angeles is not alone. Up and down the West Coast, prime industrial space around ports is in short supply. Vacancy rates for industrial space in Seattle-Tacoma, Oakland, and Vancouver remain below 5 percent, according to a recent report by JLL. In Long Beach, south of Los Angeles, only 1.8 percent of space is available.

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