The frenetic activity that the main industrial markets in Mexico experienced throughout 2021 resulted in the absorption of a large part of the industrial inventories, which led to low levels of vacancy compared to previous years.

Ciudad de México and Tijuana are examples of entities that have registered significant decreases in vacancies between January and November of this year, with reductions of 1.64 and 1.98 percentage points, respectively.

According to figures monitored by Solili as of November 2021, Mexico City registered a vacancy of 3.9%, while Tijuana 0.6%. Both percentages represent fairly low figures that have had an impact on the increase in rental prices for industrial buildings.

However, there are submarkets in both entities that still show figures below the averages, as is the case of Toluca in Mexico City with 2.2% and the Otay-Alamar and La Mesa-Vía Rápida submarkets where the vacancy is null in the case of Tijuana.

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In these submarkets there is also a significant shortage of industrial land with infrastructure, which also feeds back the strong competition of the applicants when it comes to locating the industrial spaces and warehouses necessary for the expansions or new facilities of their production processes.

The lands that have a vocation to install manufacturing industries or other productive, distribution and storage activities must have the necessary infrastructure providing adequate electricity, water and drainage services, as well as the necessary accessibility with proximity to express roads where security of cargo and personnel should be another key element to take into account.

Many investors have seen this opportunity and acquired land to develop given the impossibility of finding this type of land or real estate, both developers and investment funds have begun to buy and develop undeveloped land with considerable force.

The impact of demand affects the fact that the industrial land that is developed is more dispersed and far from urban centers because the urban sprawl of this type of use is spreading.

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This is the case of Mexico City, which in 2020 and 2021 developed a strong demand in the area known as CTT (Cuautitlán, Tepotzotlán and Tultitlán) that has been limited by the depletion of available land in these submarkets.

Thus, other submarkets of the Metropolitan Area of Mexico such as Huehuetoca and Zumpango, in addition to neighboring Hidalgo, have shown greater activity due to the demand for land to be developed.

In the case of Tijuana, the submarkets Otay-Alamar, El Florido-Boulevard 2000 and Pacifico-Nordika, which concentrate three quarters of inventory, indicate vacancies of 0%, 0.6% and 1.4%.

The exhaustion of available spaces on these submarkets has been the origin of the strong construction activity throughout the last quarter of 2021, which has concentrated on El Florido-Boulevard and Pacifico-Nordika a little more than 90% of the constructions in process.

This new 2022 is expected to continue the pressure in the search for new land to develop, which will affect the price of the land and therefore the final product of the industrial warehouse, which already during 2021 registered rental price increases of more than 6% in Mexico City and 11% in Tijuana.