Boston Metro Industrial Figures Q4 2025

With annual overall leasing activity on-par with record-breaking years, the industrial market proved to be more resilient than expected amidst a year of macro volatility and tariff adjustments. Overall quarterly leasing activity peaked at 3.96 million sq. ft., with almost 58% being lease extensions, while overall annual leasing activity was capped at approximately 13.63 million sq. ft., with almost 54% being lease extensions and a notable lack of new transactions over 100,000 sq. ft. While contributing to a healthy leasing year, heightened renewal activity and its net-zero effect on market movement contributed to -751,104 sq. ft. of overall quarterly net absorption and -991,737 sq. ft. year-to-date. Although renewals have kept many tenants in their spaces, some larger tenant space givebacks resulted in slightly softened market fundamentals as pandemic-era leases approach the five-year mark. While this uptick is concentrated amongst only a few properties, overall availability increased by 30 basis points (bps) quarter-over-quarter (q-o-q) to 10.1%. Leases rolling over as well as the continued last wave of new speculative product delivering to the market led to overall vacancy increasing to 7.9%, with the caveat that active speculative construction has tapered off significantly. Despite new product remaining slightly oversupplied in some size ranges and submarkets, overall asking rent was maintained at $15.16 per sq. ft. NNN, although rent growth is expected to further level off.