Brokers still call industrial the safest CRE play, and that may only have been true in 2021

What you're describing lines up with the broader picture. Vacancy in the sector hit roughly 6.7 percent at the end of 2025, and secondary markets with older, single-tenant flex product are feeling it more than infill logistics corridors near major population centers. Your Columbus-adjacent example is a good illustration of something the strategy guide calls the "flight to quality": modern, well-located space is still leasing, while commodity product in less-connected submarkets is sitting and giving back rent.

The cap rate move you're tracking, 5.8 to 7.1 on similar product in 14 months, is meaningful. To put that in plain terms: a cap rate is just annual net income divided by purchase price. If a building generates $100,000 a year in net income, a 5.8 cap implies a price around $1.72 million, and a 7.1 cap implies roughly $1.41 million. Same building, same income, $300,000 less. That compression of value is real, and it reflects the repricing that comes when the supply-demand story shifts.

The guide does see the forward picture as more constructive, new construction is down sharply since 2022, and absorption is expected to recover into 2026. But "constructive for the sector" and "this specific deal pencils" are two different things, and single-tenant shallow-bay in a secondary market without strong logistics infrastructure is a different risk profile than, say, multi-tenant infill near a major port.

I'd be cautious about anything a broker frames as structurally safe without specifying which submarket and which tenant profile they mean. That framing mattered more when vacancy was at 3 percent.

What does the tenant mix look like in the deals you're being shown? Single-tenant or multi-tenant, and what industries?

Cap rate moving 130 bps in 14 months on stabilized product is not a submarket problem. What is the remaining WALT on the stuff you are being shown, because that is where brokers hide the actual risk right now.

The Columbus exurban market specifically has been soft since Q3 2023 and I don't think that's a submarket problem, I think it's a size problem. The 12,000 to 22,000 sf single-tenant range is getting hit hardest because the tenant pool is thin and replacement velocity is slow. Contrast that with multi-tenant flex in the same geography where you have six or eight units under 3,500 sf each and you're not betting the whole NOI on one operator's balance sheet. The $6.40 NNN number you cited on that Columbus-area box is basically where I'd expect it to land before someone bites, and whoever bites is probably a user, not an investor, which tells you something about where investor appetite actually sits right now.

What I'd want to know before I touched anything in that range is the weighted average lease term on the comps that are actually trading, not the stuff sitting. Because the "vacancy stays low" argument is a trailing metric and in shallow bay it can flip fast. Eight months of vacancy on a 15,000 sf box at $7.10 down to $6.40 with the owner still negotiating is not a market clearing at an adjusted price, it's a market that hasn't found the clearing price yet. That's a different thing and it matters a lot for how you underwrite the next lease-up assumption if you're buying vacant.

The sticky tenant thing burned us directly. We had a 12,000 sf single-tenant flex outside Dayton, picked it up in late 2021, tenant was a regional HVAC distributor, seemed solid, and they gave notice 14 months in when their parent company consolidated fulfillment to a hub in Louisville. Sat nine months, had to drop asking rent from $6.80 to $5.90 NNN and still ate two months free to close the new deal. That nine months cost us roughly $74,000 in lost income plus the TI we had to put in for the new tenant, on a building we underwrote with basically zero vacancy assumption because the prior vacancy history was so thin. The e-commerce demand story is real but it landed hardest in the big infill logistics boxes, not the shallow bay flex stuff in secondary and tertiary markets, and I think a lot of brokers are still selling the macro narrative to move the micro product. Your cap rate observation tracks with what I watched happen in the Dayton-Springfield corridor through most of 2023 into early 2024, and the deals that look cheap at 7.1 right now are cheap for a reason if you're buying into a submarket where absorption has stalled.

That 24-foot clear spec in a secondary ring market is the exact product that got overbuilt in 2021 and 2022 when developers assumed e-commerce absorption would keep running. The Columbus collar counties got hit harder than people admit because a lot of that spec delivered right as 3PL tenants started consolidating footprints, so an owner there is competing against brand new product with better loading ratios at a similar or lower ask. The $6.40 number is real trouble if the owner underwrote at 5.8 with any meaningful leverage, because at 7.1 current market the asset is already in negative equity territory on a refi before TI and downtime on a re-lease even enter the picture. Where the case is stronger is infill shallow bay under 8,000 sf in markets with constrained land. Multi-tenant product with shorter leases and smaller units has held occupancy better than single-tenant flex in the same radius, and the rent loss from one vacancy is survivable.

Brokers fishing for a listing fee will always say the thesis is structural.

That $6.40 NNN after seven months tells you more than any broker pitch will. I've seen the same pattern in Lehigh Valley secondary, tenant walks at expiration and replacement rent comes in 15 to 20% below whatever the pro forma assumed. The 2021 underwriting treated the tenant as a floor when they were really just a variable.