My PM just told me the guy she wanted to show my Conroe space to "only does 24-foot clear minimum, won't even walk a building under that.

The clear height premium is real and it shows up in the comps, though the number varies more by submarket tightness than by a fixed rule. In a Houston corridor market with active Class A new construction nearby, the spread between 22-foot and 24-foot clear product tends to run in the $0.25 to $0.50 NNN range per square foot annually, and in a tighter infill market it can touch $0.75. Take a 30,000 square foot building at $0.35 difference: that is $10,500 a year in base rent, which at a 6.5 cap is roughly $160,000 of value sitting in two feet of ceiling. That number is not abstract, it is the figure your lender or a future buyer will see when they comp the lease against new 32-foot clear product going up nearby.

The tenant-walks-it-and-leases-anyway scenario is real but it requires a specific user profile. It tends to be someone whose stacking pattern actually works at 22 feet, usually because their pallet height or product density does not push them to the limit, and who is buying on dock count, column spacing, or yard depth that the newer buildings cannot match at the same price point. What I would ask your PM: what is the column spacing in the building, and does it let a counterbalanced forklift work a full aisle pattern without obstruction? If the answer is 50-by-50 or better, that is the actual negotiating point with a tenant who came in saying 24-foot minimum, because their real constraint is cubic utilization per bay, not the clear height number in isolation. What is the dock situation, and how does the truck court depth compare to what the 24-foot buildings in the submarket are offering?

Clear height is one of the harder filters in industrial leasing because it directly controls how many pallet positions a tenant can stack. A forklift typically needs between 22 and 24 feet of clearance to run a high-reach mast safely, so a tenant whose warehouse design assumes 24 feet will simply lose racking rows in a 22-foot building. That is not a preference, it is a layout problem, and some tenants will not attempt to solve it.

On the rent question: yes, clear height shows up in comps in a measurable way. The spread between sub-24 and 28-plus foot clear product in active logistics markets has historically run somewhere in the range of $0.25 to $0.75 per square foot annually, though I would not treat those as your Conroe numbers. That spread depends on local supply, the age of the building, and dock configuration. A broker who does industrial tenant rep in the Houston north corridor will have actual comps and can tell you what the current spread looks like in your specific submarket. That is the number worth getting before you draw conclusions.

On tenants leasing anyway after the walk: it does happen, and column spacing and dock count are exactly the factors that can move a skeptical tenant. A wide column bay gives a forklift more turning radius, which partially compensates for lower clear height. If your dock doors, staging depth, and column grid are strong, some tenants in the 22-foot range will work with it, particularly smaller distributors and light manufacturers who are not running very-narrow-aisle racking.

One thing worth knowing: the flight-to-quality dynamic the strategy guide describes right now means modern 28-plus foot product is leasing more aggressively, which puts older or lower-clear buildings in a position where they compete more on price. That context matters for how you set asking rent.

What does the column spacing in your building look like, and how many dock doors does it have? That changes what I can point you toward in the guide.

The 22-to-24-foot gap in Conroe submarkets has been running roughly $0.15 to $0.35 NNN per square foot annually in favor of 24-plus, confirm that range against current CoStar comps with your broker before pricing anything.

The question nobody asked: what is your column spacing, and do you have any documented tenants using the 22-foot space for racking that you could show a prospect? A tenant who already solved the stacking problem at 22 feet is better evidence than anything you can say about the dock configuration, and it reframes the conversation from "why is it short" to "here is how someone made it work." The tenants who lease sub-24 after initially filtering it out almost always do so because they saw a floor plan that solved their specific product flow, not because they were talked into overlooking the height. So the showing sequence matters: column spacing and dock count first, clear height second.

What is the column grid on this building?

What's your column spacing?

The rent gap is real but the figure that actually moves the needle is whether your 22-foot clear is measured to the bottom of the steel or to the bottom of the joist, because a building listed at 22 feet sometimes has six to eight inches of obstruction that drops usable stacking height further, and that is what kills the deal before column spacing or dock count even enters the conversation.

The tenant who walked may have been the right outcome, because a user who needs 24-foot minimum for their racking system will spend the whole lease term asking for accommodations you cannot deliver.

What does your lease-up timeline look like, and do you know what the column grid is?

The $0.15 to $0.20 NNN per square foot is closer to what I see in similar vintage comparisons in that submarket, not $0.30. Noticeable but not the number that ends the investment thesis.

What actually killed your showing is that the PM sent the tour without screening the tenant's site checklist first. That is a workflow failure before it is a clear height failure.

What was the tenant's use? Because a 22-foot building with good column spacing and dock configuration will lease to the right operator, just not a high-stack pallet user.