The cold storage outcome is doing most of the work here, and the question you're sitting with is the right one, but it's worth separating two things that are running together.
Cold storage does take longer to lease than a standard industrial box. The buyer pool is smaller, the use case is specific, and LoopNet reach alone is structurally insufficient for a specialty asset. Most cold storage deals close through direct outreach to operators, food and beverage tenants, third-party logistics companies, and regional brokers who carry those relationships. Three in-market contacts who never toured is not a marketing effort, it's a contact list. That distinction matters when you're evaluating whether the timeline was asset-driven or effort-driven.
The assumption doing the most work in your framing is that pricing and leasing timeline move together in a predictable direction. Your agent's $10.80 position implies the market would absorb $10.80 faster than $11.40, but if the marketing reach was the same either way, the price differential is largely academic. A constrained buyer pool leasing on a twelve-month timeline at $11.40 tells you more about outreach quality than about price resistance.
The risk you didn't name is the lease structure you accepted to get to $11.40. NNN reads well on the rate, but cold storage leases carry more complexity on the operating expense passthrough side, and what's excluded from the NNN definition can erode the effective rate materially. If you haven't already confirmed how the operating expenses were defined in that lease, that's worth a close read now.
The Cincinnati six-unit is a different asset class in every meaningful way, so it's useful as a contrast on agent effort but not on market dynamics.
What was the broker's specific outreach methodology stated in the listing agreement, and did you have a defined marketing plan in writing before you signed the renewal?
