Fort Lauderdale and Broward County Industrial at Midyear 2026:The Market Resets, and Owners Hold the Line

For most of the last decade, the Fort Lauderdale and Broward County industrial market was a market with almost nothing to lease. Warehouses filled about as fast as they could be built, rents climbed at double-digit rates, and owners set the terms. That chapter has quietly closed. Tenants have handed space back, a run of speculative big-box product has opened with empty floors, and the market is recalibrating toward a healthier balance, one that still favors owners but no longer hands them every card.

Across nearly 144 million square feet, the Fort Lauderdale industrial market remains South Florida's working core, anchored by Port Everglades, the state's leading container port and one of the nation's busiest seaports. Headquartered in Boca Raton, Scarlett Harper Commercial covers owner representation and investment sales across this market and the broader Palm Beach, Broward, and Indian River footprint. We read the current reset as a return to normal after an extraordinary run, not as the start of a downturn.

Broward County industrial vacancy resets to a decade high

Vacancy stands at 7.0% as of the second quarter of 2026, up from roughly 4% in mid-2024 and 1.5 points higher than a year ago. That is the highest reading in more than ten years, and it still sits under the 7.5% national average. The driver is supply, not collapsing demand. Trailing 12-month net absorption registered negative 718,000 square feet, with logistics product giving back about 440,000 square feet and flex space about 140,000 square feet. The vacancy is concentrated and specific. Among the roughly 220 warehouse and distribution buildings of 100,000 square feet or larger, those built before 2000 are only 3.3% vacant, while buildings delivered in the past five years are close to 35% vacant. The empty space is overwhelmingly new, large, and well located, the kind that leases as a cycle turns rather than the kind that signals distress.

Warehouse and flex rents hold as growth cools

Blended asking rents sit at $20.75 per square foot, roughly 70% above the $12.20 national average. Rent growth has slowed to 0.9% year over year, down from a pace near 15.9% in 2022 and just under the 1.3% national figure. Flex space leads at $22.77 per square foot, specialized industrial sits at $20.76, and logistics quotes $20.41. Owners of recently delivered big-box buildings are now writing concessions to land creditworthy tenants, while smaller, well-located space with limited competition has held the line. Leasing volume barely moved: roughly 1,230 transactions over the past year at an average size just over 5,300 square feet, about 6.6 million square feet in total. Headline signings included JELD-WEN's 135,481-square-foot lease in Coral Springs, an Owens & Minor renewal of 143,000 square feet in West Sunrise, and an 83,833-square-foot Costco commitment.

“A rising vacancy number reads like weakness in a headline, but on the ground this is close to the opposite of a distressed market. Rents are holding, capital is paying record prices, and almost all of the empty space is brand-new big-box product that will absorb as the pipeline thins. Owners who understand that distinction are pricing from strength, not fear.”Spencer Scalzitti, Managing Principal and Broker

Capital keeps paying a premium for South Florida industrial

Investment demand tells the clearer story. Trailing 12-month sales volume reached $2.8 billion, well above the $1.1 billion ten-year annual average, across 480 transactions and 13.9 million square feet. Logistics led with $2.4 billion in volume at cap rates near 6.6%, flex traded around $280 per square foot at 6.9%, and specialized assets cleared near 6.8%. Private buyers drove roughly 60% of volume, with institutional capital, private equity, REITs, and user-buyers each near 10%. In December 2025, a Morgan Stanley fund sold the three-building, 468,000-square-foot Bridge Point Powerline Road campus in Pompano Beach to CenterPoint Properties for $124 million, or $266 per square foot. In July 2025, the same seller sold the fully leased, 133,800-square-foot Pompano Business Center II to Cabot Properties for $38.75 million, about $290 per square foot, at a 4.2% in-place cap rate.

Modeled pricing runs near $260 per square foot against roughly $160 nationally, at modeled cap rates around 6.7% versus 7.3% nationally. Realized pricing from the 485 arms-length sale comparables over the past year averaged $228 per square foot at a 6.5% cap rate, with average vacancy at sale of 11.2%. The signal in the gap is clear: leased, stabilized assets are still trading at a premium, while the wider modeled market reflects the lease-up risk priced into newer big-box space. Recent trades clearing $266 to $290 per square foot sit at or above replacement cost, protecting existing owners as construction costs hold and the pipeline thins.

The construction pipeline is already correcting

Just 1.3 million square feet is under construction across 13 properties, only 6.9% preleased and equal to about 1.1% of inventory, below the 1.7 million-square-foot ten-year average. Pompano Beach leads with roughly 493,000 square feet, followed by Southeast Broward at 333,000 square feet and a healthier 27.5% preleased, Coral Springs at 318,000 square feet, and Southwest Broward at 183,000 square feet. Close to 80% of the county's buildings above 100,000 square feet sit in Southwest Broward, Pompano Beach, and Southeast and Northeast Broward, and about 70% of that large-format stock predates 2010. With deliveries thinning and demand projected to stay muted, the base case holds vacancy near 7% through year-end 2026 before net absorption turns positive again in 2027.

Where the opportunity is by submarket

Vacancy and rent growth vary widely across Broward, and the spread is where the decision lives. Southeast Broward is the tightest market and commands the second-highest rent. Southwest Broward pairs low vacancy with the fastest near-term rent growth. Pompano Beach holds the most inventory and the most new supply, which is why its vacancy runs higher. West Sunrise and Northeast Broward are the softest today, which can cut both ways for a value-minded buyer.

What this means for property owners

For owners, the setup rewards discipline more than timing. Stabilized, well-located assets and smaller multi-tenant space still command pricing near cycle highs, and the investment-sales bid remains deep and largely private. Owners of newer big-box space should plan for the lease-up math directly, using targeted concessions to secure credit tenants now rather than chasing a peak rent the current pipeline will not support. The October 2025 repeal of Florida's sales tax on commercial rent, which also erased Broward's 1% county surtax, lowers occupancy costs by roughly 3% to 3.5% and strengthens net effective economics on every new lease. For private and first-time investors, most trades are sub-$10 million and private-buyer led, and smaller, well-located warehouses where rents have held firmest are exactly the assets within reach.

What this means for brokers

For producers, a recalibrating market is where execution separates firms. Scarlett Harper Commercial absorbs the operational drag, research, underwriting support, marketing preparation, and buyer targeting, so brokers spend their hours in front of owners and tenants rather than building decks. Our proprietary AI workflows compress the time from engagement to a fully positioned asset and turn buyer matching into a data exercise rather than a rolodex exercise, which matters most when demand is selective and pricing has to be defended. We are actively recruiting senior and mid-career producers in industrial and across asset classes who want that leverage.

What could change the call

The base case is not guaranteed. Rising sublease availability, the loss of about 1,400 industrial jobs over the past year, and slowing transportation and warehousing demand are the variables to watch. A sharper pullback in goods movement, or a second wave of speculative deliveries, would push vacancy past the 7% plateau and extend the lease-up timeline on big-box product. We underwrite to that downside rather than around it, and would treat any renewed surge in large-format starts as the signal to turn more cautious on newer bulk space.

Where the market is headed

The near-term arc is stabilization, not stress. Vacancy should hold around 7% into 2027, when forecasts call for net absorption to swing back to positive territory as the thin pipeline meets steady demand. For buyers, the next 12 to 18 months, while newer big-box space still carries concessions and lease-up risk is priced in, is the part of the cycle where well-located product can be acquired before 2027 absorption tightens it. Broward's fundamentals support that path: a 2.0 million-person base, median household income of $84,000, unemployment of 3.9% against 4.4% nationally, and Oxford Economics projecting Broward employment growth near 0.5% annually through 2030. Port Everglades and South Florida's trade-gateway role keep logistics demand structurally anchored. We read 2026 as the year the market finds its floor.