AI data centre projects near Dallas/Fort Worth and Washington, DC helped drive warehouse rents higher, JLL said Tuesday.
AI data centre construction projects, particularly near Dallas/Fort Worth and Washington, DC, are generating new demand for warehouse space and helped send rents higher in the third quarter, according to real estate services company JLL. JLL said this in its third-quarter industrial real estate market report on Tuesday.
Average asking rents rose to $10.55 per square foot, up 3.2 per cent from a year earlier. This was the fastest annual pace of growth since the second quarter of 2024, JLL said. The figures are based on triple-net leases, under which tenants pay property taxes, insurance and upkeep of common areas separately from base rent.
Companies including Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon are spending billions of dollars in a race to dominate artificial intelligence, which requires significant electricity to run servers and computer chips that must be cooled to prevent overheating.
JLL said data centre expansion is driving outsized industrial demand in major freight hubs such as Dallas/Fort Worth, where suppliers and infrastructure providers are clustering near hyperscale campuses. The expansion of infrastructure-intensive industries is also changing the mix of tenants and the location of demand, with demand from construction, telecommunications and utilities-related tenants increasing.
Source: Reuters
