Thanks to e-commerce demand for warehouses in urban areas is increasing.
The number of warehouses and industrial buildings available for sale is falling, mainly in the Brussels-Capital Region. Why is that?
And why has e-commerce created new demand?
- Reconversion:
In the early 2000’s, Brussels Region has granted a lot of permits for the conversion of industrial sites into housing, lofts, etc.Yet a decade ago, Brussels has backed down when it realised it was losing out on a significant and precious diversity of small businesses, craft industries, artists’ studios, and so on.The trend now is to keep the tertiary sector in the city, to redevelop the urban mix and to promote the renovation of industrial sites rather than their demolition, all the more so with demand increasing thanks to e-commerce.
- E-commerce as a new real-estate player:
As always when it comes to the law of supply and demand, scarcity makes the market! There’s now a deepening warehouse shortage while on the other hand, demand is growing, especially thanks to new technologies, new professions and e-commerce… Why?Big corporations such as Amazon, Alibaba, bol.com and much more, deliver to Belgium and thus have huge logistics warehouses on the outskirts of our cities. Amazon alone has opened 15 new warehouses covering over 100,000m² in Europe this year!Alongside these giants, all the retailers, such as Zara, also need smaller warehouses in urban centres, called ‘buffer’ warehouses, to respond faster to demand. Reliable delivery is a strategic factor in e-commerce. Amazon, for example, understood this before anyone else and has been spending colossal resources to allow deliveries in less than twenty-four hours. In the near future, order processing will be even faster, thanks to AI!
Conclusion
This is just one of many examples of how e-commerce can revolutionise professional real estate too, with ever-increasing demand. Of course, other business sectors are also major consumers of warehouses and industrial property in general such as supermarkets, large retailers, the automotive industry, and so on.
It’s a segment of the real estate market that’s doing well and still has a bright future ahead !
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