Industrial property market Hamburg 3Q2022

Large volumes at top-of-the-range rents – that neatly describes the agreements signed for industrial and logistics properties in Hamburg and its environs up until the end of September 2022. Agreements for large amounts of space comprised 70 % of take-up and in 43 % of agreements rents were high, at more than €5.51/m²/month. “To date, nine of the fourteen agreements for large amounts of space related to facilities in new-builds or good-as-new premises where rents were correspondingly high,” remarks Nico Beckmann, consultant for industrial & logistics properties at Grossmann & Berger,  member of German Property Partners (GPP). “It is an absolute rarity to find empty space in an existing building. Therefore companies have to turn to developers and must be prepared for much longer planning periods than in the past. Strictly speaking, they have no choice but to focus on the few new buildings under construction, most of them in the environs of Hamburg.” Thanks to large-volume agreements, total take-up reached 400,000 m², and was thus higher than both the five-year and the ten-year average. But the shortage of space produced a result that was about a fifth lower than the record-breaking figure returned a year before. In view of the dearth of space and the fact that, apart from a couple of exceptions, all the space in new developments has been let, Grossmann & Berger expects the year to close with turnover approaching 500,000 m² at the most. 

Hamburg industrial & logistics property market details:

• Owner-occupiers accounted for 26 % of the market (3Q 2021: 15 %). Their share of take-up climbed by 39 % to 104,000 m².
  
  
• In what was the biggest new agreement between July and September, Picnic, a Dutch online supermarket company, took 25,300 m² of hall space and 800 m² of offices as part of its bid to expand in Germany. On behalf of the company a joint venture made up of Garbe Industrial Real Estate and Graubner Holding is developing a new logistics centre for them in Kaltenkirchen. In the prior quarter, Picnic had already rented 14,800 m² of space in “Mach 2 / Four Parx Hamburg”.
  
  
• The large number of contracts for big, good-as-new premises propelled both average and premium rents 11 % above the levels noted at the end of September 2021.
  
  
• The wholesale/retail trade was the dominant sector at 56 %.
  
  
• Brisk market activity was noted in the sub-markets Hamburg South (25 %) and Hamburg East (18 %). Whereas up to the end of September 2021 take-up was concentrated in the city area (63 %), a year later it was far more evenly divided between the city (47 %) and the environs (53 %).
   

Selected top transactions | industrial & logistics | Hamburg & environs | 2022 Q1-3

New agreements are displayed in bold.

Our Market survey industrial & logistics Hamburg 2022/Q4 will appear in January 2023 and may be downloaded as a PDF file from our website.