Demand for warehouses larger than 500,000 square feet surged in the second half of 2025, signaling a strong rebound in big-box activity after a brief slowdown in 2023 and 2024, Cushman & Wakefield says in a new report. Titled Large-Format Deals Return, the report finds that leases exceeding 500,000 square feet jumped 32% year over year, with third-party logistics providers and manufacturers generating nearly two-thirds of that activity. Accordingly, the vacancy rate for this class of warehouses declined 104 basis points Y-O-Y.
“This is a clear return of the large-format tenant,” said Jason Price, Americas head of logistics & industrial research at Cushman & Wakefield. “Companies are consolidating operations, upgrading to higher-quality facilities and making more strategic decisions about where and how they deploy space.”
The “flight to quality” is also driving more build-to-suit activity, according to the report. For investors, “reaccelerating demand combined with a development pipeline near an eight-year low is expected to improve occupancy across key distribution markets,” the report states.
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