From warehouses holding fulfillment operations for the world’s largest online retailer, to office buildings popping up across the valley, the Southern Nevada commercial real estate market has returned to a period of steady growth in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and related response.

The biggest pandemic-related shift came in the industrial market as warehousing and logistics demand boomed along with online shopping. Nationally, e-commerce retail sales leapt 38.1 percent from $569.9 billion in 2019 to $813.1 billion the following year. Online sales have stabilized since the initial surge and continue to account for about 15 cents of every retail sales dollar, up from 10 cents per dollar before the pandemic. The online boom was more pronounced in Nevada, where sales at non-store retailers nearly doubled from $2.3 billion in 2019 to $4.4 billion in 2020 and have since surpassed the $5.5 billion annual level.

The fast-rising demand for online fulfillment warehouses and Southern Nevada’s geographic proximity to markets on the West Coast and Intermountain West solidified the region’s position as a key industrial real estate market. Between 2019 and 2022, the Southern Nevada market added nearly 21.0 million square feet of new industrial space, more than in any other three-year period before the pandemic. Traditionally, much of the industrial activity occurred near the Las Vegas Motor Speedway with a heavy focus on manufacturing and distribution. As demands have grown, industrial space development has expanded on the southern end of the valley near the Henderson Executive Airport to better serve the California markets.

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