Queens industrial property values jump 60% — in one year

Owners of industrial sites in Queens have seen their property values rise a staggering 60 percent over the past year as developers increasingly warm up to the borough, according to a new JLL report. And as the supply of industrial properties continues to shrink, rents are seeing marked increases.

Epitomized by the likes of the Durst Organization snapping up a site in Hallets Point for $130 million and speculators looking to gentrify gritty parts of Long Island City, industrial property values have risen 60 percent year-over-year, according to JLL.

And now many of those industrial properties – concentrated near John F. Kennedy International Airport and neighborhoods such as Long Island City, Astoria, Maspeth, Flushing and Jamaica –  are seeing rising rents.

“The shrinking supply of inventory in Queens, combined with a thriving logistics sector, has industrial rents set to grow steadily into 2015,” Reid Berch, senior vice president of JLL’s industrial services group, states in the report.

Rents in Queens warehouse and distribution properties climbed a modest 1.3 percent to $13.31 between the second and third quarters of the year, according to JLL.

Manufacturing properties saw rents jump 6.3 percent during the same time period to $13.02, JLL found.