Last year was marked by impressive achievements in the industrial real estate market of the Moscow area. Particularly notable was the growth in demand, which increased 2.4 times to 3,283,000 sq m compared to the previous year.

A surge in business activity led to a critical shortage of vacant storage space, which plummeted to a record low level of 2012 – only 90,000 sq m, which is 0.4% of the total supply. This factor whipped up rental rates, with the weighted average prime rate in the Moscow area rising by 45.3% to 8,425 RUB/sq m/year.

The pace of new industrial space commissioning does not meet the growing needs of customers. The majority of commissioned facilities enter the market almost completely filled, with the shortage problem being thus further aggravated.

The acute imbalance between supply and demand is a key feature of the market. It is predicted that next year we’ll see the trend for further narrowing of the vacant space bottleneck, which, in turn, may trigger extra upward pressure on rental rates.