Input Stories

The competition for land in the U.S. is heating up (The Wall Street Journal, subscription).

What’s going on: In the past few years, companies have committed nearly half a trillion dollars to building new electric vehicle and semiconductor manufacturing facilities in the American Midwest, Northeast, Southeast and Southwest.

• That investment is leading to a race to acquire and/or construct warehouses, office buildings and hotels in the hope “that as new manufacturing hubs come online and create jobs, they will produce a ‘multiplier effect,’ with growing employment increasing demand for homes, shopping and more.”
• The Bipartisan Infrastructure Act of 2021 has helped kickstart some of this activity.

Why they’re doing it: Development planned around manufacturing sites is a “welcome opportunity for property developers” in a market where office space, once a reliable investment, is undergoing a prolonged slump.

Southern hotspot: Near Brownsville, Tennessee, “[s]peculators have bid up the price of row crop fields by as much as triple.” The site is close to an under-development Ford Motor/SK On electric pickup truck plant.

• “[E]ventually, 6,000 employees are expected to drive demand for new housing and retail in the area, as well as 30 miles away in the suburbs of Memphis.”

Into the West: Industrial real-estate investment in Phoenix, Arizona, has already gotten a boost from Intel’s announcement a few years ago that it would build a factory there.

• “Twenty industrial suppliers have committed to 3 million square feet of space, totaling $5 billion,” and homebuilders are constructing hundreds of houses in the area.