- Online estimate tools are trained on house sales. They cannot see clear height, loading, power, usable yard or permitted use, and they cannot see industrial sale comps at all.
- Each industrial asset class is priced on a different thing. A yard is priced on ground. A warehouse is priced on the building. A small bay park is priced on the rent roll.
- Your tax assessment is not market value and it lags.
- County rent and vacancy figures describe a market, not your property. They are context for a negotiation, not a number.
- A broker opinion of value costs nothing here and carries no obligation to list. Phil concludes every one himself after seeing the site.
Why an online estimate cannot price industrial
Automated valuation models work on housing because houses on a street are close to interchangeable. Three bedrooms, a lot size, a sale two doors down last month. The model has thousands of comparable transactions and the differences between them are small.
Industrial breaks every one of those assumptions.
Two buildings of identical square footage on the same road can differ in value by a wide margin because one has 28 foot clear and four dock high doors and the other has 16 foot clear and a single grade level roll-up. One has 1,200 amps and the other has enough power to run the lights. One sits on two paved fenced acres where the city permits outdoor storage, and the other has a parking lot.
Then there is the data problem. Industrial sale comps are not published on the MLS the way house sales are, and rent comps live inside brokerages. A public tool cannot read what it cannot see, so it falls back on assessed value and square footage, which is how owners end up carrying a number that is wrong in a direction nobody tells them about.
What actually sets the number, by asset class
Six classes, six different questions. Getting this wrong is the most common reason a generalist misprices industrial.
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Industrial outdoor storage
Priced on the ground. Usable unencumbered acreage after easements, retention, wetland and setbacks come off. What the zoning permits you to store, stack and how high. Whether a 53 foot trailer can enter, turn and leave. How much of the site can legally be covered. The building, if there is one, is support rather than the asset.
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Warehouse and distribution
Priced on the building and the income it supports. Clear height, dock high and grade level doors, truck court depth, column spacing, sprinkler type, power, office finish ratio, and the lease. Location against I-95, I-595, the Turnpike, Port Everglades and the airport sets who can use it.
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Small bay and flex
Priced on the rent roll and on how quickly a vacated bay refills. Unit mix, average unit size, roll schedule, escalations, expense recovery structure, and the depth of local tenant demand. The tightest asset class in South Florida, and the one where a low vacancy figure understates how hard space is to find.
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Truck parking and terminals
Priced on permitted use and on position. Whether truck parking is a permitted use in that district or a legal non-conforming one, stall count and layout, power and drainage, and reach to port, rail and interstate. A terminal with cross-dock capability is a different asset again.
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RV and boat storage
Priced on income and on what the site could become. Covered against open stall mix, occupancy and waiting list, rate history, the security and access system, and whether the site has room to add covered structures under the current zoning.
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Industrial land
Priced on entitlement. Zoning district and permitted uses, utilities at the boundary, access, environmental condition, floodplain, wetland, and how long an approval takes in that municipality. Two identical acres with different entitlement paths are not two identical acres.
The tri-county market, second quarter 2026
These are county figures for industrial buildings, published by Colliers for Broward and Miami-Dade and by Berger Commercial Realty for Palm Beach. Read them as context for a conversation, not as a valuation.
Broward holds the highest industrial rents in the state. Miami-Dade absorbed 782,677 square feet net in the quarter on 3.0 million square feet of leasing. Palm Beach softened, with a second consecutive quarter of negative absorption at negative 53,340 square feet and asking rents down 3.5 per cent on the quarter.
None of those figures price a yard. They measure enclosed building space in a market where new buildings still get delivered. Industrial outdoor storage is priced on usable acreage and permitted use, in a market where the supply of both is shrinking. When someone sends you a market report to justify a low offer, check which market it measures.
What a broker opinion of value contains
Four things land in your inbox, and if a valuation you are offered elsewhere is missing one of them, ask why.
What lands in your inbox
- 01Sale comps from the last 24 monthsWhat comparable yards and buildings actually closed at, address by address, rather than what they were asking.
- 02Rent comps by acre and by footWhat a tenant pays in your submarket today, NNN, against your coverage and clear height.
- 03Zoning and permitted use readWhether your use is permitted, grandfathered or exposed. On an IOS site this moves value more than anything else.
- 04Who is bidding right nowThe funds, 1031 buyers and owner users active in your asset class this quarter, and what each of them pays for.
A broker opinion of value is not an appraisal. An appraisal comes from a state-certified appraiser and is what a lender relies on. A broker opinion of value is what an owner uses to decide whether to sell at all. It arrives faster, it costs nothing here, and it comes with the comparable closings attached so you can check the reasoning rather than take the number on trust.
What we need from you
- Address and parcel number, so the governing zoning code can be read rather than guessed at from the district name.
- Total site size, with usable and unencumbered area separated from the total.
- Building size, clear height, dock high and grade level door counts, and the electrical service.
- What is on the site: paving or stabilised surface, fencing, gates, lighting, drainage.
- The leases, with term, rent, escalations, options and who pays taxes, insurance and maintenance.
- Anything recorded against the property, especially covenants and restrictions touching outdoor storage.
What we will not do
Phil will not put a number on a property he has not seen, and he will not hand one over the phone to be polite. A figure produced before the site visit is a guess wearing the clothes of advice, and owners make expensive decisions on those.
He will also tell you to hold. If the site is producing, the tenant is good and you do not need the capital, that is often the honest answer, and you still keep the number and the comps.
Read next: How to sell a warehouse in Fort Lauderdale, and how to choose an industrial broker.