Industrial Real Estate
From Warehousing to Distribution Hubs: A Strategic Guide to Navigating Industrial CRE Opportunities
Industrial commercial real estate in the U.S. has undergone significant changes in the past 5 years. From the COVID-19 pandemic to shifting trade policies in 2025, there’s been a lot of disruption in industrial CRE. And yet, according to the 2025 Commercial Edge Industrial Report, sales in the industrial real estate industry totaled $68.4 billion, which is the strongest year since 2022. Manufacturing and data centers are notable standouts in industrial CRE.
To understand more about opportunities in CRE, we’ve created this guide to help answer the following questions about industrial CRE:
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What is industrial real estate?
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What is the operational structure of industrial real estate?
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How can Biscred help me find and connect with industrial CRE companies?
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Who are the top players in industrial real estate?
Our pitch: Finding opportunities in industrial CRE is made easier with Biscred. Biscred’s database includes more than 99,000 companies, nearly 1.5 million people, and over 1 million buildings in industrial real estate.* Learn more about our approach to data: How Biscred Approaches CRE Data.
What Is Industrial Real Estate Used For?
Industrial real estate includes 11 broad types of industrial properties used for large-scale manufacturing, assembly, distribution, or storage of goods. All mass-produced products go through an industrial real estate asset. Even if a product is produced in a manufacturing plant in another country, it will be distributed to customers in the U.S. through a bulk warehouse, for example.
Industrial Real Estate: Who to Contact (Staffing Levels + Example Titles)
Executive Leadership (Industrial Owners & Operators)
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Example of titles: CEO, COO, president, managing director, principal, partner
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What they do: Industrial CRE planning, investment, and acquisitions. Executives are focused on high-level strategy and the growth of industrial assets.
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When to contact them: If you’re pursuing a business partnership, investment opportunity, or can aid them with property development with a focus on long-term growth. Executive leadership should only be contacted for larger scale decisions, while mid- and lower-level staff might be contacted related to a specific industrial property (see below).
Asset & Portfolio Management
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Example titles: Asset manager, senior asset manager, portfolio manager, director of asset management
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What they do: Responsible for researching potential investment and industrial assets within an organization’s portfolio of properties and assessing the risk of a property, maximizing a property’s profitability, and valuing it.
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When to contact them: If your business manages properties or can assist in maximizing a property’s profitability, an asset or portfolio manager should be contacted. Asset and portfolio managers also handle buying and selling industrial property.
Property Operations Leadership
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Example titles: Property manager, general manager, regional property manager, director of property operations
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What they do: Property operations include tenant relations, coordinating property maintenance, rent collection, and ensuring industrial regulation compliance, depending on the industrial property.
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When to contact them: Property operations leadership is concerned with improving and maintaining industrial property. If your business is a vendor for example, that can reduce operations costs, a property manager is the person to contact.
Facilities & Maintenance Leadership
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Example titles: Facilities manager, director of facilities, maintenance supervisor, operations & facilities director
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What they do: Facilities and maintenance leadership coordinate the general upkeep of an industrial property and handle operations-specific maintenance, for example, servicing manufacturing equipment or machinery.
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When to contact them: If you’re a third-party vendor who handles an aspect of industrial property like HVAC or provides services related to the operations of a specific asset class.
Industrial Development & Construction Leadership
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Example titles: Development manager, construction manager, industrial project manager, director of development
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What they do: Construction and development leadership are responsible for building, renovating, or developing industrial assets. Industrial construction or development requires a knowledge base related to the needs and regulation of a specific industrial asset class.
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When to contact them: Contractors, vendors, and businesses that offer expertise related to the development of a type of industrial property.
Leasing & Landlord Representation
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Example titles: Leasing director, industrial leasing manager, landlord rep broker, VP of leasing
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What they do: Screen potential tenants, handle tenant relations, and set and negotiate lease terms.
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When to contact them: If your firm can reduce the friction between the leasing manager and the tenants in any way — for example, if your firm provides proptech for leasing. Leasing managers may not be decision-makers, but they are influential in equipment and supply procurement.
Acquisitions & Investment Personnel (Industrial-Focused)
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Example titles: Acquisitions manager, investment analyst, industrial acquisitions associate, director of investments
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What they do: Locate properties to develop into industrial spaces (building a data center, for example), or acquire an existing industrial asset.
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When to contact them: If your organization owns property or an industrial asset, or can assist an acquisitions/investment leader in assessing the viability and profitability of an asset.
Property Ownership & REIT Contacts (Industrial Specialists)
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Example titles: REIT asset manager, VP of industrial investments, portfolio director, owner representative
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What they do: Represent the interests of investors or an investment trust to identify and manage income-producing properties.
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When to contact them: If your firm has a specific wealth-building strategy for an asset or property managed by an REIT. Contact them for high-level investment or development strategy within a specific industrial specialty (such as developing a property to be positioned for a higher-performing industrial market).
How Biscred Helps Businesses Connect With Industrial Real Estate Properties
Biscred gives businesses an efficient, more accurate way to identify the right people behind industrial properties. Instead of guessing who owns, manages, or oversees a warehouse, distribution center, cold storage facility, or industrial park, Biscred lets users filter the CRE ecosystem by asset type, job title, company role, seniority level, location, and more filters. This makes it easy to pinpoint the decision-makers who influence maintenance, operations, construction, leasing, purchasing, and capital improvements across industrial assets.
By using Biscred, you can:
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Find the property owners and operators behind industrial buildings, including private owners, REITs, and developer-operators.
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Connect directly with the staff members who manage industrial assets, such as asset managers, property managers, facilities directors, and operations leaders.
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Identify construction and development contacts for expansion, redevelopment, or capital project opportunities.
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Filter by seniority so you can target the right level — from executive leadership to on-the-ground facilities managers.
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Prospect at scale, using clean, structured CRE contact data instead of manually searching LinkedIn or public records.
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Build targeted outreach lists that match your service areas and customer profile, helping to ensure better conversations and fewer dead ends.
In short, Biscred helps businesses find the people — not just the properties — delivering direct lines of communication to the professionals who make decisions about industrial real estate upkeep, modernization, leasing, and investment.
Our database is continuously updated. As of January 2026, it contains contact information for 585,050 companies, 6.17 million professionals, and more than 3.8 million buildings. Of those, 99,219 companies, nearly 1.5 million people, and more than 1 million buildings are within the asset class of industrial real estate.
FAQs About Industrial Real Estate
How can I grow my business and do more in industrial real estate?
To grow a business and have a greater focus in industrial real estate, generating high-quality leads is essential — but it’s one piece of the business development puzzle. Biscred’s eBook on CRE leads identifies common lead generation challenges that CRE companies face, such as understanding their target audiences and ideal customer profiles. As your business generates more leads, you’ll need a set of tools for tracking and nurturing leads, which can be found in Biscred’s eBook on managing CRE leads.
How can I find who owns or manages an industrial property?
An up-to-date, CRE-specific database like Biscred makes it easy to identify who owns or manages an industrial property. You can search by asset type, company role, and job title to get contact details for decision-makers, along with information about specific industrial assets.
How can we find decision-makers that operate industrial properties?
To find decision-makers who operate industrial properties, it’s important to identify roles like facilities directors, operations managers, and property managers. Biscred makes this easier by letting you filter contacts by job title, asset type, and company role so you can connect with the right people fast. Learn more about CRE decision-makers.
How do I know if an industrial building is older and due for system or equipment upgrades?
If you want to know whether a building is older and will need system or equipment upgrades, your research should focus on county tax assessment data or county recorder deed data — this post explains how to find ownership and property records. Public records may include inspection reports, building permits and valuation changes, depending on the jurisdiction. This data will also include the size of a building, the year it was built, and its land use description.
What’s the best way to reach out (cold call) prospective properties?
That’s a short question that deserves a longer answer. We have an entire post dedicated to cold calling: Cold Calling in Commercial Real Estate. The short answer? Do your homework. The more time you spend preparing for your calls, the better your chances of making a real connection. If you’re just dialing quickly and reading from a script, you’re much less likely to succeed.
How can I find if a property is zoned industrial?
To find out the zoning information for a property, check the public records through a local government’s planning or zoning department; many have online databases. You may need to contact local authorities for guidance, as the accessibility of information will often depend on the size of your city and how updated their technology is. Learn more about commercial zoning.
Do businesses that occupy industrial CRE typically own them too?
Businesses will sometimes occupy the industrial asset they own. This is called owner-occupied CRE, which is where a business operates the majority of an industrial property (>50%). Rather than leasing the industrial asset from an REIT, for example, the business purchases its own property so that they have greater control of the space. There are industrial asset owners that do not operate out of the properties they own/manage.
What is the difference between a warehouse and distribution center?
The main difference between a warehouse and a distribution center is that a distribution center serves as a supply chain hub where products are stored before they’re shipped to customers. A distribution center is a type of warehouse, not all warehouses are distribution centers. Many warehouses that are used for long-term storage don’t have infrastructure to handle rapid distribution. Learn more about the types of warehouses.
What is the difference between a facilities manager and a property manager as it pertains to industrial property?
Property managers and facilities managers have very different responsibilities. An industrial property manager is primarily responsible for tenant relations, property budgeting, overseeing security, and working with third-party vendors. Facilities managers will specifically handle maintenance for industrial systems, service requests, and repairs. A property manager may set the budget for a facilities manager to install a new security camera system, for example.
What is the difference between industrial redevelopment and industrial repositioning?
The differences between industrial redevelopment and industrial repositioning are:
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Industrial redevelopment involves acquiring an industrial property or facility and developing it for a new, different use that’s suitable for a higher performance industrial market. This means assessing an existing property, the land it’s on, and its materials for repurposing.
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Industrial repositioning involves revitalizing and modernizing an industrial asset by incorporating better technology, systems, and enhanced energy efficiency. Repositioning is more about reconfiguring a space, rather than completely changing its usage.
What is flex space in industrial real estate?
A flex space in industrial CRE combines warehouse or industrial space with office space. It’s designed to be flexible, so tenants can adjust the amount of space they need for each use. An example of flex industrial space is a local fulfillment center that has 10,000 square feet of warehouse space and 400 square feet of office space for operations and administrative duties.
Who Are the Players in Industrial CRE?
Biscred’s datasets include more than 99,000 industrial real estate-related companies that offer various goods and services within the industrial real estate asset class. These include telecommunications companies, architecture and engineering firms, lenders, and professional services, all of which operate within industrial CRE. With such a large database of CRE companies, instead of identifying the “big players” in industrial CRE, we’re selecting a sample of the types of players you’ll find in Biscred. For our intents and purposes, we’ll focus on companies with ownership and management of industrial real estate.
EQT Partners
EQT is a private capital, developer, and management firm mainly concerned with developing industrial CRE for logistics (they also do multifamily housing). This includes manufacturing, storage, and distribution worldwide. EQT partners invests in the Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific. In December of 2025, EQT acquired a 809,000-sqft distribution center in Perks Country, PA. The firm identified the Pennsylvania I-78/I81 corridor as a competitive logistics market to distribute goods to northeast and Mid-Atlantic population centers. Biscred’s database includes contact information for 343 people at EQT.
Oliver and Company
Oliver and Company is a construction company in California with over 2,000 buildings in their portfolio across Northern California. They’re often responsible for budgeting, planning, and constructing larger projects with significant financial commitments including industrial assets. Their services include property management as well as development.
Their industrial projects include warehouses, light manufacturing centers, and more. They’ve received awards for excellence in safety and design.
Transwestern Real Estate Services
Transwestern is an asset and property manager that includes a suite of industrial CRE services that includes leasing, tenant advisory solutions, research and investment analytics, development, and more. As an example, they manage the E & O Plastics building, which is a 63,000-sqft industrial manufacturing facility located in Elk River, Minn. They manage industrial assets across the U.S.
Eaton Vance Real Estate
Managing more than $10 billion in commercial real estate investments and 145 properties in the U.S., Eaton Vance’s real estate portfolio includes multifamily, retail, and industrial assets. They’re part of Morgan Stanley Investment Management and their industrial properties focus on modern building functionality, in-place tenancy, and minimal operating expense obligations with a $30 million minimum transaction size.
They manage 470 properties with $15 billion in gross asset value, which includes 50 million square feet of office, industrial, and retail property.
Blackstone is a private equity firm that invests in CRE properties across a variety of asset classes, including the logistics sector. Its logistics facilities include storage and distribution centers in markets across the globe. The company created Link Logistics in 2019 to focus on providing warehouse and distribution solutions. Link Logistics has 550M SF of properties in 25 U.S. regions.
According to Bloomberg, on Nov. 30, 2021, Blackstone acquired $2.8B in logistics real estate, including 17.4M SF in 102 U.S. buildings and 22 UK buildings.
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