In the past, logistics centers may have been mainly for storage, with a small number of goods and a large quantity. However, now e-commerce logistics emphasizes order picking and fast in and out, resulting in a large increase in demand for new logistics centers or the transformation of old warehouses and old factories. To develop a logistics park, it is necessary to have the intervention of government power and complete supporting facilities. Logistics real estate is heavily dependent on the layout of the relevant industrial chain, and its income depends on the comprehensive operational efficiency of warehousing, sorting and distribution.
Some cross-border logistics parks are still in a loss-making operation or idle state. These parks did not consider the ecology of the industrial chain at the beginning of their establishment, but simply carried out a “land enclosure movement”. Therefore, cross-border logistics parks must be scaled and networked, provide the surrounding services required by logistics centers, and become fully functional logistics centers. Well-known giants in the logistics industry, such as Goodman, Ambo, Prologis, Baowan, Mapletree, Yupei, Easy Business, and Ping An Real Estate, have widely deployed warehousing network resources. Overseas real estate developers are more familiar with the transportation facilities, population structure, industrial characteristics, laws and regulations, tax systems, construction standards and other factors of various countries. Logistics parks should help enterprises to plan logistics centers and move in materials, and ultimately shorten the start-up time of operations.
The scarcity of high-standard logistics facilities in prime locations in large cities, as well as the strong demand for short-distance warehousing and distribution by e-commerce, have led to a continuous rise in global high-quality real estate rents. The overall market vacancy rate of high-quality warehousing resources in first-tier cities is relatively low. Among the top ten most expensive cities for high-quality logistics real estate, Hong Kong, China, has always topped the list with a rent of US$350/(m·year), followed by Tokyo, London, Singapore, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. With high land costs in large cities, the warehousing market in “satellite cities” has risen rapidly, and third-party logistics has accounted for more than 40% of the net absorption of high-standard warehouses. Logistics real estate developers purchase properties with their own funds or loans, and build and hold them themselves, but their cash flow is tight and their development is too conservative. If they rely solely on rent as income, it will take more than 10 years to recover the investment cost, so they introduced financial leverage, namely the securitization model of real estate investment trusts (REITs). Real estate developers establish joint ventures or development funds with external funds to develop projects. After the property is built, the property rights are sold to REITs to recover funds. At the same time, they continue to hold part of the fund shares (average 30%) and manage the properties to share profits and obtain management fee income. If 20% to 30% of the own funds are invested in the fund pool for operation and management, a leverage of 3 to 5 times is achieved. Thanks to the growth of market demand, property development can gain the favor of local governments with brands and resources, and expand faster. The logistics real estate sub-industry is mainly distributed in the three industries of logistics and express delivery, manufacturing and retail (including e-commerce). At present, the per capita storage area in my country is still nearly 10 times that of the United States’ 5.5m2 storage area, and modern storage and logistics facilities are still lacking.