The Age of Industrial Buildings Reveals the Future of Markets

The age of industrial inventory explains how Mexico’s industrial market was built and anticipates the challenges it will face.

Vimal Kapur leads Honeywell, which occupies industrial buildings more than 50 years old in northwestern Mexico. Photo: SiiLA.

By: SiiLA News

07/14/2026

Mexico’s industrial market often showcases its newest buildings. Yet much of its history continues to unfold inside its oldest ones.

A SiiLA analysis shows that the country’s industrial inventory has a weighted average age of nearly 13 years. Behind that average lie two realities: 46.6% of industrial inventory was developed during the past decade, while 53.4% is more than 10 years old.¹

The question, then, is not only which markets are the oldest, but whether that age influences their performance.

SiiLA’s analysis found no evidence that markets with a higher share of older inventory consistently command higher or lower rents. It did, however, find evidence of an association between a larger share of inventory aged 25 years or more and higher vacancy levels, suggesting that age may influence leasing velocity more than the ability to sustain rental rates.²

That does not mean older buildings are necessarily less competitive. Many have remained in operation after successive expansions, renovations and upgrades, making age alone a poor indicator of an individual property’s performance. Viewed at the market level, however, age serves as a proxy for when most of the inventory was developed and for how extensively it has been renewed since then.

That history is not distributed evenly across Mexico’s main industrial regions. While some have renewed much of their inventory during recent expansion cycles, others still maintain a significant share of buildings developed several decades ago.

Northwestern Mexico has the country’s most mature industrial inventory: 45.9% of its current stock is more than 25 years old, with a weighted average age of about 20 years. It is followed by the Northeast, where 10.5% of inventory falls into that category and the average age is close to 12 years. The Central region follows with 7.2% and an average age of 11 years. At the other end of the spectrum is the Bajío, where just 2.5% of inventory is more than 25 years old and the average age remains below nine years.

The age of industrial inventory varies more across regions than across markets.

Regional differences reflect distinct development paths. Markets in northwestern Mexico began to emerge as export-oriented manufacturing corridors during the second half of the 20th century, driven by their integration with the United States. The Northeast, meanwhile, combined a long industrial tradition—led by Monterrey—with successive waves of manufacturing and logistics expansion. The Central region followed a different trajectory, closely tied to the country’s economic concentration and the domestic market centered around the Mexico City Metropolitan Area. In contrast, the Bajío emerged as one of Mexico’s leading industrial growth hubs over the past two decades, driven by new waves of manufacturing investment, including from the automotive sector.

That composition also points to different challenges ahead. As industrial requirements continue to evolve, the age of inventory will likely become increasingly relevant. Markets with more mature industrial inventories will face greater modernization needs to meet specifications increasingly demanded by occupiers, such as higher clear heights, larger truck courts, stronger electrical infrastructure and sustainability standards, while those with a larger share of more recent developments will benefit from inventory built to more current specifications.

Ultimately, the age of inventory does not explain a market’s value; it explains the kinds of decisions that market will have to make.

Understanding that composition helps identify opportunities for modernization, repositioning and investment. With SiiLA Market Analytics, users can analyze industrial inventory using advanced filters by age, specifications and other characteristics. To learn more, contact us at contacto@siila.com.mx.

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¹ The estimate includes the historical Class A and Class B industrial inventory recorded by SiiLA across the main industrial markets in northern, central and Bajío Mexico. The age of each property was calculated using its delivery date, with 2026 as the base year. The national average age was estimated using a gross leasable area (GLA)-weighted average, giving greater weight to larger buildings.

² The relationship between industrial inventory age and market performance was evaluated using Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficients, as well as exploratory market-level linear regression models. No statistically significant evidence was found of a systematic relationship between older inventory and rental rates (Pearson: r=0.15, p=0.635; Spearman: ρ=0.45, p=0.140; linear regression: R²=0.37, p=0.272). In contrast, markets with a larger share of inventory aged 25 years or more tended to record higher vacancy levels (Pearson: r=0.757, p=0.004; Spearman: ρ=0.755, p=0.007), while the regression model explained approximately 70% of the observed variation across markets (R²=0.698; p=0.018). Age shares were calculated using GLA-weighted inventory. The results describe statistical associations and do not imply a causal relationship.

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