As Tijuana’s industrial market shows signs of cooling, FIBRA Macquarie—together with Grupo FRISA—has broken ground on the first of four Class A warehouses totaling nearly 70,000 square meters of gross leasable area (GLA) in the Pacífico zone, within the Sánchez Taboada submarket.

This is no small bet. It comes at a time of market realignment, geopolitical tensions, tariffs, economic uncertainty, and an increasingly challenging regional landscape—all of which are making investment decisions more complex.

In this context, Tijuana—while still stable and home to a dynamic industrial ecosystem—is facing its sharpest vacancy spike in the past five years.

Since late 2023, supply has expanded for two key reasons: a surge in speculative inventory deliveries—which jumped from 9% to over one-third in just 18 months—and a slowdown in new tenant arrivals, which coincided with one of the highest tenant turnover rates in four years. The result: a drop in net absorption, including a negative balance in early 2025—something not seen since late 2020.

This coincides with lower space usage by some manufacturing and consumer goods companies, particularly in key sectors such as capital goods, textiles, chemicals, and petrochemicals, which contracted by between 1% and 7%, depending on the case.

Still, FIBRA Macquarie’s move says a lot about how institutional investors are reading the market—not only in terms of expected returns but also in the scale and consistency of their regional expansion.

On the one hand, the trust’s expected yields—between 9% and 11% on cost—reflect an optimistic yet informed market outlook based on two operational certainties. First, that Tijuana remains a strategic hub in its portfolio, already home to one in ten of its industrial assets. And second, that its on-the-ground presence—with established leasing, engineering, and property management teams—enables efficiencies that others lack, boosting the project’s margin potential.

On the other hand, the scale of its expansion confirms this is not a short-term bet. Roughly 12% of its projected growth—some 79,000 square meters of GLA—is in Tijuana, where the trust recently developed the TIJ031 facility, spanning over 37,000 square meters in the Tijuana–Rosarito submarket.

At its core, the message is clear: despite short-term headwinds, Tijuana remains a vital link in North America’s industrial geography. Not just for its track record, but for its location: it borders California—the continent’s most populous, wealthy, and consumption-driven state—and maintains a unique binational synergy with San Diego. One side offers technology, logistics, and market access; the other, skilled labor and competitive costs. Together, they’ve fueled industries like medical devices, aerospace, auto parts, and electronics. Add to that its connection to the Port of Ensenada and the northwestern logistics corridors, and you get a single, integrated logistics ecosystem. It’s the kind of territorial resilience investors look for when the world turns uncertain.

The result is a quiet reshuffling of the market, where excess supply forces more selectivity and demand, though present, insists on more competitive terms. For developers, it’s no longer just about building in the right location—it’s about anticipating who can and will occupy that space in an unpredictable environment. And for investors, the real risk is no longer in the building itself, but in the strategy that ensures long-term viability.

To learn more about this project and access full data on FIBRA Macquarie and other industrial REITs, visit SiiLA FIBRA Analytics or contact us at contacto@siila.com.mx.