Industrial Rent Benchmarks: How to Interpret the Columbia CompStak Rent Index (CCRI)

Industrial rent benchmarks live or die on one question: is the number quality-adjusted, or is it a raw average skewed by whatever deals happened to close that quarter? The Columbia CompStak Rent Index (CCRI) answers that question directly. Knowing how to read it matters for underwriting industrial acquisitions, loans, and renewals in 2026.

Key Takeaway: The CCRI is a quality-adjusted rent benchmark, not a simple average. Reading it correctly means checking three time horizons at once, year-over-year change, peak-to-current change, and the move against a pre-COVID baseline, because the national industrial figure can look calm while individual markets are moving in opposite directions underneath it.

What Is the Columbia CompStak Rent Index (CCRI)?

The CCRI is an index built from signed industrial lease comps that controls for changes in property mix and deal composition over time, developed by CompStak in partnership with Columbia Business School. Instead of averaging whatever rents happened to transact in a given quarter, the index isolates genuine rent movement so a reported change reflects the market, not a shift in which properties or tenant sizes leased that period.

That distinction matters more in industrial than in other sectors, because deal mix shifts constantly. A quarter with heavy Mega-format activity will pull a raw average up or down for reasons that have nothing to do with underlying rent growth. The CCRI is built specifically to strip that noise out.

How to Interpret the Columbia CompStak Rent Index (CCRI)

Reading the CCRI correctly means never looking at a single number in isolation. The index needs to be read against three anchors together: the year-over-year change, the peak-to-current move over a stated number of quarters, and the level relative to a pre-COVID baseline, because each answers a different underwriting question.

Nationally, the industrial CCRI has oscillated between 12.03 and 12.61 since late 2023, peaked at 12.61 in Q4 2024, and remains 69.7% above its Q1 2019 baseline, per CompStak’s 2026 Biannual Industrial Market Overview — Part Two. That combination tells a specific story. The market has cooled from its post-pandemic peak, but rents have not corrected anywhere close to pre-2019 levels. An investor underwriting a five-year hold off today’s index needs to know both facts, not just one.

The headline national rent index has also been flat for eight straight quarters, according to CompStak’s 2026 Biannual Industrial Market Overview — Part One. Flat at the national level does not mean flat everywhere. That’s the core interpretation risk with any national benchmark: it can hide as much as it reveals.

Source: CompStak’s 2026 Biannual Industrial Market Overview — Part One and Part Two. Data as of Q1 2026.

Industrial Rent Benchmarks by Market: Reading the Peak-to-Current Spread

The most useful CCRI benchmark for underwriting is the peak-to-current spread, because it shows how far a market has already corrected, or hasn’t. Over 12 quarters, the Inland Empire is down 31.1% from its rent peak and Los Angeles MSA is down 25.7%. Chicago, by contrast, sits at a new cycle high. Dallas-Fort Worth is off just 0.4% after five quarters, essentially unmoved, and New Jersey has given back only 3.8% despite an 85.6% run-up during the boom, per CompStak’s 2026 Biannual Industrial Market Overview — Part One.

Those five markets illustrate why a single national figure is the wrong tool for market-specific underwriting. New Jersey’s 3.8% pullback against an 85.6% prior run-up describes a market holding onto most of its gains. Inland Empire’s 31.1% decline describes a market that overheated hardest during 2021 and 2022 and has been correcting the longest since.

The baseline comparison sharpens this further. Above the Q4 2019 baseline, the Inland Empire is still up 149.9% and Los Angeles is up 94.3%, according to CompStak’s Part Two report. Both markets have corrected sharply from peak, and both remain roughly double or triple their pre-pandemic rent levels. Neither the peak-to-current number nor the baseline number alone tells the full story. Together, they do.

Source: CompStak’s 2026 Biannual Industrial Market Overview — Part One and Part Two. Data as of Q1 2026.

Beyond the Headline Index: Segment-Level Rent Benchmarks

A market-level CCRI reading doesn’t tell you whether bulk or non-bulk space is driving the number, and the two segments are moving differently. Bulk (200,000+ SF) adjusted effective rent reached $10.66/SF in Q1 2026, up 0.9% year over year but still 7.7% below peak. Non-bulk adjusted effective rent came in at $12.67/SF, down 1.7% year over year and 7.9% off its high, per CompStak’s 2026 Biannual Industrial Market Overview — Part Three.

Mark-to-market spread, the gap between current market rent estimates and in-place rent, adds another layer. Bulk’s spread has compressed to 2.5% in Q1 2026 from a 4.7% peak in Q3 2024, while non-bulk sits at 1.4%, down from a 3.9% peak in Q4 2023. Both trends point the same direction: less room for landlords to mark rents up on renewal or turnover than there was two years ago. Single-tenant net lease space still commands a premium over multi-tenant industrial, with STNL starting rent at $11.46/SF against $10.85/SF for non-STNL in Q1 2026, a 5.6% gap that has held above 5% for four consecutive quarters.

Portfolio-level ownership matters too. Among the largest industrial landlords tracked in CompStak’s Portfolio series comparing FTSE Nareit Industrial owners to all other industrial owners, Nareit Industrial landlords, a group that includes Prologis, Rexford Industrial Realty, and EastGroup Properties, run a mark-to-market spread of 21.2% against 20.4% for all other owners, and starting rents up 82.8% since 2019 versus 63.3% for the rest of the market. That gap shows up in the underlying rent benchmarks even when the headline index looks calm.

Source: CompStak’s 2026 Biannual Industrial Market Overview — Part Three and Portfolio series: FTSE Nareit Industrial vs all other industrial owners. Data as of Q1 2026 and early 2026.

How Investors Should Use CCRI Benchmarks in Underwriting

The practical rule: never underwrite off a single index point. Pull the market-level CCRI trend and check it against the relevant size band or property type. Then confirm the mark-to-market spread before assuming rent growth on renewal. A market showing a flat national index could still have a bulk segment down 7.7% from peak and a non-bulk segment down 1.7% year over year, two very different rollover assumptions hiding inside one number.

For lenders sizing loans against in-place rent, the mark-to-market spread is the number that matters most, since it caps how much upside a refinance or sale can reasonably assume. For appraisers and brokers, the peak-to-current spread by market frames whether current asking rents are a floor or still have room to fall.

CompStak’s CompStak One platform surfaces these benchmarks segmented by market and size band, with lease structure layered in. The inputs are drawn from verified lease comps rather than listing data, so they match how the CCRI itself is built.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Columbia CompStak Rent Index (CCRI)? The CCRI is a quality-adjusted rent index built by CompStak with Columbia Business School. It tracks rent movement while controlling for shifts in property and deal mix, so an index move reflects actual rent change.

How is the CCRI different from an average asking rent? Average asking rent shifts whenever the mix of listed space changes. The CCRI adjusts for that mix shift using signed lease comps, isolating genuine rent movement from compositional noise.

Why has the national industrial CCRI stayed flat while individual markets moved sharply? The national figure blends markets correcting hard, like the Inland Empire and Los Angeles, with markets at new highs, like Chicago. Those offsetting moves flatten the aggregate even though no single market is actually stable.

What time periods should I check when reading a CCRI benchmark? Check year-over-year change, peak-to-current change over a stated quarter count, and the level against a pre-COVID baseline such as Q1 2019. Each answers a different underwriting question.

Does the CCRI reflect concessions like free rent or TI allowances? The headline CCRI is built primarily on rent levels. Pair it with concession-specific metrics such as free rent as a percentage of term and mark-to-market spread for a complete effective-rent picture.

Where does CompStak’s CCRI and lease comp data come from? CompStak’s comps come from a network of over 40,000 verified CRE professionals contributing through CompStak Exchange, reviewed by CompStak’s data analysts before entering the index.

Can I get industrial rent benchmarks for a specific market instead of the national index? Yes. CompStak tracks industrial rent data across markets including the Inland Empire, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, New Jersey, Atlanta, Houston, and Philadelphia, each reported separately in the biannual industrial market reports.

Interpreting industrial rent benchmarks correctly starts with the right data underneath them. Get started with CompStak to pull market-level and size-band rent comps, broken out by lease structure, behind the CCRI.