Businesses that sell doors, windows and other building materials have suddenly found themselves with too much warehouse space amid a slowdown in home construction.
The amount of Miami industrial space listed by companies for sublease jumped by nearly 22% from September to December, reaching 3.4M SF, according to a Newmark fourth-quarter industrial report.
The region has never before experienced a deluge of sublease listings like this. The average quarterly amount of sublease space on the market between 2012 and 2019 was less than 1M SF.
Companies in the housing industry, such as furniture, appliances and building materials, are responsible for the majority of the space going up for sublease, Newmark Executive Managing Director Stephen Levine said.
“Homebuilding has slowed down a little bit, and therefore the construction materials component that goes along with it has slowed down a little bit as well,” Levine said.
One of the largest listings in the fourth quarter was CGI Windows and Doors Inc., which put more than 325K SF on the market for sublease, according to the report. CGI’s parent company, Miter Brands, shuttered its facility in Medley and plans to close its Hialeah warehouse in the first quarter, US Glass reported.
CGI didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Sublease listings began popping up with frequency over the last six months, Colliers Senior Vice President Lauren Pace said.
“Tenants are being wise and trying to determine if they need to consolidate or if they need to expand,” Pace said. “They are attempting to sublease some of their spaces and offering a rate that’s lower than [the rest of the] market.”
Courtesy of Newmark
Sublease availability is at its highest on record since 2009.
The move to put space back on the market comes amid a slowdown in housing construction.
Residential construction activity was at a five-year low in October, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Total housing starts reached 1.2 million, a nearly 5% drop from September and a nearly 8% drop from the year prior.
Miami’s industrial market is echoing the national trend. Twelve percent of the record 1.5B SF of available industrial space nationwide is on the sublease market, an all-time high, CoStar National Director of U.S. Industrial Analytics Juan Arias told Bisnow on Thursday. He said the majority of those listings are from companies in the housing industry.
The sublease activity provided some much-needed relief for tenants in a market that has seen rapid rent increases since the pandemic, Pace said.
Industrial rents in Miami have essentially doubled since 2020, reaching an all-time high of $16.36 per SF in the third quarter, according to Newmark. But rents dipped in the fourth quarter by 1.2%, even as leasing activity hit its highest point, at 4.3M SF, in more than two years.
“It’s great just to give some other tenants some different options, other than just options that are Class-A and kind of pricey,” Pace said.
Many tenants in the market today for subleasing are roadway construction companies, Pace said, especially with the 31 bridge improvement projects and 116 pavement improvement projects planned through 2029, according to the Miami-Dade Transportation Planning Organization.
Subleases are typically shorter than traditional leases, which is ideal for these construction companies because their contracts typically last between 18 months and two years, Pace said.
Even then, while there is “pretty good activity,” it’s not easy to fill sublease space, she said.
“These subleases are more particular than just your traditional space that’s a direct lease, because those spaces have different timelines, and you can’t pick your timeline,” she said. “Sometimes, it’s a little bit harder to make a deal work on a sublease than it is on a direct deal.”
The market isn’t expected to turn in landlords’ favor this year. Overall vacancy increased to 6.8% in the final quarter of 2025 after the second consecutive quarter of negative absorption, according to Colliers.
Another 2.7M SF of industrial space was under construction as of the fourth quarter of 2025 — only 11.8% of which is preleased, according to Newmark.
Even as consistently new space keeps vacancies elevated, the incoming space will be filled, albeit at a slower pace, Levine said.
“With our historical absorption levels, it’s not really that awful,” he said. “It’s going to get absorbed. There’s a lot of space in South Florida that’s going to become functionally obsolete, and tenants are going to have to move at some point to facilities that are better suited for their operations.”