James Holbrook, Founder and Executive Chairman of Warehub, joined host Edward Cohen on Commercial Observer’s Tangent podcast to discuss how industrial leasing can better serve the changing needs of modern logistics. The conversation explored how a connected digital process can help businesses secure warehouse space faster, give landlords more opportunities to generate income from vacancy, and allow brokers to spend more time advising clients.
Cohen opened with the forces shaping industrial demand, including e-commerce, reshoring and data center growth tied to AI. He cited Prologis’ projection of roughly 200 million square feet of net absorption in 2026, compared with approximately 180 million square feet of new deliveries. Yet finding space, negotiating terms and executing a lease still often depend on phone calls, emails and PDFs.
Drawing on 17 years of industrial real estate experience, more than $500 million in leasing volume and over 2,500 short-term transactions, Holbrook described a recurring challenge: the time and effort required to connect available space with businesses that need it.
“The industry doesn’t have a demand problem or an asset problem. It has an underlying infrastructure problem,” Holbrook told Cohen.
Even a straightforward lease can require brokers, landlords, tenants and attorneys to confirm availability, exchange property information, negotiate terms and coordinate documents across separate systems. Holbrook said the industry has sophisticated owners, capital and buildings, but lacks a shared operating system connecting the steps from a tenant’s initial requirement to a signed lease and occupancy.
Warehub brings those steps into one digital platform. Tenants, landlords, brokers and service providers can discover space, coordinate terms, execute standardized lease documents and manage the activities needed to begin and support occupancy.
Holbrook said Warehub can reduce the process from receiving a tenant requirement to executing a lease from a typical 12 weeks to one day, including transactions involving complex corporate approval processes. He described a structured workflow that can be completed in seven clicks. At the time of the conversation, Warehub had onboarded more than 52 million square feet across approximately 40 U.S. markets, with more than 200 users and 368 suites.
The discussion also examined how standardization can simplify transactions while preserving room for negotiation.
“The mistake was assuming that because some things can’t be standardized, nothing should be standardized,” Holbrook said. “We think the opposite.”
By making availability and property information more transparent and organizing the transaction process, Warehub allows landlords and tenants to focus on the terms that determine a deal’s value: price, lease duration, the amount of space and the allocation of risk.
“We’re not trying to tell the market what a warehouse is worth,” Holbrook said. “We’re trying to give the market a better mechanism for discovering what it’s worth.”
That approach is particularly relevant to short-term leasing. Inventory surges, tariff uncertainty and shifting supply chains can create a need for additional space for months rather than years. Yet, Holbrook noted, a four-month lease can require nearly as much administrative and legal work as a five-year commitment.
“The customer wants flexibility, but the infrastructure makes the flexibility expensive and difficult to execute,” he said.
For tenants, a faster leasing process makes it easier to add, reduce or reposition warehouse capacity as business needs change. For landlords, short-term leases offer a way to generate income during gaps between longer-term tenants. Holbrook noted that vacancy brings costs beyond lost rent; including operating expenses, brokerage and marketing costs, management time and uncertainty about future cash flows.
“Every day that usable space sits vacant, it’s perishable inventory,” he said. “You can’t go back and sell yesterday’s warehouse space tomorrow.”
“The building itself is still a fixed commodity,” Holbrook added. “The commitment doesn’t necessarily have to be.”
Holbrook also emphasized the role of brokers in a more digital leasing process. By reducing administrative work, Warehub gives brokers more time to identify opportunities, structure transactions, negotiate terms and advise clients.
“Warehub isn’t designed to eliminate brokers. It was built for brokers. It was built by brokers,” he said. “If your value is understanding your customer’s business, identifying opportunities, structuring transactions, negotiating economics and truly advising your clients, technology makes you much more productive.”
The episode also explored Warehub’s approach to artificial intelligence. Holbrook described AI as supporting capabilities such as interpreting information, reviewing documents and identifying patterns within a structured transaction system that controls access and maintains an auditable record of activity.
“For us, AI is a capability inside the infrastructure,” he said. “It isn’t the infrastructure itself."
Listen to the episode, “Industrial Real Estate Leasing from 12 Weeks to 1 Day, with Warehub’s Founder James Holbrook,” on Apple Podcasts.
