Industrial Real Estate in Cabarrus County, NC

Cabarrus County, immediately northeast of Charlotte, is where the metro's industrial momentum meets a deep base of advanced manufacturing and motorsports. Anchored by Concord and Kannapolis along Interstate 85, it's a tighter, higher-priced market than its neighbors, and capital has taken notice. If Rowan is the value play on the corridor, Cabarrus is where institutional money is competing hardest.

The market at a glance

Cabarrus carries roughly 31 million square feet of industrial inventory, and it runs leaner than the broader corridor: vacancy sits around 8%, with rents well above Rowan's at over $11 per square foot. What really stands out is investor appetite.

Trailing-year sales volume reached roughly $348 million, more than double the five-year average, as both institutional buyers and owner-users chased product. A robust 3.4 million square feet is under construction, equal to about 11% of existing inventory, a far more aggressive expansion rate than the metro as a whole. Developers are building here because they believe in where this market is going.

What's driving demand

Cabarrus has demand drivers most submarkets can only wish for. Red Bull's 2.4 million square foot manufacturing complex, the Eli Lilly biomanufacturing expansion, and a dense motorsports cluster, Hendrick Motorsports and Cadillac's Formula 1 program among them, are anchoring a generation of specialized, high-value space. That advanced-manufacturing and motorsports tenancy is exactly the kind of use Mecklenburg can't always accommodate, and it commands premium rents: specialized and flex product here pushes into the $16 to $18 per square foot range.

Submarkets and product

The bulk of activity centers on Concord and Kannapolis, where both speculative logistics and purpose-built manufacturing have concentrated. The specialized segment, driven by motorsports and advanced manufacturing, is what sets Cabarrus apart from a pure distribution market, and it's why rents and pricing here outrun the rest of the corridor. For owners of well-located product, that pricing power has proven durable.

The opportunity

The challenge in Cabarrus isn't finding growth; it's pricing discipline. With this much capital chasing deals and this much new supply coming online, the risk is overpaying into the pipeline. The right asset, bought right, performs exceptionally well in a market with these fundamentals; the wrong basis can erase the upside. Knowing the difference between the two is where an advisor earns their keep, and it's the work we do every day on this corridor.

Want the current numbers in detail? Read the full Cabarrus County Industrial Market Report →