Reading an industrial listing: clear height, power, and yard

Two 20,000 square foot buildings a mile apart can be worth entirely different things to the same tenant. The square footage is the headline. The specifications underneath it decide whether the building works.

Clear height

Clear height is the distance from the slab to the lowest obstruction, typically the bottom of the joist or a sprinkler line, not the peak of the roof. A building described as thirty feet at the peak may give you twenty-two feet of usable stacking. If racking is part of the plan, measure it yourself or have the listing broker confirm where the number was taken.

Loading

• Dock-high doors sit at trailer bed height and are what a 53-foot trailer needs
• Grade-level doors let a forklift or box truck drive straight in
• Truck court depth decides whether a trailer can actually turn into the dock
• Count doors per thousand square feet, not doors in total

A building with excellent clear height and one grade door is a storage building, whatever the flyer calls it.

Power

Power is quoted as amps, volts, and phase, for example 800A / 277-480V / 3-phase. Three-phase is not optional for most manufacturing. If the building does not have what you need, the question is not whether power can be added but how long the utility will take and who pays for the transformer. In Southern California that lead time is frequently the longest item in a tenant improvement schedule.

Yard and parking

Secured yard is the scarcest attribute in the Long Beach and Paramount industrial market and it is priced accordingly. Confirm whether outdoor storage is a permitted use at that address rather than an existing use, because those are different things and only one of them survives a code enforcement visit.

The rest of the checklist

• Sprinkler type and density, and whether it supports how you intend to store product
• Column spacing, which decides rack layout
• Office percentage, and whether you are paying warehouse rent for office you do not need
• Zoning and the specific permitted use, verified with the city

Bring this list to the tour. The building either answers it or it does not, and you will know within twenty minutes whether the rest of the process is worth your time.