As they are no longer merely the domain of enterprise users, demand for data centers has skyrocketed in recent years with more information moving to the cloud. The pandemic has created issues, nevertheless, the events of 2020 have largely accelerated this trend. By just about every metric, the asset class saw incredible gains during the first half of the year,
according to a report by JLL. Datacenter REITs outperformed other sectors, absorption rose in most markets and operators have thus far weathered the
pandemic with steady—if not booming—business activity. As strong as the overall industrial sector has been this year, data centers have been even stronger. For example, the stay-at-home orders brought on by COVID-19 led to an increase in online shopping, and thus renewed demand for warehouse and logistics space. This, in turn, has resulted in a year-over-year increase in returns of 2.3 percent among industrial REITs, according to information gleaned from Nareit. Contrast that with data center REITs, which saw an incredible 19.2 percent climb over that same period. Residential, office, healthcare, retail and hospitality REITs all regressed during the 12-month period ending on June 30, 2020. What’s behind this surge? First is the increase in online shopping; in addition to furthering demand of the storage of goods, extra server space is required to accommodate all the ones and zeroes supporting this activity. Click to read more at www.rednews.com.