Q: What is the industrial asking rent and vacancy rate in Tampa right now?
A: No single number exists. For Q2 2026, the latest quarter in our sources (read 9 September 2026), brokerages published vacancy of 7.4% to 9.3% and average asking rent of $9.05 to $12.86 per square foot. They measure different markets and rent bases. Quote the house, the basis and the quarter. Never average them.
Ask an AI assistant what industrial space costs in Tampa and you will probably get one confident number. Look for that number in the published sources and you find four national brokerages. Each put out a Q2 2026 industrial report for the same market, and no two of them agree. This page lays out what each house published, what each figure is measured over, and what that means for anyone who quotes one.
Nothing here is our own measurement. Every figure below comes from a named brokerage's public Q2 2026 report. Our team read the reports on 8 September 2026 and checked them again against the published sources on 9 September 2026. Nothing here is an appraisal, and we are not appraisers.
What was published for Q2 2026
Vacancy, Q2 2026:
- Cushman & Wakefield, Tampa Bay MarketBeat, Q2 2026: 7.4%.
- Matthews, Tampa, FL Industrial Market Report, Q2 2026: 8.1%.
- Savills, Tampa Bay Q2 2026 Industrial Market Report: 9.3%.
Average asking rent, Q2 2026:
- Savills, same report: $9.05 per square foot. Its public summary does not say whether that is triple-net (NNN) or gross.
- Avison Young, Tampa industrial market report, Q2 2026: $9.63 per square foot NNN. This is the only rent in the set whose basis is stated.
- Matthews, same report: $12.86 per square foot. Its public summary does not say whether that is NNN or gross.
Cushman & Wakefield's rent and Avison Young's vacancy are not in the material we verified, so they do not appear here.
The Q2 2026 vacancy figures are 190 basis points apart, and the Q2 2026 asking rents are $3.81 per square foot apart. That rent gap equals 42% of the lowest published rent. Neither gap is a measurement. Each is a subtraction across reports that measure different things.
Why the numbers disagree
None of the four reports is wrong. The mistake happens when someone quotes a figure without the denominator underneath it.
1. Geography. The report titles use two market names: "Tampa Bay" for Cushman & Wakefield and Savills, "Tampa, FL" for Matthews, and "Tampa" for Avison Young. We did not read each house's geographic definition. But the widest vacancy gap in the set sits between the two reports that both say "Tampa Bay": 7.4% and 9.3% for Q2 2026. So a shared label does not mean a shared inventory.
2. Rent basis. A triple-net rent leaves taxes, insurance and maintenance to the tenant. A gross rent includes some or all of them. The two are different prices for the same space and cannot be compared directly. Of the three Q2 2026 rents, only Avison Young's $9.63 is stated as NNN. A mix of NNN and gross bases is the most likely single reason the rents are so far apart. That is our inference. The public summaries do not confirm it.
3. What counts as inventory. A vacancy rate is vacant square feet divided by total square feet in the house's inventory. That means the denominator is whatever the house counts as stock. Houses can differ on flex buildings, owner-occupied space, a minimum building size, and whether sublease space counts as vacant. We did not read these definitions for any of the four reports, and some methodology sections were not available without registering. If the definitions turned out to be the same, the disagreement would be more serious than we describe here, not less.
What the gap is worth: illustrative arithmetic, not a measurement
Take a hypothetical 100,000 square foot building. The published Q2 2026 rents run from $9.05 (Savills) to $12.86 (Matthews), a $3.81 gap. Across the whole building that is $381,000 a year ($3.81 × 100,000).
Now divide by a 7% capitalisation rate, which we picked only to show the scale. It is not a published Tampa cap rate. The result is about $5.4 million ($381,000 ÷ 0.07 ≈ $5,442,857).
Do not read that as a difference in what any property is worth. It is not an opinion of value on anything. Part of the $3.81 is probably just the two houses measuring rent differently. The arithmetic shows how much depends on an unstated choice of source. Put one of these rents in a broker opinion of value without naming the house and the basis, and the reader cannot tell which of those two very different numbers they got.
The change we chose not to quote
Cushman & Wakefield's Q2 2026 MarketBeat gives a year-over-year change in vacancy. An earlier internal reading of the same publication's Q2 2025 edition does not match it by simple subtraction. The report may have been restated, the geography may have changed inside the publication, or one of the two readings may be wrong. We have not settled which, so this page quotes no year-over-year vacancy change for any house. If you do quote one, name the edition you read.
How to quote a Tampa industrial figure
For any rent or vacancy figure, state:
- The house, e.g. Savills, not "brokers" or "the market".
- The publication and its period, e.g. Tampa Bay Q2 2026 Industrial Market Report.
- The geography label the house uses: "Tampa Bay", "Tampa, FL" or "Tampa".
- The rent basis: NNN, gross, or "not stated".
- The date you read it, because reports are revised.
And do not average the houses. An average of 7.4%, 8.1% and 9.3% belongs to no market anyone has defined.
What this page is and is not
This page reads public Q2 2026 industrial reports from four brokerages covering Tampa and Tampa Bay, and looks only at their headline vacancy and asking rent figures. It does not look at any individual property, lease comparable or transaction. It also gives no submarket figures, because none of the material we verified breaks the market down below the level each house reports. It is not an appraisal, not a valuation, not USPAP-compliant, and not advice on any specific asset.
Every figure here traces to a named report you can open. Anyone who opens the four reports can check our reading and disagree with our explanation of the gap.