Published: June 2026 | By Available Warehouses — Ron Kassan & Art Minassian
Most tenants start an industrial search the same way. They open LoopNet, filter by size and city, and email the listings that photograph well. That gets you a list of buildings. It doesn’t get you the right one — and in the San Fernando Valley, where vacancy has run around 3.5% and the better space rarely sits long, the distance between “a warehouse” and “the warehouse that fits your operation” is exactly where tenants overpay or get stuck in a building that fights them for five years.
The Valley isn’t one market, either. A 20,000 SF building in Sun Valley solves a different problem than the same footprint in Chatsworth, and the lease you sign shapes your cost as much as the four walls do. After more than a billion dollars in closed SFV industrial deals, our team keeps coming back to the same ten checks. Here they are, roughly in the order you’ll use them.
Before You Tour: Do the Homework
1. Write down your real requirements before you look at a single listing. Square footage is the easy part. The numbers that actually disqualify buildings are clear height, dock configuration, power, and yard. Older SFV product from the 1960s–1980s typically gives you 12–16 feet of clear height; newer construction runs 18–28. Get specific now and you skip weeks of touring space that was never going to work.
2. Don’t chase the 32-foot clear if you don’t need it. Everyone asks for it. For most SFV tenants under 30,000 SF — light manufacturing, contractors, regional distribution — a 24-foot clear stores plenty and rents for noticeably less than the high-cube logistics product. Buy the height your racking plan requires, not the number that sounds impressive.
3. Pick the submarket before you pick the building. The East Valley — Sylmar, Sun Valley, Pacoima — is the freeway-and-distribution corridor, with the 5, 405, 118, and 210 close at hand. The West Valley — Chatsworth, Canoga Park — is manufacturing and owner-user country, with smaller buildings and M1/M2 zoning that supports a wider range of uses. Van Nuys and North Hollywood sit tightest of all on vacancy. Match the area to how your business actually runs before you fall for a specific address.
4. Start researching properties months before you need to move. This is the single most common mistake we see. For example, a tenant needing 25,000 S.F. or less should start looking for buildings 3 to 6 months in advance, but a tenant needing more space should allow 6 to 9 months given lower inventory at that size. On your lease, the tenant has one option: stay put on the landlord’s terms. A tenant that allows themselves more time can tour competing buildings, collect proposals, and leave time for permitting and buildout if a relocation needs work. Compress the timeline and you give away leverage at every stage.
At the Building: What to Actually Check
5. Confirm the zoning allows your use — in writing. SFV industrial zoning runs mostly M1 (limited manufacturing) and M2 (heavier manufacturing), with pockets of MR and CM. Your intended use has to be permitted, and outdoor storage, noise, and parking each carry their own limits. Look the parcel up on the City of LA’s ZIMAS zoning map before you write an offer, and if your operation involves significant trucking or outdoor activity, ask the city how the state’s newer warehouse-siting rules (AB 98) apply to the site.
6. Walk the truck path, not just the suite. A building can have perfect docks and still be wrong if a 53-foot trailer can’t reach it without threading residential streets. Check that the truck court is deep enough — roughly 120 feet for a standard trailer to back and maneuver — and drive the route from the nearest freeway yourself. The listing photos never show the tight left turn two blocks away.
7. Check the property’s environmental history early. Decades of manufacturing across the Valley mean some parcels carry contamination issues, and environmental liability can attach to tenants. Search the parcel in the state’s DTSC EnviroStor database and order a Phase I assessment during due diligence. This is cheap insurance against an expensive surprise.
8. Inspect the roof, slab, and power before you get attached. These are the items that turn a good rate into a bad deal. A worn roof, a cracked slab, or undersized power can each cost real money — upgrading electrical service can run $50,000–$150,000 and take months. Ron Kassan, EVP at Available Warehouses, puts it simply: “The cheapest-looking building in the search is sometimes the most expensive one to occupy. The condition you can’t see in a photo is the part that costs you.”
Making the Deal: Where the Money Actually Is
9. Compare total occupancy cost, never the asking rate. Nearly every SFV industrial lease is triple-net, so on top of base rent you pay your share of taxes, insurance, and maintenance — usually another $0.15–$0.30/SF/Mo. A building quoted at $1.40 with $0.32 in pass-throughs costs more than one at $1.50 with $0.18. Run every option on the full number.
10. Ask for the concessions the market is actually giving — then get someone on your side of the table. Softer conditions over the past two years have put free rent, tenant-improvement dollars, and CAM caps back in reach for creditworthy tenants; our lease negotiation guide breaks down each one. And because tenant representation in SFV industrial deals is paid by the landlord, hiring an advocate costs you nothing out of pocket while putting market comps and off-market access on your side. We recently moved a tenant out of a cramped 15,000 SF building in North Hollywood into a 28,000 SF space in Sun Valley with a 24-foot clear — the rate per foot ticked up, but usable storage nearly doubled and the all-in cost barely moved. That kind of trade is hard to see from a listing filter.
Run these ten checks in order and the search stops being a gamble on photos. It becomes a process — one where you know what you need, what you’re looking at, and what you’re signing.
About This Article
This article was compiled by the team at Available Warehouses, a specialist industrial real estate brokerage serving the San Fernando Valley, greater Los Angeles, and Southern California. Our team has closed over $1 billion in industrial real estate transactions.
Looking for industrial space in the San Fernando Valley? Whether you’re touring your first warehouse or relocating an established operation, our team can help. Contact us for a consultation, or call 818-939-4940.
Data in this article is sourced from publicly available brokerage research and government sources published between Q3 2025 and Q2 2026. Market conditions may have changed since publication. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or investment advice.
