The Austin area has about 25.5 million square feet of industrial and flex suite space advertised for lease. But a business looking for less than 10,000 square feet is not shopping that whole market. It is choosing from about 4.1 million square feet—just 16% of the advertised total.
That is the Austin small-bay market in one comparison.
The headline square footage looks large because large blocks carry so much weight. The practical market faced by a contractor, light manufacturer, local distributor, repair shop, fitness operator, growing e-commerce company—or any of the few hundred types of small businesses that use this space—is much smaller and generally asks more per square foot.
SpanVor reviewed more than 1,700 publicly advertised industrial and flex space offerings across the Austin-area market as of August 26, 2026.
The median advertised suite was 4,920 square feet. The overall median published asking rent was $16.00 per square foot per year, while the average was $17.04.
Those are useful benchmarks. They are not the most interesting part of the story.
For this analysis, “small-bay” refers to the broader family of smaller industrial, shallow-bay, warehouse and flex properties. The working tenant-size line in the comparisons below is a suite under 10,000 square feet.
The market changes when you count suites instead of square feet
Small-bay tenants shop for a usable suite in a workable location. They do not lease a percentage of Austin's total industrial availability.
That distinction produces a striking inversion:
| Availability cohort | Share of known-size offerings | Share of advertised SF | |---|---:|---:| | Under 5,000 SF | 50.3% | 7.8% | | Under 10,000 SF | 68.1% | 15.9% | | 25,000 SF and over | 12.4% | 64.8% |
In plain English, more than two-thirds of the Austin-area offerings with a known size are below 10,000 square feet. Yet those suites account for less than one-sixth of the advertised square footage.
At the other end, spaces of 25,000 square feet and above are only about one in eight offerings—but nearly two-thirds of all advertised square footage.
This is why a broad industrial availability figure can be technically accurate and still tell a small-business tenant almost nothing about its real choices. One large warehouse can add more square footage to the market than dozens of small suites. It cannot replace them.
What does Austin small-bay space cost?
The smaller end of the market generally asks more per foot.
| Suite size | Offerings | Advertised SF | Priced offerings | Median asking rent | Average asking rent | |---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:| | Under 2,000 SF | 331 | 467,512 | 230 | $17.02 | $18.71 | | 2,000–4,999 SF | 495 | 1,534,788 | 305 | $16.50 | $17.20 | | 5,000–9,999 SF | 293 | 2,053,959 | 111 | $15.00 | $14.84 | | 10,000–24,999 SF | 319 | 4,929,421 | 90 | $16.00 | $15.73 | | 25,000 SF and over | 204 | 16,563,808 | 27 | $14.00 | $14.37 |
Across the combined under-10,000-SF cohort, the median advertised asking rent was $16.50 per square foot per year. For spaces of 25,000 square feet and above, it was $14.00.
That is an asking-rent premium of about 18% for the smaller cohort. On averages, the premium was about 21%.
The priced-offering column deserves attention. Only 27 of the 204 largest offerings publish a rent, making the $14.00 median the thinnest number in the table. It is useful direction, not the final word on large-block economics.
I would not turn that into a universal law that every smaller suite deserves more rent. The curve is not perfectly smooth—the 10,000-to-24,999-SF cohort has a $16 median, for example. Product quality, location, office finish, loading, power, parking, yard and lease structure all matter.
But the broad economic logic is familiar to anyone who operates these parks. A landlord dividing a property into smaller suites creates more doors, walls, utility connections, restrooms, tenant improvements, leasing work and management. At the same time, small businesses are buying a scarce unit of utility: enough space to operate without paying for 25,000 square feet they do not need.
Where are Austin-area asking rents highest?
The suite-level medians point north and northwest, but the second look matters. The selected submarkets below each have at least 10 priced offerings.
| Submarket | Priced offerings | Median by suite | Median giving each property one vote | |---|---:|---:|---:| | Cedar Park | 39 | $22.20 | $17.00 | | Georgetown | 64 | $21.00 | $16.75 | | Leander | 55 | $18.00 | $17.50 | | Dripping Springs | 52 | $18.00 | $16.00 | | Round Rock | 32 | $17.00 | $16.50 | | Austin | 222 | $16.00 | $15.60 | | New Braunfels | 78 | $15.78 | $14.50 | | Hutto | 24 | $15.00 | $14.28 | | Taylor | 14 | $14.50 | $14.00 | | Liberty Hill | 10 | $13.80 | $13.80 |
Cedar Park's $22.20 suite median and Georgetown's $21.00 immediately get attention. But one property can advertise many suites, and a heavily marketed park can pull a suite-level statistic upward. When each of the 424 priced properties in the snapshot receives one vote, the medians fall to $17.00 in Cedar Park and $16.75 in Georgetown.
That does not make the higher figures wrong—a tenant walking Cedar Park really is seeing $22 asks. It means the number is telling us about a few well-marketed parks as much as it is telling us about Cedar Park.
Leander is especially interesting because more of its premium survives the property-level test: an $18.00 suite median and a $17.50 property median. Austin proper sits closer to $16.00 by suite and $15.60 by property. New Braunfels is lower at roughly $15.78 by suite and $14.50 by property.
The practical read is not simply “north is expensive.” The Austin-area market contains several different pricing stories. Some premiums appear broad across properties. Others are partly the result of a few parks presenting many suites at the same asking rate.
For an owner, that difference matters. A true submarket premium may support a rent decision. A single property's marketing strategy does not establish the market.
What should owners and tenants take from this?
For owners, the under-10,000-SF market has a visible asking premium, but the right comparison is a competing suite—not the metro average and not a 100,000-SF warehouse. The more closely your suite matches on location, loading, power, parking, yard and finish, the more useful the rent comparison becomes.
For tenants, smaller space costs more per foot, but excess space costs more in total. A 4,000-SF bay at a higher rate may still be a far better operating decision than leasing 8,000 square feet because the larger unit looks cheaper on a per-foot comparison.
For investors and developers, this snapshot leaves one question I want to answer next: where does Austin have many small users and too few usable bays? Listings alone cannot answer it. We need the existing property inventory, new construction pipeline, tenant base and the details that make a bay functional.
That is the market SpanVor is building toward: not one industrial average, but a suite- and property-level picture of what each local operator can actually use. Explore the live Austin–Central Texas market profile for the broader property, supply and demand view.
Frequently asked questions
Is 25.5 million SF Austin's industrial vacancy?
No. It is the sum of publicly advertised suite square footage in this snapshot. Advertised availability is not the same as market vacancy, and some properties offer overlapping or combinable suite configurations.
Are these completed lease rates?
No. They are published asking rents, not signed rents, concessions or effective rents. They show how space is being offered, not where every transaction closes.
Why show both suite-level and property-level medians?
Because one property may advertise many suites at the same rate. The suite median describes what a tenant sees among individual offerings. The property median gives each priced property one vote and helps reveal when a submarket number is being driven by a few heavily marketed parks.
How we counted
This is a snapshot of publicly advertised industrial and flex availability across the Austin-area market as of August 26, 2026. It covers more than 1,700 space offerings across dozens of submarkets and nearly 1,000 properties. Duplicate advertisements were reconciled before the analysis. Size comparisons use offerings with a stated size, and rent comparisons use those that also publish an asking rent.
Key takeaways
- The Austin-area snapshot contains more than 1,700 advertised industrial and flex offerings totaling about 25.5 million square feet.
- A tenant seeking less than 10,000 square feet is shopping only about 4.1 million square feet.
- Under-10,000-SF suites are 68% of known-size offerings but only 16% of advertised SF.
- Their median asking rent is $16.50 per square foot per year, about 18% above the $14.00 median for spaces of 25,000 SF and larger.
- Cedar Park and Georgetown carry the highest suite-level medians, but property-level results show that multi-suite listing concentration explains part of those premiums.
- The useful unit of analysis is the suite and the property—not one metro-wide industrial number.
For more context, read Industrial Vacancy Is Measured in Square Feet. Tenants Shop in Suites. and the free Small-Bay Industrial Investor Primer.
SpanVor maps industrial and small-bay properties across the United States and is building the suite-, tenant-, property- and development-level intelligence needed to read markets like Austin more clearly. See what SpanVor knows about your market at SpanVor.com.
One last thing, since you read this far: the code SpanvorBlog takes 25% off a SpanVor Pro subscription—where the property-level data behind posts like this one actually lives.
Written by Jason Probert, Founder of SpanVor — Industrial Property Intelligence.