The specialty premium is not what you think
Cold storage trades tighter than generic warehouse. IOS prices in line with industrial. Data center transitional stayed wide. Assuming a flat premium by asset type is how sponsors get mispriced.
- Cold storage trades 25-50 bps tighter than generic warehouse, not wider. The tenant base is Lineage, Americold and USCS, and supply is constrained.
- IOS (industrial outdoor storage) now prices in line with industrial warehouse as institutional capital entered, with life companies at 150-250 over treasuries.
- Data center transitional debt stayed wide, priced all-in by debt funds, because debt funds take the risk banks will not.
- Specialty is not uniformly riskier. Some classes institutionalized and tightened; others didn’t. Assuming a premium by name is a mispricing risk, not a shortcut.
Two findings from our subtype pricing
From our pricing research across 56 property subtypes. Each corrects an assumption much of the market still carries.
Cold storage tightened, it didn’t widen
Cold storage now trades 25 to 50 bps tighter than generic dry warehouse. The tenant base, Lineage, Americold and USCS, is institutional-grade and supply is genuinely constrained, so the market has priced it as the more defensible box, not the riskier one. The cold-over-dry cap rate premium compressed from 30-75 bps down to 0-50 bps per JLL’s Q1 2026 read. If your desk is still quoting cold storage at a specialty markup over warehouse, that quote is stale.
IOS caught up to industrial, fast
Industrial outdoor storage used to price as a specialty niche. It doesn’t anymore. Institutional capital has entered the space, life companies are quoting 150-250 bps over treasuries, and spreads as low as 165 bps have been reported. IOS now prices in line with mainstream industrial warehouse, which is a genuinely different underwrite than the one most lender lists still reflect.
Where the premium held: data center
Data center transitional debt is the counter-case. It stayed wide, priced all-in by debt funds, because debt funds are taking transitional risk banks won’t underwrite: the tenant credit question and utility access, not the real estate itself. A build-to-suit with a pre-committed hyperscale lease prices entirely differently from a speculative or multi-tenant colo facility: more leverage, and bank construction money over SOFR that the speculative build rarely sees.
"Cold storage and IOS got cheaper to finance. Transitional data centers did not. Price the subtype, not the label."
What this means for how you shop a specialty deal
Don’t assume a premium by asset name. Ask what happened to that subtype’s pricing this cycle, not what it used to cost, and ask the tenant question first on anything data center. Getting this wrong in either direction, assuming cold storage is expensive or assuming data center transitional is cheap, costs real basis points on the term sheet.