You're thinking about what your warehouse is worth. Maybe you're weighing up a sale, maybe you're just curious what the market would pay. Either way, you've probably done the obvious thing. Looked at land size, building area, and a comparable sale or two down the road. That gives you a rough figure. It won't give you the right one.
Experienced buyers and their agents don't price a warehouse off square metres alone. They price it off what the building can actually do for the next tenant or the next owner. And three things drive that more than anything else on the title. Clearance height. Hardstand. Power. Get these wrong in your own head and you'll either underprice a good asset or overprice a mediocre one and wonder why it sits on the market.
The three numbers that matter more than your land size
A buyer walking through your warehouse isn't thinking about the address first. They're thinking about what they can fit inside it, what they can park outside it, and what they can run off it. Land size tells them how big the site is. It tells them almost nothing about how useful the building is.
Two warehouses on identical land parcels can be worth very different amounts once you factor in clearance, hardstand and power.
Clearance height: why an extra metre changes everything
Clearance height decides how much a tenant can stack. Low clearance limits a warehouse to basic storage or light industrial use. Higher clearance opens the door to racking, automation, and larger logistics operators who need cubic space, not just floor space. In the west, where transport and logistics tenants are competing for space near the Princes Freeway and the port corridor, clearance height often separates a building that attracts multiple offers from one that sits quiet.
Hardstand: the space buyers actually fight over
Hardstand gets overlooked because it's not under a roof. That's exactly why it matters. Transport operators, container storage users and businesses running a fleet need secure, sealed outdoor area as much as they need warehouse space. A building with generous hardstand and truck access can command interest even if the building itself is unremarkable.
Buyers pay for what they can do with a site, not just what's built on it.
Power: the silent deal breaker
Power is the one factor most owners never think to check until a deal is falling apart. Modern manufacturing, cold storage and automated warehousing all need serious three phase capacity. If your site is running on a legacy supply, you may be quietly excluding an entire category of buyer without knowing it. Upgrading power after settlement is expensive and slow, so buyers factor the risk into their offer long before they factor in your asking price.
Where owners get the valuation wrong
What this means before you list
If you're serious about understanding what your warehouse is really worth, get someone who knows the western corridor to walk it with you and look past the land size. Clearance height, hardstand and power aren't line items on a brochure. They're the reasons one warehouse sells fast at a strong price and another sits on the market wondering why.
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Fairmont only sells and leases industrial property across Melbourne's western corridor and Geelong. That focus is deliberate. It means we know the buyers who are active right now and what they are prepared to pay.