Innovative Products in CRE: Warehub

What challenge or gap in the market inspired the creation of this product or service?

Warehub was created in response to a growing opportunity within industrial real estate: unlocking value from idle and fractional space through short-term leasing. As tenant strategies shifted, demand rose for flexible, ready-to-occupy space to support fluctuating inventory, rapid scaling, and market testing. Companies needed faster ways to activate space without long-term risk. At the same time, asset managers were looking for new tools to drive NOI and improve utilization. Warehub connects both sides through a purpose-built digital platform that brings speed, transparency, and execution to industrial leasing.

How does your innovation differ from or improve upon existing solutions in the commercial real estate space?

Other platforms tend to focus on logistics-first solutions centered around 3PL services rather than real estate. In contrast, Warehub is a tailor-made, end-to-end SaaS marketplace designed to manage the entire industrial leasing ecosystem. It has demonstrated success through short-term lease commitments that create value for all parties involved. Unlike models that prioritize fulfillment management, Warehub facilitates direct landlord-to-tenant transactions, integrating dynamic pricing, digital contracting, and supplier activation within a single seamless platform. Likewise, the platform’s capabilities benefit 3PLs as suppliers of surge labor within the supplier network and as tenants, allowing 3PLs to right-size their customer contracts based on compatible terms, reducing cost to their customers and avoiding exposure of backfill if their customer contract expires prior to their lease. 

How has this product or service been adopted by clients or partners, and what measurable results have they experienced?

Our team of national industrial real-estate experts, led by 20-year industrial real estate veteran and founder, James Holbrook of Payson Smith Holbrook, Inc., created Warehub on a mission to reinvent the way industrial real estate works. Having completed more than 60 million s/f of transactions in stealth corporate R&D through his brokerage firm, Holbrook alpha-tested and proved Warehub’s concept, implementing a platform for warehouse selection with automated corporate governance on over 1,300 deals. There, he transacted more than $500 million in lease payments and proved the applicability of an automated complete lifecycle property management platform with an array of institutional and regional landlords.

Partnering with some of the world’s biggest enterprise tenants and landlords, the team saw the friction, confusion, and fragmentation that landlords, tenants, and vendors face firsthand. Holbrook became determined to turn the light of transparency and data on, unifying and orchestrating every step of the lifecycle with a real-time, data-driven experience that’s seamless, transparent, and trusted.

In what ways do you see this innovation reshaping workflows, strategies, or outcomes for commercial real estate professionals?

Warehub is shifting the industrial leasing paradigm from manual, slow processes to a streamlined, technology-driven ecosystem. By digitizing the full leasing lifecycle, it enables asset managers to move beyond reactive management toward strategic, data-backed decision-making. This evolution fosters faster lease execution, improved asset utilization, and smarter risk management. For tenants and suppliers, it introduces a transparent, performance-based marketplace where trust and reputation drive outcomes. Ultimately, Warehub is accelerating industrial real estate’s transformation into a dynamic, efficient, and scalable sector.

How do you envision this product or service evolving over the next few years, and what role will it play in the future of commercial real estate?

Warehub will continue advancing its technology to become a trusted partner to landlords, tenants and suppliers alike. By expanding its data analytics and automation capabilities, the platform will empower asset managers with predictive insights and dynamic portfolio optimization tools. It will foster deeper integration across CRE stakeholders, driving even greater transparency and collaboration. As demand for flexible, short-term industrial space grows, Warehub is positioned to lead the digital transformation, enabling faster transactions, reducing risk, and unlocking new value streams across the commercial real estate landscape.

What is the single most important benefit your innovation delivers to firms, tenants, or communities?

Warehub’s greatest value lies in its ability to unlock agility and efficiency across the industrial leasing ecosystem. For landlords, it transforms underutilized space into reliable income streams with enhanced asset visibility. Tenants gain access to flexible, low-risk space that supports growth and market testing without long-term commitments. Suppliers and insurers benefit from a transparent, performance-based environment that rewards quality and speed. Together, this creates a balanced, scalable marketplace that drives faster, smarter leasing decisions and supports the evolving needs of modern logistics and supply chains. 

Further, by shortening average leasing downtime across industrial portfolios, the Warehub’s Market Vacancy Efficiency & Avoided Construction (MVEC) initiative has the potential to lower U.S. market vacancy from 7.5% to 5.6%, filling an additional 370 million s/fof existing space without building new facilities. This single efficiency could avoid over 20 million metric tons of CO2 emissions over five years, including both embodied and operational sources. Preventing 370 million ft² of unnecessary new builds avoids the equivalent of removing over 4.5 million cars from the road. “This is one of the rare moments when ESG goals and financial performance perfectly align,” said James Holbrook. “By filling existing buildings faster, we help tenants reduce costs, landlords improve IRR, and enable the nation to cut millions of tons of carbon – all through better data.”