Busy ports drive leasing deals as companies snag warehouse space.

It's been a busy summer for commercial real estate brokers near the booming ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

At least nine lease deals for warehouse and distribution facilities larger than 100,000 square feet closed in the South Bay since the summer began. Together, those deals were worth $28.2 million and total 1.1 million square feet.

The largest was a $21.5 million, 10-year lease closed in Carson. Service Craft Logistics took 338,274 square feet of warehouse and distribution space from Carson Cos.

Shipping company DHL International Gmbh took another 105,654 square feet in Carson in a $4.6 million deal. Also in Carson, Price Transfer Inc., a warehouse and distribution company, took up a similar-sized space. Carson was busiest, but Compton, Long Beach and Rancho Dominguez also logged large deals.

There is so little land available in the area that almost all leasing involves converting former manufacturing space into warehousing, said Mark Mattis, vice president of PM Realty Group in Los Angeles.

"The reason rents are so high and the market is so tight is that the ports of L.A. and Long Beach increased container traffic over last year by about 9 percent," Mattis said.

All that port volume is keeping the real estate business hot, because cargo needs a place to go and logistics companies can't ship it to outlying destinations fast enough, Mattis said.

For the second quarter, industrial asking rents for the South Bay were 59 cents a square foot, 13.5 percent higher than the same period a year ago, according to Grubb & Ellis Co. The vacancy rate was just 2.2 percent, a third lower than the 3.3 percent vacancy rate a year ago.

For some tenants, the market is just getting too expensive.

"I've got some logistics clients that are pushing their facilities out to Ontario, where the prices are significantly lower," Mattis said.