A tenant calls with a business, not a rent question: a contractor who needs a bay for two vans, a restaurant operator who needs a hood and a grease trap, a distributor who needs trucks to turn around. If you cannot translate that business into building specifications in ten minutes, you cannot tell which spaces to show.

Industrial and retail get equal time here. Office gets one line: it is usually quoted on a full-service gross basis. This lesson builds on Lesson 1, Leasing as a Business. For the investor view, see Course 17, Flex and Small-Bay Industrial and Course 16, Multi-Tenant Strip Retail.

The four industrial space types

Labels are used loosely, so describe actual specs. Ranges are conventions, not standards.

Small-bay flex: multi-tenant suites of roughly 1,000 to 10,000 SF (guides vary), about 14 to 24 ft clear, grade-level doors, some office. Contractors, tradespeople and online sellers lease it.
Bulk warehouse and distribution: 28 to 36 ft clear or more, wide columns, dock-high doors, deep truck court. Site pages cite 50,000 to 250,000 SF. Logistics operators and distributors lease it.
Industrial outdoor storage (IOS): a fenced, paved or graveled yard with little or no building, leased by the acre to truck, trailer, equipment and container users.
Light manufacturing: about 18 to 24 ft clear, heavier power, more office. Light-industrial bays on site pages run about 1,500 to 5,000 SF.

Clear height is the distance from floor to the lowest obstruction, such as a sprinkler head or duct, not the roof deck. IOS is priced on land, so ask whether a quote is per acre or per SF of land, and whether it covers the usable yard or the gross parcel. Illustrative: one acre is 43,560 SF, so an invented $0.40 per SF per month is 43,560 x $0.40 = $17,424 per acre per month, or $209,088 per year. MaxLife Commercial pages publish IOS rents on bases that do not match, so compare yard quotes on one base only. Whether Florida's remaining sales tax on storing motor vehicles reaches a truck yard is unsettled, so ask a CPA.

See the industrial hub, light industrial, flex and IOS.

The industrial spec sheet a tenant asks about

Ask the tenant first ("how many dock doors do you need?"), then read the building. Ranges are broker-guide conventions.

Spec	What to confirm	Why it matters
Clear height	Lowest obstruction at the lowest roof point. Flex 14 to 24 ft, distribution 28 to 36 ft	Sets rack height
Column spacing	Grid and bay depth. 50 ft or wider is common in bulk	Racks and machines must fit
Dock-high door	Count, size (often 8 x 10 ft), leveler, seal	Loads trailers at truck-bed height
Grade-level and drive-in doors	Count, size (12 x 14 ft is common)	Vans and forklifts drive in
Truck court	Depth (120 ft or more is cited), gate	Trucks turn off the street
Trailer parking	Paved spaces	Occupiers want spares
Power	Amps, voltage, phase, spare capacity. Site pages cite 400 to 800 A for flex, 800 to 1,200 A for shell distribution	Machines stall without it
Sprinklers	Standard or early suppression fast response (ESFR), design basis	Limits what is stored, and how high
Slab	Thickness, cracks, load (125 to 150 psf is cited)	Racking and machines load the floor
Yard and outside storage	Lease rights, paving, fence, zoning	Many yards cannot legally hold storage
Office percentage	Office SF, conditioned or not	Drives cost and can change code use
HVAC	Warehouse or office only, age, who replaces it	Big-ticket item in a net lease
Lighting	Fixture type, light levels	Safety and utility cost

Dock ratios range from one door per 5,000 SF to one per 15,000 SF, so the tenant's door count drives the search. Two topics need an expert. Sprinklers: a system is designed for a commodity class and storage arrangement, so a tenant that changes what it stores can outgrow it. Have the tenant's fire protection engineer or insurer review it before signing. Power: amps alone mislead. Three-phase kVA is 1.732 x volts x amps / 1,000, so 800 A at 480 V is about 665 kVA and 200 A is about 166 kVA. An electrician sizes real loads, and the lease should say who pays for a utility upgrade. See Three-Phase Power for Industrial Property.

Retail space types and specs

Single-tenant buildings and pad sites sit alone, often with a drive-thru. Strip center space is inline (between neighbors) or end-cap (the corner unit, with extra frontage). Anchored centers carry a grocer or big-box tenant that draws traffic. See strip center, pad site and grocery-anchored retail.

Spec	What to confirm	Why it matters
Frontage and visibility	What a driver sees from road and aisle	Drive-by sales depend on it
Traffic counts	Florida DOT daily count for the road segment, plus median cuts and signals	Counts measure roads, not customers
Parking ratio	Spaces per 1,000 SF, shared parking, code minimum	Busy uses need more spaces
Signage and pylon panels	Storefront sign, panel position, sign plan in the lease	Panels are limited
Drive-thru	Queue length, lane geometry, city stacking rules	The brand may require a set queue
Restaurant infrastructure	Grease interceptor, hood, exhaust, make-up air	Retrofits are costly
Shell versus second-generation	Delivery condition in a lease exhibit	Shell needs full build-out. Second-generation was built for another tenant
Co-tenancy	Rent cut or exit if an anchor leaves	Protects tenants reliant on anchors
Exclusives	Uses promised to other tenants, and to yours	Can block or protect a use
Percentage rent	Rate, sales definition, breakpoint	Extra rent above the breakpoint

For restaurants, the Florida Building Code, Plumbing, requires an interceptor or removal device for grease-laden waste, local utilities add rules, and the state generally reviews plans for a newly built or remodeled food service establishment. Confirm locally.

The natural breakpoint is base rent divided by the percentage rate, and Lesson 5 works an example. See Percentage Rent Lease.

Measuring space

A listing's square footage is a claim. Usable square feet is what the tenant occupies. Rentable square feet (RSF) is usable area plus a share of common areas, and the load factor is (rentable minus usable) divided by usable. Retail is generally measured as gross leasable area (GLA), the area leased to one occupant with no common-area share. Retail tenants pay for common areas through NNN charges (taxes, insurance and common area maintenance, or CAM). Industrial load factors are usually smaller than office ones.

The Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) publishes the measurement standards. Per its standards page at the time of writing, Z65.2 covers industrial and flex (editions 2012, 2019 and 2025, with industry summaries saying the 2025 edition can count qualifying yards and truck courts), Z65.5 covers retail and produces GLA, and Z65.1 covers office (the 2024 edition replaced the 2017 one many leases cite). Z65.4 is multi-family and hospitality, not retail. Confirm editions on BOMA's site before quoting.

Why lease, appraiser and survey SF differ. A lease states rentable area or GLA under some standard and edition. The county record is a tax figure, often copied from old permits. An appraiser may use gross building area. A survey shows footprint, not floor area. Code documents measure to the inside face of exterior walls.

How to verify before quoting:

Get the standard, edition and date in writing, and ask whether someone field-measured it and whether the yard, covered dock or mezzanine is counted.
Compare the lease number to as-builts and the county record.
Suggest a remeasurement clause that caps any adjustment and says whether rent and CAM share change.
Use a licensed architect on material deals, and never say "certified" without knowing who certified it.

Illustrative arithmetic: an invented 10,000 usable SF suite with an assumed 8% load factor is 10,000 x 1.08 = 10,800 RSF. At $9.00 per RSF per year, rent is 10,800 x $9.00 = $97,200, or $97,200 / 10,000 = $9.72 per usable SF.

Use and zoning: verify before you show

"It is zoned industrial" does not mean anything goes. Make permitted use a lease contingency and never promise it. Follow five steps.

Get the parcel ID and zoning district from the property appraiser.
Read the jurisdiction's use table for the exact use: outside storage, light manufacturing or restaurant.
Check conditions, special exceptions and overlays.
Confirm in writing. Orange County issues a zoning verification letter for a fee, and it can take weeks. It confirms zoning, and may not confirm a tenant's specific use.
Check business paperwork. The City of Orlando pairs a certificate of use with a business tax receipt, and Volusia County requires fire review for a change of use.

Then check private restrictions. Deed restrictions and recorded declarations can prohibit uses or limit outside storage or restaurants, and whether an old one still binds is a legal question. Other tenants' exclusive-use clauses can bind the landlord. Ask for lease abstracts and estoppel certificates (signed statements of a lease's status). See the Lease Abstract Checklist.

Certificate of occupancy, change of use and permits

A certificate of occupancy (CO) is the building official's sign-off that a building may be occupied for a stated use. Under the Florida Building Code, changing occupancy needs a permit, and use groups include storage, factory, business, mercantile and assembly (restaurants). A warehouse becoming a showroom or a retail bay becoming a restaurant can trigger fire, plumbing, accessibility and parking review.

Tenant improvements such as walls, electrical, plumbing and fire alarm work generally need permits. The lease should say who pulls them, who pays fees, and what happens if a permit or CO is delayed. The 8th Edition (2023) code is in force, and a 9th Edition is reported to take effect December 31, 2026, so ask which applies. Rules differ across Orange, Seminole, Osceola, Lake, Polk, Brevard and Volusia, so pull each jurisdiction's zoning code and permit checklist, and route legal points to your broker of record and a Florida attorney.

Central Florida context

Orlando industrial vacancy: 7.2% (JLL, Q4 2025) in the Q1 2026 report, while other MaxLife Commercial pages show roughly 4% to 6%. Cite source and date.
Lake Mary and Sanford last-mile industrial: $9 to $11.50 per SF NNN, a MaxLife Commercial estimate in the last-mile guide.
Orlando inline retail: $18 to $35 per SF NNN, premium and end-cap $40 and up, a MaxLife Commercial estimate in the Orlando retail guide. Retail vacancy there is about 3.7% (Q1 2025 data, so look for newer), and strip center pass-throughs are cited at $4 to $8 per SF, always an estimate.
Space Coast leases: about 6 warehouse and 17 retail listings in a snapshot dated 2026-04-26. Counts drift.

Published rents are directional estimates, not audited data, so pull current comparable leases before quoting. For Seminole County, start with Sanford, and Commercial Listings for live inventory.

The touring checklist

The full list is the Commercial Property Tour Checklist.

Check	Industrial	Retail
Measurements	Clear height at lowest point, column grid	Frontage, depth, road visibility
Access	Dock and grade doors, levelers, truck court	Entrances, delivery path, drive-thru queue
Systems	Power panel, sprinkler type, HVAC age, lighting	Restrooms, HVAC, grease interceptor, hood
Floor and roof	Slab cracks, roof age and leaks	Roof age and leaks, floor condition
Outside	Yard, paving, fence, trailer parking	Parking count, sign positions, pylon panel
Rights	Yard use, expansion, right of first refusal (ROFR)	Exclusives, co-tenancy, anchor status
Paper	Zoning, CO on file, open permits	Zoning, CO on file, open permits
Risk	Flood zone, environmental history	Flood zone, prior uses, neighbors' restrictions

A worked example (illustrative calls, invented tenants and numbers)

All rents, sizes and charges are invented for arithmetic, not MaxLife Commercial results or market quotes. Florida no longer taxes commercial rent for periods beginning October 1, 2025, so there is no tax line (Lesson 7).

Call 1: 12,000 SF small-bay unit in Sanford

Dana runs a fabrication shop and asks about an invented unit.

"Before I send anything, how many trucks or vans load each day, and any full trailers?" Ask, then stop talking.

Dana: "Two box trucks and a forklift, one trailer a week." "So probably one dock-high door and two grade-level doors. What power do you need, and do you store anything outside?"

Dana: "Three-phase, about 400 amps, and some racks outside." "Outside storage is a zoning question, so I will check the use table first. By Thursday at 4 p.m. I will send the panel, voltage, spare capacity and clear height at the lowest point. When does your lease end?" End on a dated next step.

With an assumed $10.50 per SF per year NNN and an assumed NNN estimate of $2.75 per SF:

Base rent: 12,000 x $10.50 = $126,000 per year, or $126,000 / 12 = $10,500 per month.
NNN charges: 12,000 x $2.75 = $33,000 per year, or $2,750 per month.
Total: $126,000 + $33,000 = $159,000 per year, or $13,250 per month.
Measurement check: the landlord says 12,000 RSF and 11,400 usable. Load factor = (12,000 - 11,400) / 11,400 = 5.26%. Base rent per usable SF = $126,000 / 11,400 = $11.05.

Log note: one dock and two grade doors, 400 A to confirm, load factor 5.26%, outside storage and fabrication use to check. Send by Thursday.

Call 2: 2,400 SF end-cap in a Seminole County strip center

Marcus wants a fast-casual restaurant. Assume $28.00 per SF NNN and an $8.00 per SF estimate for CAM, tax and insurance, the same 2,400 SF retail deal that Lesson 5 prices, in an invented 24,000 SF center with 120 parking spaces.

"Restaurants live or die on the kitchen. Is this second-generation space, and did the last tenant leave a grease interceptor and a hood?" Do not assume it. Verify what the space has.

Marcus: "Great. What about parking?" "The center has 120 spaces for 24,000 SF, which is 120 / 24 = 5.0 per 1,000 SF. A restaurant may need more under city code, so I will ask the city before we tour. I will call you Friday at 10 a.m." Concede what you do not know, then give a date.

Base rent: 2,400 x $28.00 = $67,200 per year, or $5,600 per month.
Charges: pro rata share is 2,400 / 24,000 = 10%. The pool is $8.00 x 24,000 = $192,000, and 10% is $19,200 per year, or $1,600 per month.
Total: $67,200 + $19,200 = $86,400 per year, or $7,200 per month.

Log note: confirm condition, interceptor, hood, city parking rule, exclusives, pylon panel and whether the CO covers restaurant use. Call Friday.

Key takeaways

Translate the tenant's operation into specs first, then read the building
Clear height is measured to the lowest obstruction, not the roof deck
Route sprinkler, power and slab questions to engineers
Retail is measured as gross leasable area with no load factor, while industrial and office use rentable area
Ask which BOMA standard and edition produced a square footage, and remember retail is Z65.5, not Z65.4
Verify the use table, deed restrictions, exclusives and certificate of occupancy before you show, and make permitted use a lease contingency
Cite the source and date on every market figure, and show the discrepancy instead of picking one

Next: Lesson 3 walks the tenant rep process from engagement to signed proposal.

Industrial and Retail Space Basics for Leasing Agents