By Alika Cosner, SIOR
Senior Vice President, Industrial & Investment Services, Colliers

In commercial real estate, comps matter. They help set expectations, inform pricing, support underwriting, and guide negotiations. But in a tight, nuanced market like Hawaii industrial, relying on comps alone can lead to bad assumptions.

A comp can tell you what a deal closed at. It rarely tells you why. That missing context matters.

“I think one of the mistakes I see is in dealing with comps,” said Alika Cosner, Senior Vice President at Colliers. “Whether it’s landlords or investors, they might hear of a comp — ‘this deal closed at $1.60 base, five-year term, two months free rent’ — but sometimes they don’t know the full story. The comp doesn’t tell the full story.”

That’s where the market can get misread.

A single high-rate lease can quickly become the number everyone wants to anchor to. A landlord hears a space leased at $1.60 per square foot and assumes their property should achieve the same. An investor plugs that number into a pro forma and starts modeling returns around it. A tenant sees the comp and assumes the whole market has moved.

But that $1.60 deal may not represent the market. It may represent urgency.

“They could have overpaid because they got kicked out and had to be out in 30 days in a tight market,” Cosner said. “That might affect your pro forma if you assume every deal is going to be at $1.60. That might have just been the unicorn guy who was super desperate.”

In other words: not every comp is a clean comp.

Motivation changes the number

One of the biggest hidden variables in any deal is motivation.

Why did the tenant take the space? Why did the landlord accept the terms? What pressure was happening behind the scenes?

A landlord may be willing to take a slightly lower rate to get to full occupancy before refinancing or selling. They may be covering operating expenses on the last vacant space and simply want income flowing again. Or they may know that the space is the toughest one in the project to lease — maybe the layout is awkward, the location is less desirable, or the access is not ideal.

As Cosner put it, sometimes the landlord’s position is: “This is my last space, and I know it’s the worst one. I don’t need to knock it out of the park. I just need it leased.”

That deal may show up as a market comp. But the reasoning behind it tells a different story.

Tenant motivation can be just as important. Some tenants wait too long and assume their landlord will renew them because that’s what happened the last two times. Then the landlord decides not to renew — maybe because the tenant pays late, abuses parking, or no longer fits the ownership strategy.

Suddenly, that tenant has 30 days to find a new home.

“They’re highly motivated,” Cosner said. “They’ll take anything and they’ll pay anything.”

Other times, the urgency is driven by business growth. A company picks up a new line of business, equipment is already en route on a boat, and they suddenly need another 10,000 square feet near their existing warehouse. That kind of business pressure rarely shows up in a lease comp — but it absolutely affects what the tenant is willing to pay.

The deal terms behind the deal

Headline rent is only one piece of the transaction.

A lease comp may not show termination rights, signage rights, additional parking, yard area, assignment and sublease flexibility, personal guarantee negotiations, expansion rights, or rights of first refusal to purchase. But each of those items can materially affect the economics of the deal.

“If you want flexibility, you’re going to pay for it,” Cosner said. “A termination right is not going to show up in the comp.”

That matters because two leases at the same base rent may not be equal. One tenant may have negotiated a valuable termination option. Another may have received extra yard area or premium signage. Another may have avoided a personal guarantee or secured expansion rights that give them long-term flexibility.

The comp may look the same on the surface. The value traded in the negotiation may be completely different.

Tenant improvements and landlord work create another layer. In some deals, the landlord may agree to complete the work and charge a higher rent. In others, the landlord may offer free rent and require the tenant to handle paint, flooring, repairs, or buildout.

“You don’t always know why the abatement is there,” Cosner said. “Landlord and tenant contributions don’t show up all the time.”

That’s why a base rent number without the rest of the story can be misleading.

Market changes can distort assumptions

Another common misconception: assuming a trend line explains the whole market.

If vacancy rises, people assume rents must soften. If a high lease rate gets reported, people assume every landlord can achieve it. If a property trades at a surprising number, people assume that number resets the market.

But Hawaii’s industrial market is too constrained — and too property-specific — for broad assumptions to work.

Sometimes rates appear to shift because the quality of available space has changed. If the best spaces are already leased, the remaining inventory may be less functional, less accessible, or more expensive to operate. Lower pricing may not mean the market is weakening. It may mean the remaining spaces are harder to lease.

External changes matter too. Rail construction, new development, traffic impacts, zoning changes, or new neighboring uses can all affect a property’s value and usability. A new neighbor, for example, can change the experience of a property quickly — especially if the use brings noise, odor, traffic, waste, or parking pressure.

Those factors don’t always show up neatly in the comp set. But they matter to tenants, landlords, and investors making decisions.

Why local context matters

This is where active market participation becomes valuable.

“We do the most deals in the market,” said Cosner, who leads the No.1 industrial commercial real estate team in Hawaii, based on 2025 leasing and sales volume. “That gives us so much insight into the data points and the trends. We give clients clarity. We give them peace of mind that they’re making the right decision.”

That clarity comes from knowing not just what closed, but what happened inside the deal. Why one tenant paid more. Why one landlord accepted less. Why one space leased quickly and another sat. Why a certain rate is repeatable — or why it was a one-off.

For landlords, that context helps set realistic pricing, protect occupancy, and make better decisions about concessions. For investors, it supports stronger underwriting and avoids overbuilding a pro forma around an outlier. For tenants, it helps separate real market pressure from anecdotal noise.

The comp matters. But the story behind the comp matters more.

In a market as tight and nuanced as Hawaii industrial, the smartest decisions come from looking beyond the headline number — and understanding the motivations, concessions, property conditions, and market forces that shaped the deal.

Alika Cosner is a Senior Vice President at Colliers and one of Hawaii’s leading industrial real estate brokers, with nearly 20 years of experience in leasing and investment sales. Known for his hands-on approach and deep market insight, Alika and his team advise industrial investors, owners and occupiers across the islands.