Warehouse space has gotten hard to find near Southern California’s two main international airports, driving up rent for logistics firms and retailers trying to keep up with a boom in online shopping.

As a result, industrial landlords near Los Angeles and Ontario international airports are commanding some of the biggest “rent premiums” in the country, a recent analysis by commercial brokerage CBRE says.

Buildings with at least 75,000 square feet within five miles of LAX commanded rents that were 12.9% above the average for the L.A. market as a whole last year.

And space within about three miles of Ontario International Airport was renting 12.2% above the average for the Inland Empire market.

Those two areas had the fourth- and fifth-highest rent premiums in the nation, right after buildings near Chicago O’Hare, Oakland and Dallas Fort Worth international airports.

The O’Hare submarket is the priciest in the nation, with a 47% premium over the average rent for the Chicago warehouse market, CBRE analysts reported.

Oakland’s airport market is second in the nation, with a 32% rent premium, followed by DFW, where “mid-cities” landlords collect 22.1% more rent than the typical Dallas-area warehouse owner.

On average, industrial and logistics markets near major U.S. cargo airports are commanding a 13% rent premium over the broader market, the CBRE report said.

“The e-commerce phenomenon got compressed from a five-year window to a six-month window,” said Tres Reid, a CBRE executive vice president based in El Segundo. “You got a lot of activity in the industrial world, and a lot of it surrounded the airports.”

Online shopping totaled from $792 billion to $861 billion last year, according to estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau and online shopping research firm Digital Commerce 360. That’s up between 32% to 44% from 2019.

With e-commerce booming, industrial property emerged as the nation’s most sought-after real estate sector, especially in congested, urban areas close to homes and businesses.

For example, Amazon – the biggest industrial space consumer in both the region and the nation — tripled its number of “last-mile” delivery hubs in Southern California from nine to 32 last year and added 5.3 million square feet to its warehouse network.

Nationwide, Amazon boosted its logistics network 50% in 2020, the company reported in February.

Walmart has unveiled plans to create 100 logistics hubs at the back or adjacent to existing stores. And a host of other retailers — from apparel to home-improvement — are expanding their delivery capacity.

Transportation and warehouse employment also is up as a result of this growth, climbing 7% in the region to nearly 409,000 jobs as of February, state employment figures show.

“We’re all sitting at home hitting buy, buy, buy,” Reid said. “Trying to find a building right now is pretty hard to do.”

Airport-adjacent buildings are more in demand by companies handling products from overseas, the CBRE report said.

“Shippers and logistics operators use air cargo to quickly import perishable or high-cost goods from distant locations, such as smartphones from China, salmon from Scotland and roses from Ecuador,” the report said.

Third-party logistics operators were the most active occupiers of airport-close industrial space in 2020, accounting for 29.6% of total leasing in airport submarkets, the CBRE report said.

Retailers and wholesalers were the second-biggest group, accounting for 24.4% of space occupied last year, followed by e-commerce companies at 16.0%.

The trend is projected to continue, with demand and rent at airport-adjacent buildings “set to further take flight” in the years ahead, the report said.