Brennan Expands Midwest Footprint With $77M Buy

Brennan Investment Group has acquired an 801,728-square-foot industrial collection encompassing 13 shallow-bay industrial assets in metro Chicago and Milwaukee.

InvestCorp sold 11 of the assets for $64 million, while Farallon Capital Management sold the remaining two for $13 million, as reported by The Real Deal. Bank of America funded Brennan’s $77 million deal with a $59 million loan.

The properties are in Chicagoland submarkets such as Interstate 55, Lake County, Northern DuPage and Central Kane/I-88, as well as Milwaukee’s Airport and Northwest. Their purchase adds to Brennan’s Midwestern portfolio that had already encompassed 28 million square feet prior to the deal.

The average warehouse in Brennan’s newly bought portfolio spans 62,000 square feet, a property subset witnessing strong tenant demand. The firm plans to continue its Midwest expansion with further shallow-bay purchases in 2026, according to a company statement.

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In fact, this wasn’t Brennan’s first acquisition of the year. Earlier this month, the firm acquired another industrial portfolio, a 10-asset assemblage totaling 482,312 square feet throughout six submarkets in four states, including New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Florida.

Brennan has purchased or developed $6.5 billion in industrial real estate across 30 states since 2010. Its current portfolio spans 29 states and totals roughly 60 million square feet. Just last year alone, it acquired approximately 3.8 million square feet of industrial space, according to Yardi Matrix.

Midwest’s affordable industrial markets

The midwestern industrial markets retained their accessibility from a pricing standpoint. Nearly all metros posted sale prices below the national average of $134 per square foot during the first 11 months of 2025, according to a Yardi Matrix report. The sole exception was Detroit ($598.71 per square foot), where the sale of General Motors’ battery manufacturing facility elevated the average figure.

All other metros were below the national figure. Columbus, Ohio, led with $104.5 per square foot, followed by the Twin Cities, Minn. ($100.3), Indianapolis ($91.6) and Chicago ($89.23), the same source shows. In terms of sales volume, Detroit was clearly ahead with $4.7 billion across industrial deals, followed by Chicago ($2.6 billion), Columbus ($1.3 billion) and the Twin Cities ($1.2 billion).

Midwest rents were likewise lower than the national average of $8.76 per square foot. The Twin Cities ranked first ($7.51 per square foot), ahead of Detroit ($7.16) and Chicago ($6.57). In terms of vacancy, five of the seven midwestern markets surpassed the national average of 9.7 percent, while metros such as Chicagoland (13.9 percent) and Columbus (11.8 percent) were the outliers.