Honolulu-based Watumull Properties Corp. bought the largest industrial building to change hands in the Portland-Vancouver market last quarter at the lowest per-foot price of any major trade, landing a 261,540-square-foot Vancouver manufacturing plant from Hood Packaging Corp. just as the surrounding submarket posted the steepest occupancy losses in Clark County.

Watumull Properties Corp. paid $17,800,000 for the industrial building at 1401 W Fourth Plain Blvd in Vancouver, Wash., acquiring the property from Hood Packaging Corp. during the second quarter of 2026, according to Kidder Mathews research. The price pencils out to $68.06 per square foot across 261,540 square feet.

By size, it was the biggest industrial asset to trade in the Portland-Vancouver metro during the quarter. By price, it was in a category of its own. The quarter’s headline deal, the 496,000-square-foot data center campus at 4915 and 4975 NE Starr Blvd in Hillsboro that Flexential bought from T5 Data Centers for $223,000,000, cleared at $449.60 per square foot, according to Kidder Mathews. Watumull bought at roughly one-seventh that basis. The next-cheapest significant sale of the quarter, 118,280 square feet on North Basin Avenue in Portland’s Swan Island submarket, traded at $142.88 per square foot, more than double what Watumull paid. DCI International’s purchase of 204,158 square feet in Wilsonville came in at $151.84 per square foot, and Meadowlark Industrial Properties paid $192.37 per square foot for 154,646 square feet in Cornelius.

That gap says as much about the asset as about the market. A price near $68 per square foot sits far below the cost of building new industrial space in the region, and it typically reflects older manufacturing product with layout, clear height or loading configurations that limit its appeal to modern distribution tenants. Kidder Mathews cautioned in its second-quarter outlook that the recovery will vary sharply by submarket, and that newer facilities and well-located distribution corridors are better positioned than the rest of the stock. The firm also noted that concessions continued to pressure effective rents even as newer Class A product held premium pricing.

Watumull is buying into a submarket that just absorbed the region’s hardest blow. CBD/West Vancouver recorded negative 192,601 square feet of net absorption in the second quarter and negative 174,204 square feet year to date, the weakest showing of any Clark County submarket, according to Kidder Mathews. Leasing activity in the 6,119,616-square-foot submarket totaled a mere 1,890 square feet for the entire quarter. Direct vacancy stands at 5.0 percent, total vacancy at 5.5 percent and availability at 7.4 percent, with asking rents of $0.86 per square foot per month on a triple-net basis.

The rest of Clark County went the other way. The county logged positive 345,587 square feet of net absorption in the quarter and positive 527,725 square feet year to date, the strongest performance in the region, according to Kidder Mathews. Across 31,634,203 square feet of inventory, direct vacancy is 7.1 percent, total vacancy 7.4 percent and availability 10 percent, with asking rents averaging $1.04. Kidder Mathews reported that Vancouver’s south and west submarkets continue to draw steady tenant interest on the strength of cross-border access, transportation connectivity and a favorable business environment. Hazel Dell/Salmon Creek posted positive 269,353 square feet of absorption and Orchards positive 115,510 square feet, while Clark County Outlying captured a 117,415-square-foot Ferguson lease at 5504 S 11th St in Ridgefield from landlord EQT Real Estate.

Against the broader Portland market, Clark County’s numbers look like an outlier. Total availability across the metro hit a record 11.1 percent, up 228 basis points from 8.8 percent a year earlier, according to Kidder Mathews. Direct vacancy climbed to 7.0 percent from 5.4 percent. Net absorption was negative 867,770 square feet in the quarter and negative 1,748,405 square feet year to date, against positive 820,458 square feet through the same period of 2025. Leasing activity of 1,487,030 square feet was the lowest quarterly volume since 2008. Sublease availability has ballooned from under 1 million square feet in 2022 to nearly 5 million square feet. Average asking rents held at $0.88, up 3.5 percent year over year.

The manufacturing base behind buildings like 1401 W Fourth Plain is shrinking. Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro manufacturing employment fell to 111,400 jobs as of May 2026, down 4.8 percent year over year and a loss of 5,600 positions, according to Kidder Mathews citing U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Hood Packaging’s own retreat fits that pattern. The company shuttered its Vancouver paper packaging operation effective Aug. 1, 2025, displacing 94 workers, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filing reported by Packaging Dive in June 2025. Hood had acquired the plant from Bemis Company in 2014, The Columbian reported. Selling the real estate converts a dormant asset into cash.

For Watumull, the trade is familiar. The family-held company owns commercial property across Hawaii and in select mainland markets, and it has bought shuttered Oregon manufacturing space before. In December 2015 it paid $7,500,000, or roughly $36.53 per square foot, for the 205,303-square-foot former Blount International plant at 3901 SE Naef Road in Milwaukie, according to Kidder Mathews, then marketed the building to manufacturing and assembly users who could reuse its existing infrastructure rather than build it.

Whether that playbook works a second time depends on demand that has not yet shown up. Kidder Mathews expects the market to gradually work through existing available space as new construction slows, but flagged elevated sublease inventory as a competitive factor that will give occupiers broad options and slow the pace of vacancy improvement. Competition is still coming online in Clark County, including Panattoni’s 583,318-square-foot Mt Vista Logistics project in Orchards, due in the fourth quarter of 2026. At $68.06 per square foot, Watumull has bought itself room to wait.