Prologis may own big industrial warehouses, but it will benefit from a recovery in the U.S. housing market, chairman Hamid Moghadam told CNBC's "Street Signs" on Wednesday.
"If you look at our really large buildings, we're 100 percent leased," the industrial REIT executive said. "If you look at our smaller buildings – under 100,000 feet – we're 90 percent leased. That's the sweet spot of the housing market."
Moghadam said these are the buildings that tile companies, counter top firms and appliance people rent.
"As the housing market comes back," Moghadam said, "if we get in the 1 million 1.2 million housing starts, we'll see a surge in that segment of the market. When that sector comes back our occupancies will continue to increase."
(Read More: The Housing Recovery Continues)
Rents should also start to come back this year. After a 2.4 percent average decline in 2012, the leases that it signed at the height of the market in 2008 are rolling lower. But Moghadam said "This is the last of the high rents that are getting marked to market."
Moghadam also said the rest of the world is growing faster than the U.S. with the exception of Japan and Europe. And China, Brazil and Mexico are doing extremely well.
"Across the globe, it's the strongest we've seen in the past few years," the Prologis chairman said.
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