How to Build a Warehouse (Industrial) Pro Forma

A warehouse industrial pro forma starts with base rent — leasable square footage times the contract rent per square foot — and then adjusts for who pays operating expenses. On a single-tenant NNN warehouse, the tenant reimburses opex, so landlord NOI is roughly base rent less any non-reimbursable or structural items.

The single most consequential line in the model is the lease structure. Under a triple-net (NNN) lease, the tenant pays property taxes, insurance, and maintenance directly or via reimbursement — those expenses pass through at net zero, so they do not reduce landlord NOI. Under a gross lease, the landlord absorbs the same expenses and they cut straight into NOI. Two warehouses with identical base rent can produce very different NOI purely because of lease structure, which is why you confirm the lease type before anything else. See the NNN single-tenant cap rate teardown for how this flows into pricing.

The discipline on the expense side is to resist double-counting. If an expense is reimbursed, show it as income and as expense so the pass-through nets to zero — do not simply drop it. That keeps the statement honest if the lease later converts or a renewal renegotiates the structure. The only items that genuinely reduce NOI on a clean NNN deal are non-reimbursables: structural reserves the landlord keeps, certain management costs, and any vacancy assumed on rollover.

Finally, separate the going-in picture from the projection. The pro forma below is year one at takeover. Rent escalations, expense inflation, and lease rollover belong in the multi-year cash flow, not the going-in NOI you capitalize. Review the broader NNN lease mechanics before locking assumptions, and read more playbooks on the industrial hub.

Worked example — 100,000 sf NNN warehouse

Formula: NOI = base rent − non-reimbursables = $700,000 − $0 = $700,000. Under a gross lease where the landlord absorbed, say, $120,000 of opex, NOI would instead be $580,000 on the same rent.

The discipline: on a clean NNN warehouse, NOI ≈ base rent — but always book the reimbursement so the pass-through is visible and survives a lease change.