Industrial real estate is often seen as the least glamorous slice of the property sector, but investors are increasingly looking at China's warehouses as a good place to park their money as their sexier cousins lose some of their allure.

Property consultants and logistics property developers said there had been an upturn in investment interest in logistics and business parks in recent months as a way to tap into the growth of e-commerce and rising domestic consumption. Some investors are also sobering up to slimmer returns from the residential, office and shopping mall sectors, where prices are fast rising to unattractive levels.

To be sure, most of the investment deals in recent months in China were still in the commercial and residential sectors. But concerns over a supply glut in the office and shopping mall sectors in some Chinese cities as well as policy volatility in the residential sector have compelled some investors to look for alternative real-estate investments.

'Some investment interest is being directed to the bottom of the food chain, the dirtiest, smelliest, least attractive of all real estate,' said Stuart Ross, head of industrial China for Jones Lang LaSalle JLL +0.07% . 'We definitely had more phones ringing to ask about industrial property in the last six months compared to the last 12 months.'

Sovereign-wealth funds, pension plans, and private-equity players have been making enquiries about industrial real estate in China, attracted by the heady growth in the e-commerce industry, consultants and developers said.

'It's consistent with the global trend of renewed interest in the logistics asset class,' said Philip Pearce, managing director at Goodman Group GMG.AU -0.93% China. 'Prices in other asset classes have gone up, and yields have compressed a bit, but not in industrial property.'

Rents in the logistics space have grown at about a nationwide average of 5% to 10% a year in the past few years, as increasing demand outpaces supply, said Colliers International Research. The compounded average growth rates of China's office and retail rents from 2007 to 2012, based on 10 major city samples, were 4.62% and 4.41%, respectively.

Australian-listed property developer Goodman Group, which first invested in warehouses in China in 2009, has 12 logistics projects, mainly in Shanghai and nearby cities, as well as in the Bohai Bay region. It has a stake in a $1 billion property fund in China, Goodman China Logistics CLGZF -12.09% Holding, which is an 80/20 joint venture between Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Goodman.

'We are still expanding, and we've got a number of new developments under way,' said Goodman's Mr. Pearce. 'Right now the majority of our expansion comes from developing our own land bank, because it's hard to get existing investment grade products.'

China's State Council, or cabinet, said in February that the country needed to raise the efficiency of logistics and transport, and highlighted the need to streamline such operations while encouraging the use of more environment-friendly vehicles as well as 'green' warehouses and business parks.

The cabinet has also said that warehouses need to meet environmental standards, including having improved management and storage procedures for toxic chemicals, explosives and radioactive material