DFW Is The 'Economic Dynamo Of The Country,' But Has It Entered Its Gateway Market Era?

Dallas-Fort Worth real estate is having a moment on the national stage.

The metro reclaimed its crown as the No. 1 market in the Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2026 report from the Urban Land Institute and PwC. It’s also the top market in the country for investment sales, collecting nearly $18B across more than 800 transactions over the first three quarters of the year, according to Avison Young’s latest investment sales report.

“It's the economic dynamo of the country,” Stockdale Capital Partners Managing Director Chase Jensen said.

But behind the accolades, debate remains as to whether DFW has attained true gateway-market status. Those top-tier markets attract investors due to their economic strength, stability and diversity. They also boast large populations and high barriers to entry for new development.

DFW has grown by nearly 36% since 2010, solidifying it as the nation's top growth market, and investors and corporations from around the world are taking notice. The rise of Y’all Street has turned the metro into a financial hub, fueling the demand for top-tier office space. DFW has also emerged as a magnet for corporate relocations, bringing new employers to the growing population. 

This year, Site Selection Magazine chose the region as the best city in the country for headquarters. That’s in large part due to its business-friendly environment and the state’s lack of personal and corporate income taxes. 

However, the same thing that made the region so attractive for corporate relocations and population growth — DFW’s abundance of available space — has proven to be a strike against its claim as a gateway market. The metro lacks the high barriers to entry that investors typically look for in gateway markets.

Commercial real estate’s top-tier markets, like New York and San Francisco, require extensive market knowledge and much higher capital investments to gain entry, given the scarcity of available property. Texas' wealth of deals to be made makes the market knowledge hurdle easier to navigate.

Outside of that negative, Jensen said DFW checks all the other gateway-market requirements in investors’ eyes. Institutional investors, especially, are very bullish on DFW, he said.

“You'd be hard-pressed to find someone to say, ‘I've crossed Dallas off the list,’” Jensen said.

That love from institutional investors is due to DFW being an established market with well-known demand drivers, Avison Young Head of U.S. Investment Sales James Nelson said. Institutional capital loves established cities, while private capital usually favors more pioneering metros or those at an inflection point, he said. 

DFW offers the flight-to-quality opportunities gateway market investors are looking for, as institutional capital has returned to the metro in force after bottoming out at 16% in 2023. Institutional capital accounted for more than 31% of the buyer pool through the first three quarters of 2025, according to Avison Young. 

Denver was the only city in the nation that beat DFW’s 31.2% of institutional investors this year, the firm found. 

“That's a huge vote of confidence that Dallas is right up there as one of the top markets for institutional demand,” Nelson said.

The rise of Y'all Street has contributed to that status as a top national market, thrusting DFW into the same conversations as New York, an established gateway city. While the Big Apple has Wall Street, Y'all Street has turned DFW into another hot spot for the financial services sector. 

Last year, the Dallas-based Texas Stock Exchange raised $120M to create an alternative to the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq Stock Market. TXSE gained approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission in October and plans to launch next year with a headquarters in the heart of the city.

The existing securities exchanges quickly followed the move to the region. The NYSE announced in February that it would reincorporate its Chicago branch in Dallas, and Nasdaq said the next month that it was planning a regional headquarters in the city that would serve the entire Southeast.

The region has also received major commitments from companies such as Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Scotiabank and PennyMac Financial Services that have solidified DFW as a top-tier financial hub.

The financial services sector’s growth has also provided positive momentum for DFW’s office market this year. 

Along with that momentum, DFW has experienced significant housing demand, which has skyrocketed as its population and labor market have grown.

The latest population estimates published by the North Central Texas Council of Governments showed that DFW added more than 234,000 residents over the past year and the region is on pace to overtake Chicago, another gateway market, as the nation’s third-largest metro in the next decade.

Multifamily deals are driving sales volume in DFW, despite the market’s development pipeline cooling off during the third quarter. 

Out of the nearly $18B worth of deals done in the metro this year, more than $8B came across 205 multifamily deals, Nelson said. The San Francisco gateway market was the closest multifamily market to DFW, with $5.3B in sales volume, followed by New York at $4B. 

Construction in the sector was at its lowest level since 2015 during the third quarter. Yet the 30,000 units under construction in DFW are still on par with the largest multifamily pipelines in gateway markets nationwide.

That downturn isn’t concerning on the national stage, as it is just part of the sector’s typical development cycle, according to Anita Kramer, senior vice president and senior director of the ULI Center for Real Estate Economics and Capital Markets.

With the region’s growing population, Moody’s Analytics forecasts continued strong job growth in DFW. 

DFW’s run as the leading investment sales market in the country has attracted a growing proportionate share of foreign capital, Avison Young Senior Director of U.S. Investment Sales Erik Edeen said. International investors have consistently made up less than 10% of the total buyers in DFW, but as the market has expanded, their investment amount has increased with it. 

Despite that increase, DFW's 8.4% average of foreign investment over the past decade significantly trails New York, the nation's No. 1 gateway market for international capital. New York averaged nearly 22% foreign investment since 2015, Edeen said.  

Although foreign capital has not seen a noticeable increase in its share of the buyer pool, Edeen said DFW will be hard to ignore as a safe destination for international investor sources as it continues to lead the nation in transaction volume.

Buoyed by a strong second quarter, the metro is on pace for a more-than-15% increase in dollar volume and a 10% rise in transaction numbers for this year compared to 2024. 

One issue muddying the foreign investment waters in DFW is Senate Bill 17, which went into effect on Sept. 1. The law prevents individuals, companies or government-linked organizations in China, Iran, North Korea and Russia from buying or leasing most real estate in Texas. 

The law was designed to serve as a safeguard against countries included in the federal government's annual threat assessment from gaining influence in the state.

However, it could prove to be a barrier to entry for international investment in the metro and in the state, especially as its scope could be expanded, said Steve Triolet, senior vice president of research and market forecasting at Partners.

“There is a possibility that additional nations could be added because of tariff conflicts,” he said. 

The push to avoid tariffs has also helped North Texas become a popular landing spot for semiconductor chip-manufacturing facilities. 

Texas Instruments announced plans in June to spend more than $47B on semiconductor fabrication plants in Sherman and Richardson. Sherman has also seen multibillion-dollar plants built for international semiconductor companies GlobalWafers and Coherent.

Development demand has accelerated across sectors in the Sun Belt and diminished slightly in some of the coastal markets, Triolet said. He expects DFW to be a major beneficiary of the $350B he estimates is sitting on the sidelines waiting to be deployed in commercial real estate. 

“The dry powder is more fixated on the Sun Belt and … Dallas is one of the big stars,” Triolet said.

That’s why he said DFW has been a gateway market for a few years now.

“How I justify that is I look at the number of relocations [and] the investment that's happening across the board,” he said.

DFW secured 100 new corporate headquarters between 2018 and 2024. That’s nearly 20% of the 560 total moves that happened across the country during that time.

The region’s continued growth in population and employment as well as across the multifamily, office and retail sectors show DFW has the staying power to remain a top-tier city, Edeen said. 

While DFW’s status as a gateway market remains a question mark, the metro's huge transaction volume, stability and continued popularity with institutional and international investors make a strong case for the designation. And as for its stability, Jensen believes the metro’s continued attraction of corporate relocations means it will remain in the gateway market conversation for the foreseeable future.

“Look at all the people that are relocating their global headquarters to Dallas from other cities,” Jensen said. “A large majority of the Fortune 500 companies seem to think it has staying power.”

Kramer agreed that the ingredients are all there. And even if the metro's growth rate slows due to its size, she expects it will remain a hot market for investors and corporate relocations.  

“All indicators are that what's happening now is what will continue to happen,” she said.