The 4 CRE Trends That Defined 2025 For Dallas-Fort Worth
Growth was the common denominator for nearly all commercial real estate sectors in Dallas-Fort Worth throughout the past year.
The metro emerged as a growing financial hub with an expanding population that fueled retail growth, the multifamily pipeline and development in the region’s southern sector.
DFW has grown by nearly 36% since 2010 and is on pace to overtake Chicago as the nation’s third-largest metro in the next decade, according to the latest population estimates published by the North Central Texas Council of Governments.
That growth was also noticed outside the region.
DFW's new residents have expanded the region’s educated workforce, offering companies the talent they need in a convenient, central location in the U.S. That has helped attract more financial services companies to the region and fueled office demand; driven the retail industry to new heights; expanded the multifamily pipeline; and pushed development into long-overlooked areas of Southern Dallas County.
The metro retained its crown as the No. 1 market in the Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2026 report from the Urban Land Institute and PwC. It was 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.
"They say the state bird of Texas is the [construction] crane,” JLL Senior Managing Director Torrey Littlejohn said. “Well, it went away in quite a few cities, but it never quite left Dallas.”
DFW was perfectly positioned for development across all sectors of commercial real estate in 2025, Littlejohn said. And she doesn’t expect that to change in the new year.
“We were still developing when nobody was, and we have a lot of pent-up desire to develop even more, so I think you'll see that a lot in 2026," she said.
Y’all Street Is Coming
The Dallas-based Texas Stock Exchange plans to launch in 2026 as an alternative to the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq Stock Market.
Y'all Street fueled DFW’s flight-to-quality trend and demand for top-tier office space in the region’s hottest markets following big office commitments from the New York Stock Exchange, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo.
Morgan Stanley could be next up for a big commitment, as the company is in the market to expand beyond its current office in the PwC Tower in Uptown's Park District, according to Steve Triolet, senior vice president of research and market forecasting at Partners.
"They're looking for around 150K SF in Uptown and up to 350,000 in the Legacy area,” Triolet said. “There will be at least one of those deals signed — probably both of them — in 2026.”
DFW’s status as a major financial hub is also attracting technology companies, life sciences startups and law firms that want to set up offices in the region.
“Most any company can come set up in Dallas and find talent that they need,” Littlejohn said.
Retail Explosion
The arrival of H-E-B to the metro in 2022 set off a chain reaction of one-upmanship and growth among area grocers, turning supermarkets into the top choice to anchor new retail and mixed-use developments.
But the region also has its sights set on becoming a luxury shopping destination, as a pair of high-end retail projects in the city's Knox-Henderson corridor aim to compete with destinations like Melrose Avenue.
It is expected that around 2.9M SF of new retail space will be delivered in DFW by the end of 2025, a total that will be the region’s highest level since 2017 and nearly double the 1.5M SF delivered in 2024.
And while retail rents have skyrocketed in DFW's northern suburbs thanks to bulging construction budgets, that hasn't slowed demand as tenants rush to lease space in new projects.
"We're just seeing the first moves,” Triolet said. “We're going to see a lot more of that in 2026 and beyond.”
Multifamily Took A Break
DFW's multifamily pipeline finally cooled off in 2025 after 10 years of fierce development. The 30,000 units under construction in the third quarter, the metro's lowest level since 2015, was still on par with the largest pipelines in the nation.
The region’s growth projections mean housing demand will remain elevated despite some softness in the sector, Triolet said.
The pipeline could grow again in 2026 as Texas’ Senate Bill 840 went into effect in September. It allows multifamily development to move forward in any area already zoned for commercial use, provided the project is in a city with a population greater than 150,000 and in a county with more than 300,000 residents.
DFW has more than half of the 19 cities in the state affected by that law.
Plus, the region loves new multifamily product, Triolet said. But for the sake of tenant retention, he said new development has a better chance of keeping renters when it’s part of a mixed-use project with live-work-play elements.
“It gives them a little bit more stickiness," Triolet said.
Growth in Southern Dallas
The successful redevelopment of The Shops at RedBird, which turned a 1970s-era mall into a medical hub, has served as a proof-of-concept for further projects in Southern Dallas and on the south side of Dallas County. The biggest of those is the $1B University Hills mixed-use project that Hoque Global broke ground on in May next to the University of North Texas at Dallas.
But Cawley Partners’ eye-popping purchase of 5,200 acres in the tiny town of Ferris, located 20 miles south of Dallas, also attracted a lot of attention. That project is expected to bring as many as 5,000 new homes, 2,000 acres of data center campuses and around 1,000 acres of manufacturing and warehouse space to the area.
“There is a lot of activity and excitement around the development in the southern sector,” Littlejohn said.
The South Dallas/Fair Park area’s land use and development plan, approved by the Dallas City Council in June, should spark further progress in those areas of the city, Triolet said.
“The caveat is it's going to be slow, especially in comparison to when we're talking about the northern suburbs,” Triolet said.
