Dallas-Fort Worth Trails Only San Francisco, Seattle In Q1 Net Office Absorption

The Dallas-Fort Worth office market is seeing sustained, demand-driven growth with net absorption that rivals the top office markets in the country, according to the latest report from Transwestern.

DFW net absorption numbers are behind only San Francisco and Seattle — and ahead of San Jose/Silicon Valley — for Q1. Flip those locations for four-quarter trailing numbers — the Dallas-Fort Worth office market soaked up 5.5M SF of office space in the last 12 months, second only to San Jose-Silicon Valley, which posted just over 7M SF in net office space absorption.

“This June will mark the ninth year of economic recovery since the last recession,” Transwestern Director of Research Ryan Tharp said. “[Dallas] still has about 8.3M SF under construction, and I think that says a lot about how optimistic developers are.”

DFW’s office boom began around six years ago, when office construction began to rise rapidly, especially in the Far North, Uptown and Las Colinas areas.

Vacancy rates have slowly inched up over the past 24 months, but remain relatively stable given the supply added to the market, Tharp said. DFW opened the year with two dozen office buildings in the construction pipeline, three of which are single-tenant corporate projects totaling 700K SF. CBRE reported almost half the space in those buildings was already leased.

DFW doesn’t even break the Top 10 in terms of per-SF asking rates in the U.S. Asking rates are $25.31/SF, up 2.6%. Austin commands $33.21/SF, and San Jose/Silicon Valley rents average $42.94. San Francisco leasing rates are almost three times that of Dallas, at $73.39/SF.