DFW On Track For Fourth Straight Record Year For Retail Occupancy

Six months into 2026, Dallas-Fort Worth’s retail market is on pace for another historic year, with the region delivering approximately 75% more than it did in 2025.

In 2026, 4.2M SF of new retail projects have been delivered and are in the pipeline, while only 2.4M SF was added in 2025, according to Weitzman’s midyear retail report. 

The metro also maintained its record 95.3% occupancy over the first half.

DFW's 7.7M SF development pipeline for the rest of this year and beyond is the largest in the nation and accounts for nearly 14% of the 56.1M SF of retail under construction nationwide, according to Colliers' U.S. Retail Market Statistics report for the second quarter. 

The region's exponential population growth is driving continued demand for retail, according to Lynn Van Amburgh, a Weitzman senior vice president and director of portfolio leasing. The metro had four of the nation's top 10 fastest-growing cities last year, and DFW is on pace to overtake Chicago as the third-largest metro in the U.S. by 2035.

“Between the density, the households and where our market is going, it’s a very exciting, dynamic market,” Van Amburgh said to Bisnow. 

Weitzman reported that the region’s projected deliveries for the remainder of the year will give DFW around 205M SF of retail space in shopping centers of at least 25K SF. The region's total retail inventory of nearly 470M SF is second in the nation behind Chicago's 553M SF, according to the latest market report from Lee & Associates. 

DFW occupancy rate has risen to a record high each of the last three years, the retail-focused brokerage firm reported in January. If 2026 ends with retail occupancy above 95%, it will be just the fourth time DFW has achieved that benchmark since Weitzman began surveying the market in 1990. 

The region's occupancy has also benefited from fewer major chain closures than in previous years. In 2025, the DFW market had to absorb vacancies created by the national failures of retail chains such as Big Lots, Joann, Conn’s and Party City.

Weitzman reported that DFW's retail market absorbed 2.5M SF of retail vacancies in 2024 and more than 1.1M SF last year. And net absorption was up across the country during Q2, with more than 10M SF leased.  

Even with the big jump in expected deliveries, Weitzman’s report said DFW’s construction pipeline is firmly on the conservative side for a metro with such high occupancy. As a result, retailers looking to enter the market or add new locations have often had to focus on filling existing retail space.

Van Amburgh said Weitzman has an active set of prospects looking for prime retail space, so the firm was able to quickly line up a new tenant for an Office Depot location set to close on West State Highway 114 in Grapevine. 

That kind of market strength is why Van Amburgh said she doesn’t expect retail demand to slacken off anytime soon.

“From a leasing standpoint, there are always external factors, but I do not see any potential negative turn happening for the next six months of the year,” she said.

The new space that is being delivered in the metro is dominated by freestanding anchors like H-E-B, which has several new stores on the way in DFW. 

After no new grocery stores opened in DFW in 2021, H-E-B entered the region the following year and helped make supermarkets a must-have for retail and mixed-use developers. Weitzman’s report said grocery-anchored retail projects should account for the majority of the new space to be delivered over the next six months and going forward.

Walmart opened a 200K SF supercenter in Celina earlier this year, and Costco has a 160K SF store slated to open there before the end of the year. Weitzman and Kroger broke ground on the grocery-anchored Custer Frontier Marketplace development in McKinney during the first quarter of the year. 

That 170K SF center at the southeast corner of Custer Road and Frontier Parkway will be anchored by a 99K SF Kroger Marketplace with a Kroger fuel station. The center will also include 54K SF of small-shop and freestanding retail space in multiple buildings and pad sites designed for a mix of shops, dining, services and medical uses.

The project is located in a corridor that also serves fast-growing, affluent communities like Celina and Prosper. Van Amburgh said Weitzman is very bullish about the region’s affluent suburbs. 

Cities such as Prosper, Celina and Flower Mound have median household incomes ranging from $161K to $195K per year, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Retail rents in Prosper and Celina have jumped more than 40% over the last five years, while the metro as a whole recorded annual rent growth of around 4%.

That’s why Weitzman said much of the region’s new retail development is centered in DFW’s high-growth, high-density and high-income markets. 

“You’re going to continue to see new developments happening,” Van Amburgh said. “Case in point, what we have going on in Celina, Flower Mound, Princeton, and we continue to look at opportunities.”