Weitzman: Grocery-Anchored Retail To Drive DFW's 4th Year Of Record Occupancy
After Dallas-Fort Worth’s love affair with H-E-B and similar stores led Weitzman to name 2024 “The Year Of The Grocer” and 2025 its sequel, the firm is ready to make the title a record-breaking trilogy.
Traditional, specialty and superstore grocers are expected to drive DFW to a record retail occupancy rate in 2026, just like they have for the past two years.
More than 82% of the 2.4M SF of new retail space built in 2025 was for grocers like H-E-B, Kroger, Sprouts and Walmart, according to data shared at Weitzman’s annual forecast event on Wednesday. The year prior, grocers accounted for less than half of the 1.5M SF of new retail space delivered.
Occupancy at grocer-anchored community shopping centers remained at a record high of 96.4% in 2025. That pushed the metro to its highest retail occupancy ever at 95.3% in 2025, the third year in a row DFW has achieved record highs in the category.
“This back-to-back-to-back performance cements remarkable retail stability in the face of inflation, tariff uncertainty, chain failures, rising construction costs, capital market ups and downs, and other economic headwinds,” Weitzman Executive Managing Director Bob Young said during the event.
For 2026, Weitzman officials anticipate the metro’s retail occupancy will tick up again to a new record of 95.4%. The year ahead will also have 3.8M SF of new retail construction completed, which would be the highest level of deliveries in DFW since 2018.
After no new grocery stores opened in DFW during 2021, H-E-B arrived in the region the next year and helped turn supermarkets into a must-have for retail and mixed-use developers.
The seven new grocery anchors that opened in 2024 led Weitzman to declare that the year’s biggest retail trend was the opening of 18 new supermarkets in the metro during 2025. The firm said 34 additional grocery stores are expected to open in 2026 and 2027.
"DFW is definitely the most active grocery market in the entire country," Young said.
To go along with the anticipated surge in deliveries in 2026, retail absorption is also expected to outpace 2025's total of 2.5M SF.
Fitness centers flexed their strength across the metro last year by backfilling big-box stores and stepping in to anchor struggling retail centers. Fitness centers like EoS Fitness and Planet Fitness, as well as concepts like Trader Joe’s, PetSmart, Cavender’s and Barnes & Noble, all expanded in existing retail developments last year and are expected to continue that trend in 2026.
Weitzman forecasts DFW will experience more than 3M SF of absorption during the year ahead.
“We are currently in a market where a well-located box vacancy will not stay vacant for very long,” Young said.
The region’s overall retail vacancy dropped to 9.5M SF in 2025 from the previous year’s total of 9.7M SF. The latest vacancy number is also more than 44% lower than the 17M SF vacancy the region recorded in 2020.
DFW’s retail inventory rose to 202M SF in 2025, thanks to the year's new deliveries and close to 1M SF of space removed due to demolitions or changes to nonretail uses.
The Houston and San Antonio metros each had retail occupancies close to DFW's during 2025, while Austin recorded 97% among its nearly 54M SF.
“Without a doubt, Texas retail is firing on all cylinders,” Young said.
CORRECTION, JAN. 8, 3:21 P.M. ET: A previous version of this story presented DFW's overall vacancy in percentages instead of millions of square feet. This story has been updated.
