Coming out of the pandemic, Dallas-Fort Worth was the No. 1 destination for corporate relocations by a wide margin, but in 2026, the competition is much fiercer, from within Texas and beyond. 

Several internal and external factors have site selectors thinking twice about automatically recommending DFW to their top-tier clients, including rising regional home prices, questions about Dallas’ office market and the rapid ascension of competing national markets. At the same time, more companies are opting to establish regional hubs instead of fully relocating to the metro.  

“DFW had record-shattering success a few years ago … but it’s difficult to sustain that type of success year after year after year,” said John Boyd Jr., principal of Florida-based corporate site selection specialist The Boyd Co.

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DFW has added more than 100 corporate headquarters since 2018, thanks to its business-friendly climate, growing population and land availability. The region now boasts more than 20 Fortune 500 companies, and its publicly traded firms have a combined market value of approximately $1.5T.

However, construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar Inc.’s move to Irving in 2022 was the last Fortune 500 company to relocate its headquarters to DFW. 

Fierce Competition

DFW’s Fortune 500 relocation momentum has stalled just as markets like Miami, Charlotte and Phoenix have emerged as major contenders to DFW’s relocation throne. Those cities have their own growing talent pools, business-friendly environments and supportive infrastructures, according to a new CBRE report. 

Without new corporate tenants coming into the market, the future of DFW’s office sector begins to look murky. 

Corporate relocations and Y’all Street fueled the region’s trophy office market last year, but new trophy product is limited, and companies haven’t lined up to fill the 1M SF of office space in Whitacre Tower that will be left vacant when AT&T moves to Plano. 

Intrastate relocations have become more common than full corporate moves in recent years, as have companies establishing regional headquarters in North Texas, according to Mike Rosa, senior vice president of economic development at the Dallas Regional Chamber.

He cited Goldman Sachs’ 800K SF regional campus in Dallas and ScotiaBank’s 133K SF lease at Victory Commons One as examples of these regional hubs and what they bring to the metro. 

Across the country, corporate headquarters relocations grew by more than 70% from 2024 to 2025, according to CBRE. 

DFW nabbed 11 of the 164 headquarters relocations last year, the most of any city in the country. Seven companies also made intrastate moves to DFW, including some that consolidated operations to rightsize their footprints in the metro, according to CBRE.

The Miami metro was second in the nation, with eight new corporate headquarters in 2025, and it scored Palantir Technologies earlier this year. The Austin, Charlotte and New York metros were right behind Miami with seven new headquarters each. 

A North Texas highway

Some of those cities also received more support than DFW from site selectors surveyed this year about the best cities for corporate headquarters projects. After topping Site Selector magazine’s list of best cities for headquarters last year, Dallas fell to fourth this year, behind Nashville, Atlanta and Charlotte. 

Rising home prices in DFW have also made a move to the metro less attractive for corporate executives, who no longer get as much bang for their buck. Median listing prices for homes in DFW have risen more than 40% since the start of the pandemic, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. 

Winning Formula

With an abundance of undeveloped land, a pro-business climate and a diverse, educated workforce, Texas metros have been the biggest winners of corporate relocations for close to a decade. DFW gained the most new headquarters in the country during that time for those factors, as well as a high quality of life and affordability for businesses, JLL Executive Managing Director Bret Hefton said. 

The region’s favorable tax climate, with no state or local income taxes, is always attractive to companies.

“That’s a big factor when you’re talking to companies that are relocating or considering relocation from New York and California,” Hefton said.

He also praised the metro’s growth and central location in the U.S., which allows for easy transportation to anywhere in the country. 

DFW’s nearly 124,000 new residents made up the second-largest population increase in the nation for the 12 months that ended last July, according to Census Bureau data released last month. 

Booming markets in Collin, Denton and Kaufman counties continue to land major mixed-use projects and master-planned communities for those new residents because of their large swaths of undeveloped land.

The region’s growing population helps companies find workers when they relocate, as does its strong talent pipeline coming from a diverse range of educational institutions, said Mike Rosa, senior vice president of economic development at the Dallas Regional Chamber. 

The Dallas skyline

DFW is also unique for its diversified industries, which allow it to cast a wide net when trying to attract relocations. 

“Whereas Houston is very energy-driven and even though we’ve become more financial services-focused, we’re not nearly as dependent upon that industry as some other markets are with other industries,” Hefton said. 

Looking Ahead 

Many of the nation’s high-growth markets have seen skyrocketing home prices and costs of living, so DFW isn’t alone in struggling to score huge corporate relocations, Boyd said. Concerns about how artificial intelligence will affect real estate commitments in the years ahead have also prompted companies to favor intrastate moves and regional hub setups instead of full headquarters relocations. 

Companies are expected to continue picking DFW for secondary headquarters and regional hubs, but there will also be more full corporate relocations to the metro. 

“That’s what these decisions are based on — it comes to ‘where do we grow?'” Rosa said. 

Hefton said DFW remains a popular destination nationwide for companies considering a move. 

JLL has also engaged with several companies about possible relocations to DFW, but none have yet made full commitments. Still, Hefton said it is inevitable that DFW will see another major corporate relocation soon.  

“There’s a good chance that there will be an announcement in the next 12 months,” Hefton said.

After claiming the third spot in 2024’s pipeline, Savannah leads the pack this year with 24.7 million square feet of space currently under construction, that’s according to the latest industrial survey by Commercial Edge. The current pipeline will expand the market by almost 17%, making it the leader in that metric as well. A majority of the pipeline can be attributed to Hyundai’s 17-million-square-foot electric vehicle plant, and it’s also worth noting that the market still saw a drop of around 18% compared to the start of last year in terms of space under construction.

As the fifth-largest port in the entire U.S. and home to the single largest terminal nationwide, its significance to the East Coast’s logistics network is key. A $200-million expansion of the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport has greatly expanded its capabilities. The market’s significance was best underlined when Hyundai chose it as the site of a brand new, $7.6-billion electric vehicle plant, driving local employment as well as further development of Savannah industrial space through the multiplier effect.

As New York City led in 2024 CMBS conduit issuance for multifamily properties, so it is also leading an increase in multifamily conduit delinquencies, Kroll Bond Rating Agency reported.

The overall KBRA distress rate for apartment-backed conduit loans, which includes loans that are delinquent or current and in special servicing, was at 8.5% as of year-end 2024. NYC multifamily currently represents 43% of the multifamily distressed balance, with a distress rate of 14.4% at year-end. That’s more than double the city’s year-end 2023 distress rate of 7%.

The city’s multifamily distress rate was distinctly bifurcated by property age, according to KBRA. Pre-1974 NYC properties, which have a much higher proportion of rent-stabilized buildings, had a 25.1% distress rate by balance, compared to post-2000 properties with a distress rate of 2.9%. Manhattan had the highest distress rate of the five boroughs at 29.8%, followed by Queens (7.5%) and Brooklyn (3.2%).

U.S. net-lease investment surged in 2024, led by the industrial & logistics sector, CBRE reported. On a dollar-volume basis, 2024 saw a 13% year-over-year increase to $43.7 billion, boosted by an especially strong fourth quarter.

Industrial & logistics increased its share of net-lease investment activity to 64% in Q4 from 54% a year earlier. In 2024, investment volume for industrial increased 87% from a year earlier.

“The net-lease sector demonstrated remarkable resilience and growth in 2024, driven by its stability and appeal to investors seeking compelling risk-adjusted returns,” said Will Pike, vice chairman of net lease properties for capital markets at CBRE. “We anticipate continued momentum in net-lease investment, especially in retail and the industrial & logistics sector, as investors prioritize low-risk opportunities amid potential capital markets volatility in the first half of 2025.”

The average cap rate rose by nine basis points quarter-over-quarter and 56 bps Y-O-Y to 6.8% in Q4 2024.

Pictured: A net-leased FedEx facility in Portland, OR, which traded for $32 million in 2024. Courtesy B+E.