A tightening industrial vacancy rate and a diminishing development pipeline have pushed Dallas-Fort Worth to the upper echelon of U.S. warehouse and logistics markets. 

Marcus & Millichap ranked DFW No. 3 on its new 2026 National Industrial Index as private investors have fueled metrowide transaction growth. Trading increased by around 40% year-over-year through the first quarter in DFW, thanks to a nearly 50% increase in transactions in the $1M to $10M range.

The national brokerage firm attributed that increase to DFW’s rising long-term investment demand due to the region’s robust employment growth, growing leasing momentum and diminishing supply. 

Courtesy of CapRock Partners

CapRock Partners broke ground on the 250K SF McKinney Air Business Park near the McKinney National Airport earlier this year.

“DFW is seen across the nation as a hub [for employment], with a diversified economy, massive population growth, good infrastructure,” Marcus & Millichap Senior Managing Director of Investments Adam Abushagur said of the factors that play into investors’ confidence in the metro. “We’ve been less affected by this cycle compared to a lot of other markets across the U.S, such as an LA, a New York and so on.”

Charlotte and Orlando, Florida, topped the industrial index, and the rest of the top 10 was filled out by Sun Belt and Midwest cities with a strong supply-demand balance, while Los Angeles and New York City were at Nos. 20 and 21, respectively. The declining development pipeline has tempered vacancy risks in DFW and many Sun Belt and Midwest markets, according to Marcus & Millichap’s 2026 Industrial Investment Midyear Outlook.

Marcus & Millichap projected DFW will add around 40,000 net new jobs in 2026. That employment growth, coupled with the region’s expanding population, is fueling just about all project types in the region, Abushagur said. 

For the industrial sector, employment and population growth mean more warehouse space is needed as more products need to be manufactured and delivered. Plus, more small businesses are occupying shallow-bay spaces, which is also contributing to the region’s tightening vacancy rate. 

DFW completions are projected to hit their lowest level since 2013, pushing the sector’s vacancy rate down to 8.9% in the first quarter. That’s the region’s lowest rate in three years.

Industrial demand has been strong in DFW for several years, but investors’ appetites have shifted away from the smaller infill assets that had been most popular, according to Trey McGhin, a principal at the land brokerage and investment firm Dosch Marshall Real Estate.

“Over the last 12 months, institutional equity has really returned for the industrial development market, and that, coupled with the tightening vacancy rates and supply being at a lower point, groups are now … really trying to pursue bigger product again,” McGhin said.

That has led to investors making deals in the higher-growth areas of the metro have more available land for development. Areas like Denton, South Dallas, Rockwall, Royce City, Terrell, Forney and Waxahachie are seeing renewed demand because of the desire to build 500K SF to 1M SF facilities, McGhin said.

McKinney has emerged as the hottest industrial market in DFW over the last year. Despite having one of the smallest industrial footprints in the region, it boasts some of DFW’s highest rents, thanks to tremendous growth around the expanding McKinney National Airport.

While McGhin expects demand to remain strong in the submarket, many of the best deals have already been done. 

“You’re starting to get to the point where a lot of those McKinney opportunities are more picked over,” McGhin said. “They still exist, but there’s definitely going to be more push to be on sort of the east side of the airport.”

Developers have also moved north of McKinney to the emerging city of Melissa for industrial opportunities, according to McGhin. 

The Fort Worth logistics corridor, northeast Dallas and the South Stemmons submarket are also expected to continue attracting investor attention this year, Marcus & Millichap reported. 

Abushagur attributed the increased investor confidence in DFW to the region’s status as a steady market on the national scene. McGhin said the return of institutional equity has also boosted investor confidence in getting deals capitalized. 

“When times are tough, it’s a lot easier to find $15M from a capital group than it is to go find $40M from a capital group,” McGhin said. “With the leasing being stronger, vacancy being tighter … and there just being more liquidity in the industrial capital markets, all of that is leading to more and larger deal activity.”

​​The latest corporate relocation to Texas might also be the tastiest.

Fast food chicken chain KFC announced plans last week to move its headquarters from Kentucky to the Metroplex. It came close on the heels of an announcement earlier this month that real estate services website Realtor.com planned to move to Austin, making its home in what it predicts will be the most populous state in the nation within 20 years. 

Relocations to the Lone Star State have cooled since the turn of the decade when dozens upon dozens of companies stampeded to open headquarters there. And states like Georgia and the Carolinas are increasingly coming for its title.

But 2024 was the first year since 2021 that Texas corporate relos inched up, and site selection experts say 2025 is already setting up to come in hot.

Texas saw its number of corporate relocations inch up from 2023 to 2024.

After a year of uncertainty surrounding the presidential election and capital markets, JLL Managing Director Torrey Littlejohn said KFC and Realtor.com’s arrival could be the beginning of a fresh wave of relocations to Texas. 

“You can’t push pause forever, and so what we’re seeing right now is a lot of people have pushed play,” said Littlejohn, who co-leads JLL’s tenant representation team and represents national corporate office clients in facility and site acquisition.

“The velocity of transactions and activity that we’re seeing is huge for the first six to eight weeks of the year.”

Texas’ business-friendly environment and lack of personal and corporate income taxes has long made it a premier destination for corporate relocations, though states like Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina are making a push up the charts.

After crowning the Lone Star State as the best business climate in the U.S. a year ago, Site Selection Magazine dropped Texas to No. 4 alongside Tennessee and behind the previously mentioned locations based on its November 2024 site selector survey.

Yet Dallas still topped the magazine’s ranking of best cities for headquarters, followed by Charlotte, North Carolina, Atlanta and Nashville. 

State officials are hoping to solidify Texas as “the headquarters of headquarters,” as the Office of Gov. Greg Abbott calls the state. Last year, Texas snagged 24 out-of-state headquarters relocations, the first time that number has increased over the previous year since 2021, according to a list put out by Abbott’s office. 

2021 was the height of the state’s acceleration period as an HQ hub. Texas brought in 42 headquarters relocations in 2020 and 79 the following year. The number dropped to 38 in 2022 and just 17 in 2023.

Last year, the state also saw the number of headquarters moving from California to Texas rebound as 11 companies made the jump. In total, Texas has seen 314 headquarters relocations over the last decade, with nearly half of those — 156 — coming from California.

Dallas skyline

Despite a relative cooling off from the white-hot pace of 2020-21, site selection researcher The Boyd Co. maintains Texas remains a top choice for corporation relocations. 

“Some of the most high-growth submarkets today are in the Dallas Metroplex region,” principal John Boyd Jr. said of headquarters selection. “Markets like Plano, Frisco and McKinney are very much in demand.”

Companies are on the hunt for workers, which is something Texas has in spades. Texas is on track to surpass California as the nation’s most populous state by 2045, per a Realtor.com analysis of its own data and figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.

“Texas continues to be a big winner with respect to talent migration,” Boyd said. 

DFW also topped U-Haul’s Growth Metro of 2024 list by having the largest net gains of the moving companies’ customers taking one-way trips into the Metroplex. The state’s Austin and Houston metros also placed within the company’s top 10. 

The connectivity of Texas, whether through Port Houston or the highways and airports linking DFW with the global marketplace, is one of the most attractive reasons for corporations to move to the state, Boyd said. Plus, SpaceX’s rocket launch facility in Cameron County links the state to space. 

“It’s impossible to underscore how significant the space industry is,” Boyd said. “Every industry relies on satellites in outer space — healthcare, banking, finance, transportation, defense.”

The impending rise of Y’all Street is seen as another feather in the state’s cap that can be used to attract companies, Boyd and Littlejohn said.

The Texas Stock Exchange aims to host its first listings in 2026 and establish its headquarters in the heart of Dallas, including executive offices, a conference center and a broadcast center. The New York Stock Exchange also announced plans to reincorporate its Chicago branch in Dallas as NYSE Texas.

“The stock exchanges might be a little late to the game, because this has really been a great place for financial services clients to relocate the labor base [for the past five to 10 years],” Littlejohn said.

Although the federal funds rate has remained the same since the third quarter of 2023, dollar stores’ average cap rate increased from 6.34% to 6.51% during Q3, or 17 basis points, B+E reports. This rise is well aligned with market norms, as sellers recalibrate pricing to facilitate financing access and keep pace with Federal Reserve rate hikes, the company says in its report on the dollar store sector. 

“In response to inflationary pressures, dollar stores are experiencing a decrease in customer purchases, particularly for essential items,” the report states. “Non-essential products, which produce higher profit margins, are experiencing less sales volume.”  

Although profit margin pressures will likely continue during economic uncertainty, B+E predicts that Dollar General and Dollar Tree will likely ride out the inflationary period and continue modestly expanding location count. “Moreover, dollar stores have benefitted from a reduction in ocean freight costs and an increased customer base with household incomes over $125,000,” according to the report. 

On-market listings for single-tenant dollar stores increased 13% in Q3 from 477 to 538. This can be attributed to rising interest rates, pushing independent levered buyers out of the buyer pool.