Named the fastest-growing “Sprawling Darling” in CBRE’s 2024 Shaping Tomorrow’s Cities report, Dallas outperforms its rivals due to its accessibility, low cost of living, and ease of doing business.
Known for its business-friendly environment, Dallas attracted 100 corporate headquarters between 2018 and 2024. Dallas led the state of Texas’s 111 percent increase in investment banking and securities employment over the past 20 years and is now the second largest financial market in the country. The pending launch of the Texas Stock Exchange in downtown Dallas, along with local expansions of NYSE and Nasdaq, underscore the metro area’s status as a leading financial center.
The metro area ranked eighth in CBRE’s Scoring Tech Talent 2025 report. This was partly due to the massive demographic shift currently favoring Dallas and Texas more broadly. Texas ranked as the No. 1 destination for Generation Z, with net migration almost double that of the second-ranked state. This bodes well for Dallas’s economic prospects, as Gen Z is projected to account for one-third of the U.S. workforce by 2030.
While the city’s overall office vacancy remains high at 27.6 percent, negative net absorption of late has been driven by the Class B market, with prime space having a vacancy rate of just 14.2 percent. Sublease availability has declined to 3.6 percent of total inventory from a high of 4.5 percent in 2023. An under-construction pipeline totaling 2.7 million square feet is already more than 60 percent prelease, due to strong demand for top-quality space. Almost 75 percent of this new construction will be in the Uptown/Turtle Creek submarket.
Vibrant mixed-use districts including Uptown, Legacy, and the new Knox District have created lively urban and suburban communities. Office-to-residential and hotel conversions are enhancing Dallas’s standing as a model for other cities to adapt to new styles of working. Dallas-Fort Worth currently has 20 conversion projects underway or planned that will remove approximately 6 million square feet from the office market and help ensure the city’s continued standing as a top metro area for economic growth.
—CBRE
