Commercial property sales have plummeted in Dallas-Fort Worth amid hiked interest rates and low demand for office space.
The region saw $8 billion in commercial sales from January through June of this year. That’s down almost 70 percent compared to the midyear point in 2022, the Dallas Morning News reported, citing data from MSCI.
While the drop in sales is significant, there is a silver lining. DFW still had the second-most prolific first half of 2023 among all major U.S. metros. Only Los Angeles did more commercial sales, with $9.24 billion. Cities like Houston, Atlanta and Phoenix all had slightly greater decreases in year-over-year sales from January through June.
DFW set the bar high in previous years, as it led the nation in commercial sales volume from 2020 to 2022. Commercial transactions in the region surpassed a whopping $42.5 billion last year.
Of the $8.1 billion in sales this year, more than half were tied to apartments. Among the top 25 markets, only Austin, Seattle and San Francisco saw multifamily transactions account for more than half of total deal volume.
In DFW, $1.6 billion of sales at the midyear mark came from the industrial sector, $940 million stemmed from retail buildings, and roughly $383 million were hotel sales.
Read more
The office sector in DFW has been hit hardest by recent market shifts. The lingering remote-work movement, compounded by high interest rates and construction costs, banking failures and fears of an economic downturn, contributed to an 80 percent decrease in office sales year-over-year in the first two months of 2023.
—Quinn Donoghue