Cell phone data shows DFW workers returning to office

Office return rates across Dallas-Fort Worth are nearing pre-pandemic levels, highlighting the region’s resilience despite ongoing remote and hybrid work trends. 

The Metroplex had an office return rate of 62.4 percent in July 2024, slightly above the U.S. average of 61.9 percent, and higher than the 54.6 percent seen in Austin and the 59.3 percent observed in Houston, Bisnow reported, citing data compiled by Avison Young. The conclusion comes from the Office Busyness Index, which is based on cell phone mobility data.

DFW is outpacing other markets, and the numbers are even higher when you examine Dallas’ core. In the city’s Central Business District and Uptown neighborhoods, employers are seeing over 90 percent of employees come back to the office in person.

Areas farther from the city center, such as Las Colinas, have lower return rates, with only 52.2 percent of employees regularly back in the office. Walter Bialas, a senior insight analyst at Avison Young, attributes this disparity to longer commutes for workers to more centrally located offices.

In DFW’s close-in suburbs, where short commutes can be made to downtown areas via public transportation, average return rates were nearly 84 percent, while more distant suburbs and regions along major highways, like the Dallas North Tollway and Central Expressway, lag behind the metro average.

“We have a lot of multifamily in Uptown, and we also have a lot of nearby neighborhoods. People live and work close by, so coming into the office is an easy thing,” Bialas said. “As you get farther out, the commutes are getting longer, and people have adapted to this hybrid-remote workplace.”

Bialas predicts that while the return to office will continue, the pace of recovery will be gradual. 

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“I’d like to think that we’re going to get back to where we were,” however, “I don’t think we will,” return to pre-pandemic office usage, Bialas said. 

Office leasing was sluggish in the second quarter, with about 5.7 million square feet of activity, which is about 65 percent of the normal average page, according to Avison Young. Vacancy is sitting at 25.9 percent, the highest since the 1980s. And absorption was negative in the second quarter, with 456,000 square feet more space opening up than was leased.

— Andrew Terrell