Dallas-Fort Worth Tops U.S. in Commercial Sales Volume

Dallas-Fort Worth retained its national commercial real estate crown last year.

Despite a slowdown in the final months of 2022, North Texas once again topped all the other major U.S. metros for commercial property deals for the third year in a row. Still, the 2022 North Texas commercial real estate volume was down 15 percent from 2021′s record total of deals, the Dallas Morning News is reporting.

More than $42.5 billion in commercial properties were sold in the area last year, according to the latest estimate from MSCI Inc. Even with a drop from 2021, Dallas-Fort Worth far surpassed second-ranked Los Angeles, which had $30.4 billion in sales volume, and third-place Atlanta’s $28.9 billion. The national volume of $729 billion also represented a 15 percent drop from 2021.

Elsewhere in Texas, Houston ranked fourth nationally for commercial property sales last year with more than $24 billion in deals. Meanwhile, Austin also showed declining activity, but still held the 10th spot overall — the same ranking it had in 2021 — with $14 billion in sales.

North Texas “wrested the top slot from Manhattan at the onset of the pandemic and has held it ever since,” MSCI analysts wrote in their year-end report. Manhattan had the 6th-highest commercial sales volume with $21 billion — half that of Dallas-Fort Worth.

“The headline figures on real estate investment sales declined in 2022, but growth rates are only part of the story,” MSCI analysts said. “The level of activity for the full year was elevated relative to history, and 2022 was the second-most active year for sales volume over time.

Apartment sales accounted for more than half of the metroplex’s 2022 property investment volume. The region had the largest dollar volume of apartment sales of any U.S. market.

“Dallas was the leading market for every property sector but for offices and retail,” the report said.

Even if it wasn’t the top office market, Dallas-Fort Worth had some highly notable commercial deals in 2022. First off, the $615 million sale of downtown Dallas’ Trammell Crow Center office tower was one of the country’s biggest real estate transactions of 2022. The McKinney & Olive tower in Uptown Dallas sold in a deal valued at almost $400 million, while the 300-acre Exxon Mobil campus in Irving went for more than $110 million.