Diverse industry expansion bolsters DFW office development

"The market is very healthy," said Steve Thelen, a managing director in JLL’s Dallas office, told the Dallas Business Journal.

"There’s a lot of speculative development going on and tenants are growing and doing very well. This is the case not only in Dallas-Fort Worth, but in the state of Texas."

In the past 12 months, North Texas lease rates increased 7.6 percent, or a direct average asking rent of $25.24, according to JLL research. 

Popular submarkets, such as Uptown, Preston Center, and the Legacy area of Plano, are seeing rates hit the high $30s, $40s and $50s per-sf.

The higher-than-average lease rates are pushing price-conscience companies to neighboring submarkets, such as North Central Expy. or Las Colinas.

In all, there’s 1.8 million sf of vacant speculative construction scheduled for delivery by the end of 2016 (of a total of 3.3 million sf of space underway).

"If we continue to have the job growth we expect, which is about 116,000 new jobs in 2016, I think we’ll absorb a lot of new space," he told me. "It all comes back to job growth and compared with other parts of the country, we are less expensive."​