D-FW's one of the top U.S. office markets for leasing and vacancy

Dallas-Fort Worth was one of the top office-leasing markets in the country during the first quarter of the year

But the strong leasing activity didn't move the needle much on the area's office building vacancy rate.

Only the San Francisco area had more net office leasing in the first quarter than D-FW, according to the latest study by commercial property firm CBRE.

D-FW had about 750,000 square feet of net leasing compared with 960,000 in the San Francisco area. Atlanta was third at 580,000 square feet.

Nationwide office occupancy grew by about 11 million square feet during the first three months of 2019.

"Twelve-month absorption through first quarter 2019 totaled 62.7 million square feet, the highest 12-month total in three years," CBRE researchers said. "The Texas Triangle markets of Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and Austin remained among the leaders" in new office sector jobs.

The D-FW area added just over 20,000 office sector jobs in the past year, according to CBRE. Houston added almost 15,000 office jobs to its payrolls in the same period.

Although demand for offices in North Texas is strong, that hasn't made much of a dent in vacancies.

At the end of the first quarter, D-FW had the highest metro area office vacancy rate of any of the major markets CBRE surveyed. Almost 21% of the area's offices were empty.

Nationwide office vacancy was at 12.7%, the lowest since 2007.

Looking at the 10 largest U.S. metro areas, CBRE found that D-FW had the lowest average quoted office rents. Office rents in D-FW were just over $25 per square foot, compared with almost $34 nationwide.

The highest rents were in San Francisco ($81) and New York ($79).

"Rents increased over the past year in nine of the 10 largest metro office markets," CBRE said. "The strongest year-over-year rent growth was in the nation's priciest office markets: San Francisco, Manhattan, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C."

D-FW's overall quoted office rents were about 3% higher than a year ago compared with the 4.4% nationwide rise.

This is an original article by Steve Brown, Real Estate Editor. A copy of the original article can be found in Dallas News here.

US Freedom Capitalis an investment manager offering US real estate investments to global investors. The offerings are structured either for financial return or for immigration by investment utilizing the EB-5 Investor Visa. The company operates worldwide from offices in Dallas, Dubai, Mumbai, São Paulo, and Washington DC. The leadership of US Freedom Capital includes both the former Director and Acting Director of Immigration and real estate executives with over $3 billion of real estate investment experience.