AUSTIN, TEXAS — By any objective, outside-looking-in metric, the Austin industrial market is currently overbuilt, but brokers who are on the inside looking out say that the narrative is more nuanced than the numbers suggest. According to CBRE’s fourth-quarter 2025 market report, the marketwide vacancy rate was 20.4 percent at the end of last year, which represented a 10.9 percent increase from the third quarter of 2025. Approximately 3.4 million square feet of new space was delivered in the fourth quarter as part of 9.5 million square feet of new construction that came online year-to-date, per CBRE, while fourth-quarter net absorption was less than 500,000 square feet. Qualitatively, the report concluded that the year-end vacancy rate was “an all-time high,” while 2025 was “one of the busiest years for development in market history.” The Austin industrial market has traditionally differed from those of its sprawling Texas counterparts — Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) and Houston — which have seen numerous massive projects built and absorbed over the past decade. Industrial deals and projects in the state capital have historically trended smaller, though that has changed somewhat in recent years as two tech giants — Tesla and Samsung — have planted massive manufacturing …
