DALLAS — The Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) industrial market posted a vacancy rate of 6.5 percent to close the third quarter while seeing its 11-year streak of positive quarterly absorption remain intact, according to a new report from Newmark Knight Frank (NKF).
Though overall vacancy is up 30 basis points from a year ago, the metroplex absorbed approximately 3.6 million square feet of space in the most recent quarter, down just 7 percent from that period in 2019. This activity indicates that industrial users are still attracted to the market’s exceptional job and population growth despite the recession-inducing COVID-19 pandemic.
While third-quarter net absorption was also down from the second quarter of this year, industrial users and owners transacted more leases (604) in that period, up from 486 deals during the previous quarter. Among the largest deals inked in the third quarter were Uline’s 1.1 million-square-foot lease in Las Colinas, Amazon’s 1 million-square-foot lease in southeast Dallas and HelloFresh’s 375,000-square-foot lease, also in Las Colinas. Year-to-date, the market has already absorbed more than 17 million square feet of industrial space.
The report pegged the amount of industrial product under construction at roughly 28.3 million square feet, but with vacancy up 300 basis points year-over-year and the fourth quarter typically seeing strong levels of leasing activity, the market appears to have maintained its supply-demand balance through the first seven months of the global health crisis.