The business-friendly environment remains the main bait for corporate relocations and expansions, sans rent concessions surfacing elsewhere. Some landlords might be offering a one-month, maybe even two-month, giveaway, but that's just to offset relocation costs, say commercial real estate executives in Dallas-Ft. Worth and Austin. The game's still the same and there isn't any indication that's going to change in the near future.

The days of free rent, as occurred in 1987-88, aren't coming back. Tales of filling class-A space by abating rent for a year, with values as high as $12,000 per month, and then allowing an exit without penalty still linger. It had been a time when rates had plummeted below $10 per sf gross, a figure that stands at more than $30 per sf today. "I don't know anyone who thinks we're heading back to that...but there's certainly a softening," Bart Matheney, Insignia/ESG's director of leasing in Austin, tells GlobeSt.com.

Savvy lenders are keeping construction in check and existing inventory still attracts new tenants from inside and outside state lines. Few, if any, costs are being shaved on direct leased space. Most sublease space still brings the going rate, though some has been offered at $1 per sf to $2 per sf less.

What Matheney and others have noticed is that rent hikes have disappeared from the market, for now. There also haven't been any decreases, a sure sign that all's well in Texas at this point.

Just as in Austin, the Dallas-Ft. Worth region is boasting a balanced supply and demand. Grubb & Ellis Co. senior vice presidents Clyde McKinney and Tom Clarke haven't heard of any major rent abatements or finish-out concessions being tossed out to would-be tenants. The few and far between concessions are just being granted for early occupancy, usually in the form of a one- or two-month rent reprieve.

"We are the distribution center for the Southwest," Clarke tells GlobeSt.com. "And NAFTA is a benefit to Dallas in particular, and Texas in general." As relations with its southern neighbor solidify and border-crossing issues get fine-tuned, the Texas economy will further be shored up by the clear-cut NAFTA advantage.

McKinney, like the others, says he can't foresee where the market is going. "But for now, it's not a significant part of the market today," he emphasizes.