It's Business as Usual in Texas Leasing Circles

DALLAS-Texas cities just aren’t playing by the same rules as other major metropolitan markets.

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.