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DFW Among Leaders in Office Deals in 2026

DFW: The Dallas-Fort Worth area ranks among the top leaders in office sales this year. Commercial Café, a tech company serving the real estate industry, reports that DFW ranked second with more than $2.6 billion in office deals for the first six months of the year. The region was behind only Manhattan, which reported $4.3 billion in sales. San Francisco was ranked third with $2.4 billion in office deals. Commercial Café’s report also noted that the national office vacancy rate was down by just under 2% to 17.7% from the same period in 2025. And all the construction cranes dotting the North Texas landscape also accounted for another statistic. Dallas, which has consistently ranked No. 1 in corporate relocations, also is among the country’s leaders in industrial space construction. In June, it reported nearly 3 million square feet of space in development, slightly behind Boston and Manhattan. 

DFW: And one of those Dallas office deals involved a 20-story glass tower off of North Central Expressway near Mockingbird Lane, just north of downtown Dallas. The 450,000-square-foot high-rise that was built in the 1980s and known as Premier Place was recently acquired from Glenstar by an affiliate of Lone Star Funds. The Class A tower is valued for tax purposes at more than $100 million and last changed hands in 2019 when Chicago-based Glenstar paid $140 million for it. The property, home to a Merrill Lynch office and a massive Life Time Fitness club, is near the Mockingbird Station shopping center and across the highway from Southern Methodist University. 

U.S.: The number of U.S. cities where a starter home costs $1 million is on the rise. Zillow reports that there are now 242 cities that fit that category, with the new total tripling from about 80 cities since the start of the pandemic in February 2020. There were 226 cities on the list in 2025. The new list encompasses 26 states, up from just nine states in just six years ago. California has the most, with 105, followed by New York, 41; New Jersey, 26; Florida, 11; and Massachusetts, 10. Texas has seven cities on the list, including Highland Park, University Park, Westlake in Tarrant and Denton counties, Westover Hills in Fort Worth, and West University Place, Bunker Hill Village and Hunters Creek Village in Houston. 

DFW:  More and more states are cracking down on data centers, but capital still keeps flowing to them. Aligned Data Centers of Plano was recently acquired for $40 billion by a consortium of institutional investors. Aligned’s owners had taken the company from two data centers and 85 megawatts of power in 2018 to more than 51 campuses and 6.4 gigawatts of power. A single gigawatt of power can operate up to 1 million average homes. Data centers that power artificial intelligence for numerous global companies have recently run afoul of local communities and local and state officials across the country because of the impact to the electric grid, environment and property values. Several states and communities across the country have banned or set development moratoriums until licensing agencies determine their economic and environmental impact. 

LALALAND: Helen Mirren has been trying to sell her Hollywood Hills mansion for years and now hopes her new strategy will pay off. The Oscar winner and her husband purchased the 6.5-acre property in a gated estate in the Hollywood Hills in 1986. They spent years restoring the mansion into a 10,000-square-foot, seven-bedroom, eight-bath home with Old Hollywood flair. When they put it on the market for $18.5 million five years ago, there were no takers. So, they started trimming the price, gradually but surely. Still no takers. Now, the estate is listed for $12.9 million, has been restaged with vintage furniture and accessories and black-and-white photographs on the walls to show its potential to new buyers. 

COPYRIGHT © 2024. Allie Beth Allman & Associates, a HomeServices of America, Inc. company. All Rights Reserved.

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