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DFW Tops Real Estate Investment List Again

DFW: The Dallas-Fort Worth area has again topped a prestigious list as the best market for commercial real estate investment and development. It’s the third consecutive year that North Texas has led the Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2027 report from consulting firm PwC and the Urban Land Institute. DFW ranked No. 2 in a separate homebuilding ranking. The Emerging Trends outlook was developed from a survey of nearly 1,500 investors, developers, lenders and advisers from across the United States and Canada. The North Texas region’s expanding financial services industry, improving office demand and industrial leasing, along with migration and job growth are among the barometers of the area’s economic diversity. The growing “Y’all Street” corridor north of downtown Dallas will include billion-dollar-plus investments among various financial giants, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. On the commercial investment forecast, Nashville, Miami, Raleigh-Durham and San Francisco rounded out the Top 5, while Houston was No. 1 in the homebuilding ranking. 

DFW: Hunt Realty Investments is partnering with a global real estate investment trust that could bring up to 11 million square feet of warehouse and distribution space to Terrell. The joint venture between Dallas-based Hunt and San Francisco-based Prologis would be for a 780-acre campus at Terrell 20 Business Park. It will combine the Hunt family’s longstanding land ownership with Prologis’ logistics development expertise and international business operations. The development will accommodate facilities custom-built to companies’ requirements. Individual buildings could span nearly 2 million square feet. The project would be part of a much larger development across 2,300 acres along Interstate 20, about 30 miles east of Dallas. The property already has access to high-voltage electricity and regional freight routes. The Hunt family’s land ownership in Kaufman County dates back to the late 1940s. 

DFW: Hillwood Communities is teaming with Austin-based Base Power to bring home battery storage to nearly 6,500 North Texas homes, an arrangement both companies describe as a first of its kind. Eligible new and existing homeowners at Treeline in Justin, Pecan Square in Northlake and Harvest in Argyle and Northlake will get access to Base battery systems at preferred pricing. At full build-out, 9,500 homes will have access. CoServ, one of Base's utility partners, serves all three communities, and plans call for extending the program to future CoServ-powered homes in Landmark by Hillwood in Denton and Lantern by Hillwood in Pilot Point. Base, founded in 2023, links home batteries into a coordinated resource that adds capacity to the grid in high-demand hours and gives members full home backup, similar to a generator, during outages. Hillwood officials say the partnership will expand across the company's platform where feasible, including Austin, Houston, Florida and the Northeast.

U.S.:  Boo! Dressing up and handing out candy is going to be a bit more expensive for American households this year. Trick-or-treat spending this Halloween is projected to hit a record $13.5 billion, up more than $400 million from a year ago. Blame the scarier prices on higher costs for candy, costumes and delivery. Candy purchases alone will surpass $4 billion because chocolate prices are up more than 8% from 2025. Stocking up on candy to hand out will set hosts back an average of $17 per 100-piece bag, up more than 70% from five years ago. Consulting firm PwC says that the average person will spend over $260 on the holiday alone. And a survey from WalletHub finds that two-thirds of Americans consider this holiday too expensive this year.

BEANTOWN: Michael and Susan Dell are hitting the refresh button on their personal real estate portfolio. The billionaire couple is putting up for auction one of their Boston penthouses with a $6.5 million reserve. That’s about 40% below the $10.9 million that they paid for the 4,100-square-foot penthouse on the 59th floor of the Millennium Tower. It has three bedrooms, four full baths, a half-bath, a private terrace that extends the living space outdoors and floor-to-ceiling windows that capture Boston’s skyline, the Charles River and Boston Harbor. The tech-heavy home has luxe amenities throughout and also comes with two garage spaces. The Dells also own another penthouse in another Boston building, and another one in a Central Park building in Manhattan, along with properties in Austin and Hawaii, along with other commercial properties in other cities, including Dallas.

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