Members and guests of the Dallas REAL Professionals meeting welcomed David Kahn, a Senior Market Analyst for CoStar Group as the guest speaker. David has covered the Dallas/Fort Worth (“DFW”) metroplex for the past 4 years and shared a lot of valuable information on local jobs, multi-family housing, office, industrial and retail space throughout the DFW metroplex.

With regards to the job market, David shared that the job growth has almost doubled in the national average and since 2011 the job rate has grown 3-4% which translates to 100-200,000 jobs per year in DFW. The past few months all research is showing that “things are still looking really strong” and it’s no surprise that the driving force behind the job growth is corporate relocations and expansion in the DFW area.

David said that multi-family in DFW shows that that there is some level of “over building.” There is also still a concern regarding affordability on housing because income hasn’t kept up with rent growth. The question becomes, “How much can we raise rents when people haven’t received raises to the extent that they should have?”

Though DFW tends to over build historically, that has not been the case this cycle in office development as current office space has leased up well with vacancies below the historical average. With regards to Retail, it tends to get a “bad wrap because of store closures” but DFW has done relatively well in retail compared to the nation as a whole. “Steady demand, low vacancies, positive rent growth, better than the national average but nothing to write home about like the other property types,” David explained.