Dallas-Fort Worth finished 2024 as the leader in industrial property sales with nearly $6 billion in transactions by year-end. First, it claimed the top spot in September, replacing the Bay Area. Then, by the close of the year, Dallas was well ahead of Houston, Phoenix, Los Angeles, the Bay Area and Chicago — all of which surpassed the $3 billion industrial sales threshold for 2024.

At the end of December, Dallas industrial space traded at an average of $133 per square foot, just slightly above the national average of $129. While Dallas led in volume and remained much more affordable than coastal markets (for example, the Bay Area’s average sales price was $414), it also led its Southern region in price per square foot, tying with Baltimore and far surpassing Houston’s average of $106 per square foot.

At the same time, sales momentum appears to have continued into 2025, as well. Although the exact sales price remains undisclosed, an affiliate of WPT Capital Advisor secured a $72.4 million loan from PCCP to purchase up to 1.1 million square feet of industrial space across two fully leased warehouse/distribution facilities that are part of Elizabeth Creek Gateway in North Fort Worth, Texas.

Beyond sales, Dallas also now leads all major markets in industrial supply under construction with 22.56 million square feet underway. Specifically, Dallas overtook Phoenix in January: Phoenix had only 17.67 million square feet under construction. Still, despite its national leadership, the active pipeline in Dallas is down from 28.6 million square feet at the same time last year — a trend that aligns with reduced pipelines across nearly all markets. For comparison, Phoenix was as high as 41.64 million square feet 12 months earlier.

Among the industrial space underway in Dallas, both manufacturing and data centers are significant players. In particular, manufacturing is massively boosting industrial pipelines in Southern markets. As such, Dallas benefits from a diverse range of industrial segments where manufacturing and data centers interweave. For instance, this month, Siemens opened a $190 million, 500,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Fort Worth to produce electrical equipment for data centers. Meanwhile, in February, Flex announced that a new, 400,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in east Dallas will help support its digital infrastructure to meet demand for power from AI-enabled data centers.

Additionally, Dallas has niche strengths like IOS. In January, Alterra IOS acquired four industrial outdoor storage sites across multiple locations in the DFW metroplex, including Dallas, Grand Prairie, Fort Worth and Garland.

For more information and a complete breakdown of the data, check out CommercialEdge’s original report.