Kerry Curry

While the Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) region has been highly successful in drawing corporate relocations to the area, city leaders, speaking at a ULI North Texas event, said that the main weakness in Amazon’s eye for the e-commerce giant’s second headquarters (HQ2) was an insufficient amount of existing and available talent.
Alternative lenders increased their market share in the commercial real estate debt sector in 2018, panelists said at a ULI North Texas event in March. That trend is likely to continue this year as competition among all types of debt providers heats up capital markets.
The booming economy in the Dallas/Fort Worth metropolitan area, fueled by corporate relocations, business expansions, and in-migration, can mask some of the region’s heady challenges: rising home prices, a high poverty rate, and long-term racial and economic segregation. A new study of three U.S. cities, which was released at an event cosponsored by ULI North Texas, looks at mitigating inequality without stalling development.
Dallas/Fort Worth has the best outlook of any U.S. real estate market, according to Emerging Trends in Real Estate® 2019, published jointly by ULI and PwC. However, the region is near the bottom of the pack among similar-sized metro areas for walkable urban development. Researchers spoke at a ULI North Texas event about the opportunities in changing that dynamic.
The city of Dallas’s first-ever comprehensive housing policy is drawing significant interest from real estate professionals, but building affordable housing in one of the nation’s most income-segregated cities remains a significant challenge. A group of housing experts gathered in September to discuss the policy and affordable housing opportunities at an event hosted by ULI North Texas.


While it is estimated that 98 percent of the Dallas/Fort Worth region’s land mass is suburban-style development requiring the day-to-day use of a car, panelists speaking at a recent ULI North Texas event say most of what has been built in the current cycle has favored walkable urban places, whether in the downtown areas or in suburban corridors.
Strong economic fundamentals, a favorable regulatory environment, and plenty of capital to deploy bode well for real estate investments, acquisitions, and development in 2018.
With the Texas economy firing on all cylinders, 2018 looks to be another good year for many industries, including residential real estate and both the energy and industrial sectors. But key demographic changes could challenge the future prosperity of Texas and other states, according to the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank president for the region speaking at a ULI event in Dallas.
With e-commerce’s stake in U.S. retail at less than 10 percent, suggestions of a “retail apocalypse” of brick-and-mortar stores is greatly exaggerated, panelists said during a ULI North Texas event on the retail sector. Still, panelists at an event in Dallas said the industry has to find new ways to reinvent itself and connect with customers in order to thrive.
Texas markets are meeting a healthy demand for multifamily housing from millennials who are reaching renting age and baby boomers who are downsizing, while attracting investment from around the United States. At a recent conference, speakers said that fundamentals were generally strong with higher cap rates possible in tertiary markets such as Midland-Odessa, Waco, and Lubbock.
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