DFW office market shows mixed recovery, but urban core nears pre-COVID levels

Avison Young has updated the Office Busyness Index that utilizes cell phone mobility data to assess daily employee activity and visitation to office space across major U.S. markets. As of December 2024, the U.S. office sector had rebounded to 60.8% of where it stood before COVID and the sector’s accelerated move to remote and hybrid work. DFW, in comparison, lagged slightly at 58.9%.

While December is always a “slower” month in office attendance due to the major holidays, DFW did see a positive 4.6-percentage point bump from December 2023. Overall, this put DFW squarely in the middle of the pack of the 41 markets Avison Young tracks. Within these “averages,” there is a wide range in how assets have recovered—dependent on submarket location, property specifics, and individual tenancy. Dallas’ urban core has fared much better than other parts of the market.

Dallas’ CBD and neighboring Uptown submarkets show that December office utilization has returned to near 90%, with the CBD and Uptown nearly tied. This also reflects an increase of 6.3 percentage points from 2023. DFW’s close-in suburban submarkets (Central Expressway, LBJ Freeway, and Preston Center) are also outperforming the average, although mostly unchanged from 2023. This continued solid return to the office is likely driven by the easy commuting patterns for these close-in suburbs from the extensive nearby single and multifamily housing.

For DFW’s next tier of suburban employment hubs, the return to office has been more modest, even though some of these areas represent the region’s dominant office hubs (like the Dallas North Tollway and US 75). These areas have seen a return to office of 48% to almost 60%—more in line with the broader average and only a modest increase in the last year. MidCities, however, did see a 14.4% increase in the last year to 66%, mostly due to a dramatic rebound in Westlake | Grapevine. Since the buildings tracked there are almost exclusively single-tenant, it is difficult to pinpoint what drove the increase.

While these suburban locations were very popular prior to the shift, these hubs tend to have longer, more congested commutes, and fewer walkable amenities. Interestingly, the closer-in lower tollway (Quorum | Bent Tree) comes in at 67.7%, down slightly from where it had been in December 2023.