Initially, it appeared that the health of office rentals would be failing in 2007. Major companies such as CompUSA and Centex homes suffered huge employee cutbacks, causing them to abandon a significant amount of Dallas office space.

Fortunately, the new trend in metropolitan development of combined use properties has made Dallas office space prime real estate for major companies. The environment fosters ease of living, working, and enjoying entertainment in one easy to reach area, creating a desirable location for employees to live. This has led to a significant increase in employee retention.

New real estate projects were completed in 2007, mostly in the form of luxury office buildings in the Uptown and Turtle Creek neighborhoods.

Due to the introduction of many new office buildings into the market in 2007, and the closing or relocating of several large companies, occupancy still held above 80 percent. Several large corporations have relocated their corporate headquarters to Dallas, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Comerica Bank has announced its intention to vacate their corporate offices in Detroit and relocate to downtown Dallas, and American International Group will be moving between 400 and 500 employees into 125,000 square feet of Dallas office space in the Plaza of the Americas Building. AIG

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 8:43 am and is filed under Commercial Real Estate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.