Dallas Tops Cities With Room To Grow, Boasting 90,000 Acres of Vacant Land

Texas cities claimed five of the top eight spots in the Commercial Cafe ranking.

Everything’s bigger in Texas — including room to grow, a new study finds.

Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio and Houston all were ranked among the top five cities in the country with available land for additional construction.

“Texas remained the home of urban sprawl with the highest number of entries on our list,” according to the study by Yardi Systems’ Commercial Cafe.

Phoenix also made the list of metro areas with the most vacant land for development.

But Big D by far has the most vacant property for future building.

“Dallas led with a whopping 90,739 acres across more than 30,000 parcels with an average size of 2.72 acres,” Yardi Systems analysts found. “Since 2012, the city has added more than 40 million square feet of new office and industrial space to its inventory.

“Not to be outdone, Dallas’ sister city, Fort Worth, Texas, boasted 74,835 acres of undeveloped land.”

While the study didn’t list specific locations, most available land in Dallas historically has been in the southern sectors.

Yardi Systems surveyed development sites in the largest U.S. cities for its land use estimates.

“Across the 20 most populous cities in the U.S., there are 516,980 acres of land currently still awaiting development,” analysts found. “Unsurprisingly for those familiar with the map of urban sprawl across the U.S., cities across the South and Southwest boast tens of thousands of acres of undeveloped lots each.”

Looking at other Texas metros, San Antonio has 48,834 acres left to build on, and in Houston there are 46,168 acres of vacant land. Yardi Systems estimates only about 25,117 acres are available in Austin.

Source: Dallas Morning News