Richardson Industrial Capital Market Report
Mid-Year 2026
Between February 2026 and mid-year 2026, the Richardson industrial market tightened its investment story even as leasing fundamentals held their long-running pattern of scarcity. A single $59 million data-center sale gave the submarket its first confirmed sales volume of the year, cap rates and pricing firmed modestly, and specialized industrial space, already Richardson’s tightest product type, saw its remaining availability all but disappear.
This report summarizes capital markets performance, leasing fundamentals, pricing dynamics, and strategic implications for owners, investors, and tenants operating in one of North Texas’s most supply constrained infill industrial submarkets.
Executive Summary: Scarcity Tightens Further
Between February 2026 and mid-year 2026, Richardson moved from a quiet, undisclosed sales market to one anchored by a single large institutional transaction, while leasing fundamentals stayed structurally tight.
Key signals from the period included:
- Total asset value held flat at $3.2 billion, while 12-month sales volume moved from no confirmed transactions to $59 million, driven almost entirely by one data-center sale
- The market cap rate edged up 10 basis points to 6.5%, and average market sale pricing firmed from $178/SF to $180/SF
- Vacancy ticked up slightly from 6.1% to 6.3%, but remained far below the Dallas-Fort Worth industrial average, which itself compressed from 9.1% to 8.2%
- Under-construction inventory fell sharply from 199,782 SF to just 76,440 SF as Naturich Labs’ 123,342-SF owner-occupied building delivered in March 2026
- Trailing 12-month absorption held ahead of deliveries, rising from roughly 384,000 SF to 410,000 SF against 123,000 SF of new supply
- Asking rent growth cooled from 3.0% to 2.3%, even as specialized industrial availability collapsed from 2.3% to just 0.5%
Richardson remains a landlord-favorable, high-barrier infill market where scarcity, not transaction velocity, continues to define performance.
Capital Markets Performance Metrics (Mid-Year 2026)
Key changes over the period:
- Total Asset Value: $3.2B → $3.2B (flat)
- 12-Month Sales Volume: $0 confirmed → $59M
- Transactions (12 mo): 65 → 49
- Market Cap Rate: 6.4% → 6.5% (10 bps expansion)
- Market Sale Price/SF: $178 → $180 (+1.1%)
- Market Sale Price/SF Growth (YoY): 1.5% → 1.9%
Richardson’s confirmed sales volume for the trailing 12 months is effectively the product of a single transaction: the $58.98 million sale of the 365 Data Centers DAL1001 building at 1001 E Campbell Rd, which alone accounts for the entire $59 million figure. Transaction count fell from 65 to 49 over the same window, a function of the trailing 12-month window rolling off a wave of small, often undisclosed-price deals from late 2025 rather than a slowdown in current activity. Average transaction size held in the mid-$20,000s SF range in both periods.
Cap Rate Dynamics and Pricing Power
- The move from 6.4% to 6.5% is a modest 10 basis point expansion, a small give-back rather than a re-rating, consistent with a market where buyers are willing to accept tight yields for restricted supply
- Market-wide sale pricing firmed from $178/SF to $180/SF, with year-over-year price growth accelerating slightly from 1.5% to 1.9%
- CoStar’s underlying commentary notes recent single-asset comps clustering closer to 6.0%, tighter than the blended 6.5% market cap rate, reflecting a premium for the highest-quality, mission-critical assets
- Sale-price-to-asking-price differential is not reported for this submarket
Pricing continues to reflect Richardson’s identity as a high-barrier, infill industrial market: restricted supply, elevated replacement costs, and a technology and manufacturing-oriented tenant base support values well above several peer submarkets, even with only modest deal volume.
Institutional Transaction Activity
Richardson’s investment activity continues to run through portfolio-level and institutional trades rather than a broad base of standalone sales, and this period added a new headline transaction to that pattern.
- 1001 E Campbell Rd (365 Data Centers DAL1001), Richardson, TX 75081: sold February 2026 for $58,981,942 ($785/SF), 100% leased at closing. Buyer: Altum Digital Infrastructure (USA); Seller: CVC DIF (NLD). RBA 75,100 SF, built 1980 and renovated 2011, structured as a bulk/portfolio, entity-level sale with a 91-month hold period.
- An 8-property, roughly 49,000-SF portfolio traded in April 2026, including several properties along Interurban Street and Bishop Avenue, continuing the pattern of small-bay assets changing hands in bundled transactions rather than one at a time
- Longpoint Realty Partners acquired 660 N Dorothy Drive, a 120,000-SF distribution center, in January 2026 as part of a broader core-plus infill industrial portfolio spanning Dallas-Fort Worth, with PGIM Real Estate providing $108 million in acquisition financing across the combined deal
- Walton Street Capital’s earlier $84 million, six-property acquisition from TA Realty (roughly $168/SF) remains notable context: it included the 175,000-SF Richardson Logistics Center, valued near $37.5 million and anchored by Game Nerdz’s distribution and headquarters operations
Taken together, these transactions confirm that institutional and increasingly digital-infrastructure-focused capital continues to treat Richardson as a durable, income-oriented hold, even as headline transaction counts stay modest.
Leasing Market Fundamentals: Tighter Than the Metro, Still Scarce at the Small End
Leasing conditions held their structurally tight pattern through mid-year, even as vacancy ticked up slightly from a very low base.
- Vacancy: 6.1% → 6.3%
- Availability: 7.3% → 6.8%
- Trailing 12-month absorption: ~384,000 SF → ~410,000 SF
- 12-Month Deliveries: ~102,000 SF → ~123,000 SF
- Dallas-Fort Worth benchmark vacancy: 9.1% → 8.2%
Absorption again outpaced deliveries, and availability tightened even as vacancy edged higher, a combination that points to healthy pre-leasing and limited speculative risk rather than softening demand. Richardson’s vacancy gap to the broader Dallas-Fort Worth market narrowed in absolute terms, from roughly 3.0 points to 1.9 points, mostly because the metro’s own vacancy compressed faster than Richardson’s did. Leverage remains landlord-favorable overall, and increasingly so in specialized industrial, while flex space carries more room to negotiate given its larger footprint and a handful of oversized vacant blocks.
Development Pipeline and Supply Dynamics
- Under Construction: 199,782 SF → 76,440 SF
The pipeline thinned sharply this period. Naturich Labs’ 123,342-SF owner-occupied specialized industrial building at 3200 Research Dr delivered in March 2026, leaving 2180 N Glenville Dr (76,440 SF, Box Investment Group, logistics) as the only project still under construction, now expected to complete in February 2027. The submarket’s one proposed project, Dayton Street Partners’ 346,507-SF building at 2801 Telecom Pky, saw both its start date (March to July 2026) and completion date (December 2026 to July 2027) pushed back a full quarter, a sign of continued caution around new speculative supply.
In a notable supply-side shift, the former Campbell Glen office property was demolished in the second quarter of 2026 as part of an office-to-industrial conversion that will yield a new 76,500-SF industrial building, mirroring a similar conversion recently completed just across the Tollway in Plano and hinting at a second source of future supply beyond ground-up development.
Market Rents by Product Type
- Logistics: $12.98/SF, 5.9% vacancy, 10.8% availability (was $12.71/SF, 6.7% vacancy, 12.4% availability)
- Specialized Industrial: $16.09/SF, 5.1% vacancy, 0.5% availability (was $15.93/SF, 5.1% vacancy, 2.3% availability)
- Flex: $16.37/SF, 7.0% vacancy, 7.8% availability (was $16.36/SF, 6.1% vacancy, 7.2% availability)
- Submarket blended average: $15.44/SF, 6.3% vacancy, 6.8% availability (was $15.33/SF, 6.1% vacancy, 7.3% availability)
Specialized Industrial is the tightest segment by far. Its availability collapsed from 2.3% to just 0.5% even as vacancy held flat at 5.1%, meaning almost none of that space is being actively marketed for lease at any given time.
Rent Growth Drivers
- Asking Rent Growth (YoY): 3.0% → 2.3%
Why rent growth cooled:
- Specialized industrial, the segment carrying Richardson’s highest asking rents, is now so fully leased that there is little remaining space left to reprice upward through new leasing
- Limited new deliveries, essentially one owner-occupied building this period, mean landlords face little competitive pressure to concede on rent, but there is also little large-scale premium product driving fresh upward mark-to-market resets
- The broader Dallas-Fort Worth industrial market has also cooled on rent growth as elevated bulk logistics vacancy metro-wide weighs on the regional average, and Richardson’s deceleration tracks that wider trend even as its absolute rent levels stay well above the metro
Small-Bay and Owner-User Space
For businesses looking to buy or lease sub-10,000 SF space, Richardson remains an extremely tight market and got tighter this period. Specialized industrial, the product type that best fits smaller owner-users, has essentially no availability (0.5%), down from an already-scarce 2.3% six months earlier. Flex space, at roughly 9.1 million SF, makes up just over half of Richardson’s total industrial inventory, by far the largest share of any product type in the submarket, yet its 7.8% availability is concentrated in a handful of larger blocks rather than broadly distributed in small increments. Unlike some peer submarkets, Richardson’s active and proposed construction pipeline includes no small-bay, multi-tenant project purpose-built for smaller users. Owners and tenants targeting smaller footprints should not expect near-term relief from new supply and should be prepared to move quickly, widen their search to include larger flex blocks that can be subdivided, or consider build-to-suit.
Strategic Market Positioning
- For Owners and Owner-Occupants: Specialized industrial availability has effectively vanished, at just 0.5%, which supports both sale pricing and renewal leverage if you already own in this segment. Market pricing firmed to $180/SF and continues to grow year-over-year, so holding is being rewarded. If you are looking to buy a small-bay building for your own operation, expect a nearly empty market: almost nothing is being actively marketed, and the construction pipeline offers nothing built to your scale. Move quickly on any listing that fits, look seriously at flex space with functional retrofit potential, or explore a build-to-suit given Richardson’s access to US-75, the President George Bush Turnpike, and the UT-Dallas talent pipeline.
- For Tenants: Absorption continues to outpace deliveries, and with only one small building left under construction, don’t expect meaningful new supply to relieve pressure on specialized industrial space. Flex space shows more headline availability, but a meaningful share sits in a few oversized blocks rather than being broadly available in the smaller increments most tenants need, so treat that 7.8% figure with some caution. Start your search early, budget time to negotiate around large vacant blocks that may need subdividing, and don’t assume standard small-bay product will simply appear.
- For Institutional Buyers: Cap rates ticked up a modest 10 basis points to 6.5% and pricing firmed to $180/SF, and institutional and digital-infrastructure capital remains clearly active, evidenced by this period’s $59 million data-center sale and continued portfolio activity from firms like Walton Street Capital and Longpoint Realty Partners.
Market Outlook and Investment Thesis
Capital Markets Outlook: With asset value stable, cap rates only modestly higher, and institutional capital continuing to target Richardson’s data-center and infill industrial stock, expect continued but selective investment activity through the balance of 2026, concentrated in portfolio-level and technology-tenant-anchored transactions rather than a broad pickup in standalone sales volume.
Leasing Outlook: With the construction pipeline down to a single 76,440-SF building and specialized industrial availability near zero, expect rents in that segment to firm further even as blended rent growth stays modest. Flex space should see gradual absorption of its larger vacant blocks over time, but landlords of oversized flex space may need to offer concessions to fill them, which will likely keep blended submarket metrics steadier than the underlying tightness in specialized product would otherwise suggest.
Brent Pennington, CCIM, ALC
Advisor, Senior Vice President
Metroport Commercial Group, eXp Commercial
1720 Bray Central Drive, Ste 100, McKinney, TX 75069
Phone: 817-999-8266
Email: brent@metroportcommercial.com
Website: www.metroportcre.com
Data Sources: CoStar Group, Richardson Industrial Submarket and Capital Markets Reports, February 2026 and July 2026.
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