Texas vacancy warning as parallel

Industrial vacancy in Austin has climbed as a wave of new warehouse space hits the market, giving tenants more leverage in lease talks. (cbre.com) CBRE said Austin industrial vacancy rose for a fifth straight quarter in Q1 2026, with 385,000 square feet of net absorption and 3.2 million square feet of leasing activity. Asking rents fell by $0.19 per square foot from the prior quarter as deliveries kept coming. (cbre.com) Cushman & Wakefield put Austin’s overall industrial vacancy even higher, at 22.9% in Q1 2026, after 1.2 million square feet of new deliveries expanded inventory to 101.9 million square feet. It said 4.5 million square feet remained under construction and less than 10% of that space was preleased. (cushmanwakefield.com) The split in vacancy figures comes from firms using different market definitions, but both reports point in the same direction: supply is arriving faster than tenants are filling it. Cushman said Austin’s leasing volume still rose 35.3% from a year earlier, led partly by deals above 100,000 square feet. (cushmanwakefield.com) That matters because “big-box” space — the giant warehouses used by retailers, logistics firms and manufacturers — has been the part of the market most exposed to the post-boom construction surge. Cushman said large-format leasing of 500,000 square feet and up stayed active nationally in Q1 2026, but newer supply still left the U.S. vacancy rate at 7.0%. (cushmanwakefield.com) In Austin, that imbalance is already showing up in negotiations. CBRE said rent declines reflected “increased tenant leverage amid higher availability,” while Cresa said elevated supply was reshaping decisions for occupiers. (cbre.com) (cresa.com) The Inland Empire, a Southern California logistics hub, is not at Austin’s vacancy level. But its industrial vacancy has also risen: CBRE put core vacancy at 7.8% in Q1 2026, Cushman & Wakefield put the broader market at 8.5%, and Colliers put it at 8.1%. (cbre.com) (cushmanwakefield.com) (colliers.com) Colliers said four separate 1 million-square-foot buildings went vacant in the Inland Empire in one quarter for the first time on record, and average asking rents were down 39% from their Q2 2023 peak. It also said 53.6 million square feet sat vacant in Q1 2026, up from 1.9 million square feet in Q1 2022. (colliers.com) The difference is that Inland Empire leasing is still running hot. CBRE said new deals there reached 13.6 million square feet in Q1 2026, up 40.2% from Q4 2025, even as large move-outs in buildings above 500,000 square feet pushed vacancy higher. (cbre.com) Texas is not a one-market story, either. Dallas-Fort Worth posted positive absorption in Q1 2026, and both CBRE and Savills said vacancy there improved from late-2025 levels even with a huge supply base. (cbre.com) (savills.us) What Texas offers, for now, is a live test of what happens after developers deliver years of speculative warehouse construction into slower demand. Austin shows the clearest version of that reset: more empty space, softer rents, and tenants with more room to bargain. (cushmanwakefield.com)