Amazon HQ2 Could Mean Higher Rents For Dallas Area

What would it take to get Amazon to locate it’s HQ2 here in Dallas? Jon Anderson says you don’t want to know, and we shouldn’t be so sure we want the e-retailer here anyway.

And according to new stats from ApartmentList, if Seattle’s fallout from HQ1 is any indication, Dallas and Austin renters should expect a bump in cost of living should Amazon HQ2 land in these major Texas metro areas.

Since Amazon executives announced early last month that the company plans to select a U.S. city for a second corporate headquarters, speculation has been swirling about which city the retail giant will crown. In an upcoming report, Apartment List studied the top Amazon HQ2 contenders to project the impact that the new headquarters would have on local rents.

In Seattle, home of the company’s current headquarters, the influx of high-paid Amazon employees has coincided with rent increases that outpace almost all other U.S. cities and the fastest growth rate in home prices nationwide.  We predict an additional annual rent increase of up to 2 percent per year on top of the rent growth those metros would experience without the Amazon HQ2, costing renter households up to $29,581 over the next 10 years. 

• Rents in Dallas will increase an additional 0.2% – 0.4% per year with the Amazon HQ2. This is on top of baseline rent growth without Amazon, which averaged 3.3% per year from 2005 to 2015
• With a vacancy rate of 7.4% and a historical average of 37,382 building permits per year, Dallas is more prepared to house the influx of Amazon employees than other metros studied
• With a population size of 7,233,323 and median wages of $36,450, Dallas will be less impacted by the influx of high-wage workers than other metros studied