Supply Pressure to Persist in 2026

The Greater Dallas multifamily market enters 2026 fresh off a year in which net absorption outpaced new supply for the first time since 2021. While much ground remains to be made up after a tough few years, 2025 was another step in the right direction.

Looking ahead at expectations for 2026, new supply will continue to play a prominent role in market dynamics. New supply fell last year after a peak in 2024, and a resurgence is not expected in 2026. However, new supply pressure will remain due to a combination of new deliveries and a backlog of lease-up units.

Backlog of Lease-up Units

Anticipated deliveries this year make up the primary component of the new supply picture. However, an important element is the portion of the pipeline that includes properties that have already been delivered and are in some phase of the lease-up process.

These units continue to impact existing stabilized stock and will also impact new properties coming online this year. There were about 33,000 units in some stage of lease-up to begin the year. This was down slightly from approximately 38,000 units in September of 2025.

To add some perspective to that number, 33,000 lease-up units exceed the net absorption total for Greater Dallas in 2025 by about 60%. 2025 net absorption was also the most robust since 2021.

This means that even without a significant year-over-year increase in deliveries this year, the broader new supply environment, including both recent and upcoming deliveries, will likely continue to be a competitive pressure.

Of course, the effect will not be directly experienced equally across the market. For the lease-up portion of the pipeline, a little more than one-third of total units were in two submarkets: Frisco – The Colony – Little Elm and McKinney – Allen – Fairview.

Units Under Construction

There were about 24,000 units under construction across the market to begin the year. As with the lease-up portion of the pipeline, this total was modestly fewer than was the case at various points in 2024.

Of course, not all those units will enter the market in 2026. Based on current estimates, roughly 16,000 new units are expected to enter the market this year. This would represent a moderate increase in deliveries compared to last year but would put 2026 below both 2023 and 2024 for new supply.

The expected deliveries metric is a moving target. Delays happen and projects that are expected to begin leasing in the back half of the year, and especially in the final quarter, can end up starting to lease early the following year.

With all of that accounted for, new supply in 2026 appears set to come in right around the median point of the range set for Greater Dallas over the last five years. Importantly, this signals normalization rather than contraction.

The two aforementioned northern submarkets remain among the most active for current construction. Another notable submarket is the Plano East – North Richardson area. Those three regions of the Greater Dallas market account for about half of total units under construction.

Takeaways

New supply, despite no longer being at the 2024 level, will continue to impact leasing competition and rent growth this year. When taken together, expected 2026 deliveries and current lease-up units total nearly 50,000 units.

While net absorption cannot be expected to meet or exceed that total, 2026 has a real chance to be another year in which net absorption outpaces new deliveries. As the year progresses, construction starts data will begin to provide a clearer picture for the next couple of years. For this year at least, no supply surge is on the horizon. This is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for continued recovery.

*Jordan Brooks is Director of Market Analytics at ALN Apartment Data. https://www.alndata.com

ALN is the largest collector of apartment data in the United States. We update property-level information monthly, reporting on properties nationwide, and provide our clients with data analytics, new construction projects, histories, occupancy and rental trend reports, contact databases and locating services.