The Top US CRE Markets That Are Expanding Their Tech Hubs

A surge in technology employment is fueling rapid growth in Dallas and Atlanta, which both broke records for CRE investment in 2021 as the top US markets, respectively, for total investment in all types of property.

The Dallas-Fort Worth metro now has the seventh-largest tech workforce in the nation, estimated at 380,000; Atlanta broke into the top 10 in 2021 with about 275,000 tech jobs, according to CompTIA, which tracks more than a dozen key tech categories including software engineers, database architects, IT managers and cybersecurity specialists.

Tech workers are migrating to the Dallas and Atlanta metros in large numbers, drawn by the growth of high-wage tech jobs in metros that offer a much more affordable cost of living that larger urban tech centers including New York, San Francisco, Boston and Washington DC.

Atlanta experienced the second-largest metro increase of average tech salaries in 2021, a 13.4-percent jump that put the average tech wage in Atlanta at $107,515, according to the Dice Salary Report. Average tech wages in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro grew by 8.5 percent to $106,113.

According to Axios, which tracks LinkedIn user profile location changes for software and IT workers, Dallas and Atlanta were among the metros with the largest influx of migrating tech workers during the pandemic, while San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Boston and Washington DC all experienced double-digit losses in the percentage of tech workers who moved out.

Atlanta rapidly is developing into one of the top global fintech hubs, building on a solid foundation of online banking and lending innovations in a city known as Transaction Alley because 70 percent of all debit, credit and prepaid card transactions in the US are processed in Atlanta. Leading fintech firms based in Metro Atlanta include Global Payments, NCR, Equifax, Fiserv, and InComm Payments.

Leveraging academic resources at Georgia Tech, which is consistently ranked as one of the top cybersecurity schools in the US, Atlanta continues to grow as a leading cybersecurity hub. Atlanta is home to more than 100 companies in the cybersecurity space, according to data from Crunchbase, with new growth coming from demand for upgraded security by fintech or e-commerce solution providers.

Recent cybersecurity activity in the Atlanta metro includes IRONSCALES, an Israeli startup that moved to Atlanta and recently secured $64 million in venture capital; and DefenseStorm, a rapidly growing startup that has $17 million in VC equity funding its work with banks in the cloud-based cybersecurity, cyber compliance and cyber fraud space.

Dallas cemented its reputation as a millennial magnet offering a 24/7 work/live/play scene when Uber chose Big D’s thriving Deep Ellum historic district as the site of its new US General and Administrative Hub, which is creating 3,000 jobs as the anchor of a mixed-use development known as The Epic.

According to JLL’s most recent Data Center Outlook, Dallas-Fort Worth is the sixth largest US data center hub and Metro Atlanta is no. 8 in JLL’s annual tally of the data hubs with the largest net absorption of megawatts.

Data from Real Capital Analytics ranked Dallas the top US real estate market, with $46.9 percent in total investment in 2021, which is 77 percent higher than the previous record for the Dallas market. Atlanta ranked second with $37.1 billion, also a record.