Which Sun Belt Metros Are Attracting the Most Institutional Real Estate Capital in 2026

TL;DR: Dallas-Fort Worth pulled in $22.3 billion in commercial real estate sales in 2025, more than any other U.S. metro, and institutional buyers accounted for over a third of that dollar volume, according to Avison Young data reported by The Real Deal. That number tells you more about where institutional capital is actually going in 2026 than the $8 billion 1789 Capital Sun Belt vehicle that made headlines this month. I pulled transaction data, Census migration numbers, and cap-rate commentary to separate which Sun Belt metros are backed by real deal flow from which are running mostly on narrative.

The data: five metros, one uneven story

I want to be straight with you before the numbers start flying: "the Sun Belt" is not one market. It is a marketing phrase that lumps Dallas, which had the best year of any metro in America, together with Austin, which is still digging out from an apartment supply glut. Treating them as a single thesis is how you end up overpaying for a Tampa industrial park because a Dallas headline made you feel bullish.

Here is what the transaction data shows across five Sun Belt metros, pulled from brokerage capital markets reports and metro-level filings. I have flagged where the numbers are directly comparable and where they are not, because that distinction matters more than the numbers themselves.

Metro	2025 CRE investment volume	YoY change	Population growth (2024-2025)	CBRE 2026 investor ranking	Notable institutional deal
Dallas-Fort Worth, TX	$22.3 billion	+6.6%	+123,557 residents	No. 1 (5th year running)	LaSalle Investment Management multifamily/industrial portfolio buy from QuadReal
Atlanta, GA	Not separately disclosed by Avison Young top-12 list	Data centers: 1.6 GW to 19.6 GW pipeline since 2021	+61,953 residents	No. 2 (up 2 spots)	GI Partners paid $253M for an Alpharetta data center, ~300% above its 2022 price
Charlotte, NC	$6.07 billion (full-year total from Avison Young metro table)	-21.8% dollar volume vs. 2024, but Q4 alone up 55% QoQ	+54,122 residents	No. 5 (up 13 spots)	$223 million office sale, 600 South Tryon Street
Nashville, TN	$5.1 billion	+40%	Not in Census top-10 numeric gainers; still above U.S. average	No. 7 (new top-10 entrant)	Industrial sector alone hit a record $1.8 billion, per Colliers
Tampa, FL	Not aggregated at metro level in sources reviewed	Industrial asking rents +86% over 5 years, more than double the U.S. average	Not in Census top-10 numeric gainers; Florida's growth concentrated in Ocala, Lakeland, Punta Gorda	New top-10 entrant	Brookdale Group paid $151.3M for the 100 North Tampa office tower; East Capital Partners paid $92.5M for a Tampa industrial portfolio

Notice the gaps in that table. I did not find a single clean, metro-wide 2025 dollar-volume figure for Atlanta or Tampa from the brokerage reports I pulled, the way I did for Dallas, Charlotte, and Nashville. That is not laziness. Avison Young's year-end report names Dallas-Fort Worth as the No. 1 metro by dollar volume nationally, at $22.3 billion, out of roughly $472.6 billion in total U.S. investment sales in 2025, a nearly 20% jump over 2024, per The Real Deal's coverage of the Avison Young data. Atlanta and Tampa's momentum in 2025 shows up more clearly in sector-specific and deal-level reporting than in a single top-line number, so I am flagging that limitation rather than inventing a round figure to fill the cell.

What's driving the capital flow

Three forces are doing the heavy lifting.

First, migration is real but it slowed. The Census Bureau's Vintage 2025 estimates, released in March 2026, show Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth as the two biggest numeric gainers in the country, adding 126,720 and 123,557 residents respectively between mid-2024 and mid-2025, roughly double the next-largest gainer, Atlanta, at 61,953. Charlotte added 54,122 and Austin added 53,796, according to the Census Bureau's own release. The growth rate nationally cooled sharply: the average metro growth rate fell from 1.1% in 2023-2024 to 0.6% in 2024-2025, mostly because net international migration dropped off, not because domestic Sun Belt migration reversed. That distinction matters for anyone underwriting a five-year hold. Domestic in-migration to Texas and the Southeast held up. The immigration-driven tailwind that inflated 2023-2024 numbers did not.

Second, capital is chasing job growth more than raw population count now. CBRE's 2026 North America Investor Intentions Survey found Charlotte jumped 13 spots to No. 5 among the most attractive U.S. metros for investors, citing "sustained job and population inflows." Charlotte posted roughly 2.7% year-over-year employment growth concentrated in financial services and corporate relocation, per Willowbrook Capital's market-by-market financing guide. Nashville made the same leap, rising to No. 7 for the first time. Dallas has held the No. 1 spot for five straight years, per CBRE's 2026 Investor Intentions Survey, and 95% of surveyed investors said they plan to buy as much or more real estate in 2026 than in 2025, with 55% planning to increase their capital allocation to real estate outright, up from 48% a year earlier.

Third, the cost of capital is finally moving in investors' favor, on paper. CBRE projects total U.S. commercial real estate investment volume will rise 16% in 2026 to roughly $562 billion, "nearly matching the pre-pandemic (2015-2019) annual average," per its 2026 Capital Markets outlook, with cap rates for most property types expected to compress 5 to 15 basis points as the Fed is expected to bring the fed funds rate toward 3% by late 2026. Compression that small will not bail out a bad basis. It is a tailwind, not a rescue.

There is a fourth driver worth its own line, because it is quietly larger than housing migration in dollar terms right now: data centers. Georgia's data center capacity ballooned from about 1.6 gigawatts in 2021 to a pipeline exceeding 19.6 gigawatts today, according to Bisnow's year-end Atlanta CRE recap. OpenAI signed a $20 billion deal in July 2026 to build a data center campus near Savannah in Effingham County, Georgia, and Meta and BlackRock announced a separate $14 billion venture in El Paso, Texas the same month, per Reuters. QTS and Lancium separately committed $10 billion to a Hall County, Texas campus. None of that shows up in a residential migration chart, but it is real institutional and hyperscaler capital landing in Sun Belt dirt, and it is arguably a bigger 2026 story than any single housing fund.

The 1789 Capital fund, in context

This is the fund that put "Sun Belt real estate" back in headlines this month, so here are the facts, then where it sits relative to everything above.

1789 Capital, the investment firm where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner, closed a $1.2 billion real estate development fund on August 13, 2026, with a stated goal of backing over $8 billion in total project capitalization once leverage and co-investment partners are layered in, according to Axios's original report. The fund targets Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, the same five-to-six-state footprint that shows up across every migration and capital-flow dataset in this piece. Easton Street Capital, a Florida development firm led by Cody Crowell, is the exclusive operating partner. Focus areas include housing, community development, manufacturing, and data centers, per Bisnow's reporting.

The fund's size deserves honest framing. First, $1.2 billion in committed equity is real money, but it is not large by institutional real estate standards. It is smaller than Nashville's total 2025 industrial investment volume alone ($1.8 billion, per Colliers). Second, the projected $8 billion figure is aspirational total capitalization, assuming debt and co-investment partners show up at the ratios the fund is targeting. A SEC filing for the fund's blocker feeder vehicle showed just $65 million raised from a single investor as of March 31, 2026, months before the final $1.2 billion close, according to The American Developer's reporting. These raises build slowly, and the headline number arrives only at the end.

I am treating 1789 Capital as one data point confirming a trend that was already visible in the CBRE, Avison Young, and Census numbers above, not as the trend itself. The fund is notable because of who is behind it and the media attention that follows, and it will likely accelerate deal flow in its target metros once it starts deploying. But Dallas-Fort Worth alone did more than 18 times 1789's committed equity in transaction volume in 2025. The fund is a symptom of the capital rotation into the Sun Belt, not the cause of it.

Risks and where the data gets murky

Three risks are showing up clearly in the data, and one limitation is showing up in how the data itself is reported.

The multifamily oversupply hangover is the biggest near-term risk, and it is concentrated in exactly the metros getting the most investor attention. Austin's apartment rents were down 3.7% to 4.2% year-over-year as of mid-2026, according to Yardi Matrix's Austin report, with stabilized occupancy at just 91.8%. Nashville rents fell 1.3% year-over-year even as the metro's investment volume jumped 40%, per Yardi Matrix's Nashville report. The Dallas Fed's own research desk put it plainly: the sharpest rent drops in Texas have hit Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas, with landlord concessions running six to twelve weeks of free rent in some Texas submarkets, per the Dallas Fed's analysis. CBRE's own 2026 outlook admits that Sun Belt and Mountain markets face a "twin dilemma" of macro headwinds plus a 50-year-high wave of new supply, pushing the expected return to positive asking rent growth out to late 2026 for many high-supply markets. If you are underwriting a multifamily deal in Austin, Dallas, or Phoenix right now, you are underwriting a recovery that has not happened yet.

Second, transaction data itself is inconsistent across metros, which is a real limitation for anyone trying to build a clean comparison table like the one above. Different brokerages (Avison Young, Colliers, CBRE, JLL, CoStar) use different geographic definitions, different property-type inclusions, and different reporting cadences. Dallas-Fort Worth's $22.3 billion figure comes from Avison Young's national ranking, and Nashville's $5.1 billion comes from Colliers' market index. I could not find a comparably clean full-metro figure for Atlanta or Tampa from any single source in this research pass. When a metro's number is missing from this article, it is because I could not verify it against a primary source, not because the metro lacks activity. Treat any single-source metro statistic with more caution than a number confirmed across two or more brokerages.

Third, forecasting real estate cycles is unreliable, and the people saying 2026 is a recovery year are, structurally, the same people paid to originate transactions. CBRE's 16% investment volume growth projection and its cap rate compression forecast are reasonable given the data trend, but they are forecasts, not facts, and CBRE's business model benefits from investor optimism. Cushman & Wakefield's own June 2026 research notes that "the market is not broadly optimistic, but it is increasingly pragmatic," per its Market Matters briefing, a more honest read than most bank research desks will give you. The same report notes the recovery has been a debt story more than an equity story. Apartment refinancing volume grew faster than apartment sales volume in early 2026, because selling at today's cap rates locks in losses that a refinance defers. That is not a market screaming "buy now." It is a market where owners are waiting.

Georgia's data center boom carries its own separate risk that gets less attention than housing oversupply: power and water infrastructure. Texas has committed up to $20 billion to water infrastructure over the next two decades, but the state's own 2027 water plan draft projects $174 billion is actually needed over 50 years, according to The Texas Tribune's reporting. If grid and water constraints slow data center buildout, that is a direct hit to one of the fastest-growing capital flows into Texas and Georgia real estate.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which Sun Belt metro attracted the most institutional real estate capital in 2025?

Dallas-Fort Worth led all U.S. metros, Sun Belt or otherwise, with $22.3 billion in commercial real estate investment sales in 2025, up 6.6% year-over-year, according to Avison Young data reported by The Real Deal. Institutional buyers made up more than a third of that dollar volume, the highest institutional share of any major U.S. market that year.

Is the 1789 Capital $8 billion fund the biggest driver of Sun Belt real estate investment right now?

No. The fund closed with $1.2 billion in committed equity, and its $8 billion figure is a projected total capitalization once debt and co-investment partners are added, not capital already deployed. Dallas-Fort Worth's 2025 transaction volume alone exceeded that projected total, and data center deals in Texas and Georgia announced in mid-2026, including a $20 billion OpenAI project and a $14 billion Meta-BlackRock venture, dwarf the fund in absolute dollars.

Are Sun Belt apartment markets currently oversupplied?

Yes, in several specific metros. Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, and Nashville have all posted negative year-over-year asking rent growth in 2026 as new apartment supply outpaced demand absorption, according to Yardi Matrix and Dallas Fed research. CBRE's own 2026 outlook projects a return to positive rent growth in many of these markets will not arrive until late 2026, and the pace of recovery is expected to be uneven across metros.

Why don't all five metros in this article have the same type of investment data?

Brokerage firms use different geographic boundaries, property-type inclusions, and reporting schedules, so a clean, directly comparable dollar-volume figure is not always available for every metro from a single source. Where a metro-wide figure could not be verified against a primary source, this article describes directional trends, such as data center capacity growth or specific deal prices, instead of estimating a number.

Author Disclosure: Jeff Barnes, MBA has no personal position in any company, fund, or platform named in this article. Angel Investors Network has no current commercial relationship with any party mentioned. AIN provides marketing and education services, not investment advice. Past performance does not guarantee future results. All investments involve risk, including loss of principal.