Warehouse Construction Cost per Square Foot in Texas: How AP Prices It

A new warehouse in Texas costs about $90 to $155 per square foot for the building alone at AP’s baseline, a 5,000 SF building in Dallas-Fort Worth. Larger buildings cost less per foot: at 50,000 SF and above, the same building runs about $70 to $121 per square foot before soil and market adjustments. Site work, design, and fees come on top.

Those figures come from the AP Construction Cost Index, the same model behind our instant estimate. This guide shows how the index is built so an owner, developer, or lender can see why one warehouse lands at the low end of the range and another at the top. It is written for anyone budgeting a warehouse, distribution center, or light industrial building in Texas, Louisiana, or Oklahoma before a design exists.

Base cost by building type

The index starts with a base rate for each building type. It covers building construction, including the general contractor’s general conditions, overhead, and fee, at a 5,000 SF baseline in Dallas-Fort Worth.

Building type	Base, 5,000 SF	At 50,000 SF and up
Warehouse	$90 to $155	$70 to $121
Distribution center	$120 to $190	$94 to $148
Light industrial or manufacturing	$140 to $235	$109 to $183
Metal building with office finish	$170 to $215	$133 to $168

All figures are dollars per building square foot, before market, soil, and site adjustments. Offices, retail, bank branches, and other building types are compared in our guide to commercial construction cost per square foot.

A distribution center sits above a plain warehouse because it carries more dock doors, a heavier truck court interface, more power, and often more conditioned space for the people who work in it. The metal building row includes an office finish, which is why it starts higher than a warehouse shell. The metal building versus tilt-wall comparison covers that choice.

Where in the range your building lands

The spread between the low and high number is mostly the building itself. A warehouse moves toward the top of its range when it has:

• A taller clear height, which adds wall, structure, and sprinkler cost
• More dock doors, levelers, and seals per square foot
• An ESFR or in-rack sprinkler system for higher storage or harder commodities
• A larger share of office, restrooms, and break space
• A thicker or flatter slab for heavy racking or narrow-aisle equipment
• Insulated walls, heating, or conditioned space

A plain storage shell with a small office, standard clear height, and a few doors sits near the bottom.

Size: bigger buildings cost less per foot

Fixed costs such as mobilization, supervision, and the site office are spread over more floor area as a building grows, and the exterior wall grows more slowly than the floor. The index applies a size factor to the base rate:

Building size	Factor applied to the base rate
Under 3,000 SF	1.20
3,000 to 4,999 SF	1.10
5,000 to 7,499 SF	1.00
7,500 to 9,999 SF	0.95
10,000 to 14,999 SF	0.90
15,000 to 24,999 SF	0.86
25,000 to 49,999 SF	0.82
50,000 SF and up	0.78

Market: where in Texas you build

Labor and subcontractor markets differ across the state. The index adjusts the base for the metro, measured against Dallas-Fort Worth:

Market	Adjustment to the base
Dallas-Fort Worth	Baseline
Houston	+1% to +4%
San Antonio	+2% to +5%
Austin	+8% to +12%
Corpus Christi	+6% to +12%
Beaumont / Port Arthur	+6% to +14%
Midland / Odessa	+8% to +25%

Sites far from a metro core carry a travel adjustment on top, because crews, supervision, and deliveries have to travel.

Soil, coast, and plant labor

Three conditions add cost on top of the building:

• Soil. Moderate soil adds $10 to $20 per SF (expansive clay, select fill, moisture conditioning). Severe soil adds $20 to $35 per SF (piers or piles, high water table, deep undercut). Expansive clay in Dallas-Fort Worth and the Gulf Coast usually counts as moderate.
• Coastal wind zone. Near the coast, design for higher wind loads, impact-rated openings, and builder’s risk coverage add 5% to 12%.
• Petrochemical labor competition. Around Beaumont, Port Arthur, Baytown, and Lake Charles, plant turnaround seasons pull skilled trades away, adding 5% to 15%.

Public or prevailing wage work adds 10% to 20% for wage rates and certified payroll.

Three worked examples

Each example uses the index exactly as the instant estimate does, with the market’s usual soil and coastal settings.

Building	Per SF	Building total
20,000 SF warehouse, Houston	$88 to $159	$1,760,000 to $3,170,000
60,000 SF warehouse, Dallas-Fort Worth	$80 to $141	$4,810,000 to $8,450,000
10,000 SF warehouse, Corpus Christi (coastal)	$100 to $195	$1,000,000 to $1,950,000

The Houston building gets a small market adjustment, a size factor of 0.86, and moderate Gulf Coast soil. The Dallas-Fort Worth building is larger, so its size factor of 0.78 brings the cost per foot down even with Blackland clay. The Corpus Christi building is smaller and coastal, so the market, the wind zone, and the soil all push it up.

What the number does not include

The index prices the building. These costs sit outside it and belong in the project budget:

• Land acquisition and closing costs
• Site development beyond the building pad (paving, drainage, detention, retaining, landscape, irrigation)
• Offsite utility extensions, taps, and franchise utility fees
• Impact fees, plan review fees, permit fees, water/wastewater capacity fees
• Architectural, structural, MEP, civil, and geotechnical design fees
• Survey, platting, and entitlement costs
• Furniture, fixtures, and equipment (FF&E)
• Owner-furnished equipment, IT/AV, security, and low-voltage cabling
• Testing and special inspections
• Escalation beyond the current quarter
• Owner contingency
• Financing and carrying costs

Site work is often the largest of these on an industrial project. Grading, paving, the truck court, detention, and utilities can approach the cost of the building on a heavily paved site. Our guide to distribution center site development explains what drives it.

How to use these numbers

The index carries the same caveat as the instant estimate: this calculator produces a planning-level order-of-magnitude range, not a bid or a proposal. It reflects building construction cost only; see the exclusions list. Actual pricing depends on documents, site conditions, schedule, and market conditions at the time of bid. No estimate, warranty, or contractual commitment is created by the output of this tool.

A range like this is right for a first budget, a land decision, or a lender conversation. It is not a price. Once there is a site and a program, AP replaces the index with a quote-based estimate in preconstruction, using current trade pricing for your building and your market.

To see the range for your own building, enter its type, size, and ZIP code in the instant estimate. It applies every factor on this page and shows each step.