Houston Office Market: An Analysis
One of the hot topics these days is the market for Houston’s downtown offices. Leases, acquisitions or move-out activities in the recent months made a lot of people so busy. However, it is was a secret that the downtown market was plagued by several vacancies that is equal to saying the real estate office market was on a 20% stand still on rentals.
Armed with the idea that the market will eventually improve, a lot of investors thought of buying properties using earnest money. Buildings were purchased by big companies such as EPCO, Inc. and Wells Real Estate Funds, which was encouraging enough to hear. After all, some investors were optimistic.
Big Companies Coming, Going and Reducing
Rumor mills have made Chevron Texaco and other energy companies among their topics recently as these big fishes expressed interest in purchasing some land. But on a sad note, the CBD’s recovery is not at all that amazing. Big named tenants like Bank One and Burlington Resources are soon to vacate downtown spaces. It was also reported that Calpine Corporation has reduced its occupied space.
The Future of Real Estate at Stake
It was unclear whether or when the office market within the heart of the city will see improvement. At one point, the local real estate community thought that everything would come out good due to the flooding of New Orleans office renters; unfortunately, it did not.
Nevertheless, economic experts predicted a healthy year ahead, betting highly for the fourth quarter in order to see it moving towards the right path. As predicted, it surely did; absorbing a huge 414,678 sq. ft. which was the highest quarterly absorption market figure since 2004’s third quarter. Overall, an annual all class absorption of 737,259 sq. ft. was recorded with both classes A and C providing positive results.