September 27, 2011

GE Oil & Gas Fully Leases 182,000-SF Westway III

STON-GE Oil & Gas has inked a deal to lease the entire office space at Westway III, an 182,000-square-foot Class A office building located at 4425 Westway Blvd in Houston. Principal Real Estate Investors is the owner of the property. GE has expanded its current lease at Westway II located at 4424 West Sam Houston Parkway North to over 130,000 square feet by leasing an additional 50,000 square feet.

Houston Site Acquisitions specializes in Houston Commercial Real Estate including Houston Office Space, Houston Industrial Space, Houston Warehouse Space, Houston retail Space, and investment property. For commercial real estate assistance please contact us at 713-789-8700 or fill out the easy to fill out form located at the top right hand corner of this page. http://www.hsacq.com

November 22, 2009 by HSACQ · 7 Comments 

Houston Office Space ,Houston Office Spaces, and Houston Office Buildings service listings guide, for Houston Office space lease, Houston Office space for sale, Houston Office Space news, Houston Office Space information, and Houston Office space discussion. Houston Office Space in Houston, Texas, U.S.A. is Houston Site Acquisitions. www.HoustonOfficeSpaces.com . www.HoustonOfficeBuilding.com, www.HoustonOfficeBuildings.com, Need Space ? We can help. Free Location Service Citywide. Let Houston Site Acquisitions www.HoustonOfficeSpaceHouston.com find your office space in Houston,Texas.

September 27, 2011 ET

Houston Tower Could Get Record Price

HOUSTON-According to a Houston Chronicle report, real estate experts predict that the sale of Hess Tower, an 844,000-square-foot office tower located in downtown Houston, could fetch as high as $444 million, which translates into $525 per square foot. Trammell Crow Co. was the developer of the 29-floor office building completed in 2010. Hess Corp. is the sole occupant of the building located close to the George R. Brown Convention Center.

Houston Site Acquisitions specializes in Houston Commercial Real Estate including Houston Office Space, Houston Industrial Space, Houston Warehouse Space, Houston retail Space, and investment property. For commercial real estate assistance please contact us at 713-789-8700 or fill out the easy to fill out form located at the top right hand corner of this page. http://www.hsacq.com

Houston Office Space ,Houston Office Spaces, and Houston Office Buildings service listings guide, for Houston Office space lease, Houston Office space for sale, Houston Office Space news, Houston Office Space information, and Houston Office space discussion. Houston Office Space in Houston, Texas, U.S.A. is Houston Site Acquisitions. www.HoustonOfficeSpaces.com . www.HoustonOfficeBuilding.com, www.HoustonOfficeBuildings.com, Need Space ? We can help. Free Location Service Citywide. Let Houston Site Acquisitions www.HoustonOfficeSpaceHouston.com find your office space in Houston,Texas.

http://www.globest.com/news/2008_2008/houston/314364-1.html

Logistics and Location Drive 206,000 Square-Foot Lease

HOUSTON-GE Oil & Gas has signed a long-term lease to take the entire space at the 182,000-square-foot Westway III. The move will consolidate the energy industry servicer’s multiple locations into one spot in the northwest submarket.

Building owner Principal Real Estate Investors acquired the class A office building in late 2010 when it was vacant. The building at 4425 Westway Blvd. in Westway Park, was completed in 2008. GE Oil & Gas offers a variety of equipment and services to the oil and gas industry including drilling and production, LNG, pipelines and storage and petrochemicals.

Brent Woodruff, Craig Beyer, Sanford Criner, Tommy Alexander and Warren Alexander with CB Richard Ellis represented the tenant. CBRE’s Cody Armbrister and Steve Rocher executed the Westway III deal on behalf of Principal Real Estate Investors. Sharon Dobson, Senior Project Manager with CBRE’s project management division will be in charge of building out of the remaining raw space of the facility. CBRE will also be onsite for the asset’s daily management.

Houston Site Acquisitions specializes in Houston Commercial Real Estate including Houston Office Space, Houston Industrial Space, Houston Warehouse Space, Houston retail Space, and investment property. For commercial real estate assistance please contact us at 713-789-8700 or fill out the easy to fill out form located at the top right hand corner of this page. http://www.hsacq.com

 September 28, 2011 12:26pm ET Logistics and Location Drive 206,000 Square-Foot Lease  

http://www.globest.com/news/2008_2008/houston/314364-1.html

LA PORTE, TX-A need to facilitate storage and distribution of pipe and valves led Ferguson Enterprises Inc. to sign a four-year lease for industrial space at Port Crossing Commerce Center. Ferguson Enterprises, one of the largest distributors of plumbing pipes, valves and fittings in North America, has taken down 206,296 square feet formally occupied by Frontier Logistics.

According to Peter B. Harmon, executive vice president of Port Crossing Commerce Center developer ML Realty Partners, the Virginia-headquartered tenant liked the building’s close proximity to the Houston Port Authority’s Barbours Cut and Bayport terminals. He tells GlobeSt.com that Ferguson Enterprises plans to bring product through the Barbours Cut terminal, warehouse it, then distribute it to clients throughout the U.S. Financial terms were not disclosed, though space is being quoted at $.29 per sqare foot, triple net.

The lease means approximately 100,000 square feet of the 412,000-square-foot building at 1701 S. 16^th St. is vacant. The other tenant in the building is Overland Distribution. Michael J. Taetz, Gary A. Mabray and Jason Dillee of Colliers International represented Port Crossing Commerce Center while John Nicholson of Transwestern represented Ferguson Enterprises.

ML Realty and partner National Property Holdings launched construction on the 300-acre Port Crossing Commerce Center in 2006 and, to date, have built 1.2 million square feet of approximately 3.3 million square feet planned. Harmon says that, except for the 100,000 square feet available, everything else is full. “We’re looking at possibly launching another building next year, but we need to see how things work out going forward,” he says.

Things might be going better than expected, especially in Houston’s southeast submarket. Houston hasn’t been immune to the economic ups and downs of the past several years, but has weathered them better than other parts of the country. “The market, in general, has picked up,” Harmon adds. “The southwest market has had a great run of late.”

Houston Site Acquisitions specializes in Houston Commercial Real Estate including Houston Office Space, Houston Industrial Space, Houston Warehouse Space, Houston retail Space, and investment property. For commercial real estate assistance please contact us at 713-789-8700 or fill out the easy to fill out form located at the top right hand corner of this page. http://www.hsacq.com

It seems to me that most people are used to working with a real estate agent or realtor when considering purchasing a home. However, when it comes to leasing an Houston office space a lot of people are under the impression that they are far better off handling it themselves. I think this is very interesting when in some cases these people have never leased a space in their lives. Sometimes even the most sophisticated of tenants choose to drop whatever they might be doing even if it is negotiating or handling the most high profile cases in some instances to avoid having to use a Houston commercial real estate broker or Houston Tenant Representation company. The main concern appears to be that the commercial real estate agent or Houston Tenant Representation would be earning a commission if they were used for their services.  This is to say that they would conduct the research, identify the locations, arrange appointments, meet with the prospects to show the office space, negotiate concessions and low rents for the tenant,etc. I think you get the picture, but yet some tenants have this idea that they should take time out of their core business to do it themselves instead of generating revenue for their business.  (Houston Office Space, Houston Industrial Space, Houston Retail Space -Houston Site Acquisitions-Start Search & Submit Requirements On-Line 24-7.) Anyway,  I was talking to a lady today who was making calls for her boss who was against securing the services of a tenant representation company or broker but wanted the information we had to be forwarded to them. The first time I contacted the lady (who had actually contacted me initially) she was very short and very against working with our company. After calling and following up several times in spite of her being against using our services she seemed to be more receptive to me and explained that she didn’t mind working with me and it actually sounded like she was tired of this task her boss dumped in her lap.  I decided to ask the lady that I was working with today on an office space requirement that they had for the Galleria Area and downtown Houston if they used a residential agent or realtor when considering the purchase of a home ? She said that she was very used to using an agent for the purchase of her home and that she believed that her boss as well as her friends were also used to using a residential agent as well. She didn’t have any problem with the idea of a commission being paid to a residential agent who worked to sell a home and even understood the concept of having an agent representing both the seller and the buyer in a real estate transaction. In other words she had no problem in this example with two agents or brokers being paid a commisson for the sale of a house. So, I decided to ask her boss had her calling commercial real estate companies to gather information instead of simply using a commercial real estate agent to do the work for them just like they do when they want to buy a house ? She responded by saying that she really didn’t know and that it didn’t make sense to her but that she had to follow orders.  She thought the question was extremely interesting and suggested that I blog about it and so I decided to follow through with a post about it asking for feedback.

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A private partnership called 500 Fannin LLC has purchased the historic downtown building at the corner of Fannin and Prairie.

The 1932 building originally housed the Wilson Stationery & Printing Co. and was most recently owned by Hilcorp Realty.

The new owners plan to renovate the four-story building, which also has a basement, and rent it out to commercial tenants.

The developer will have the help of a recently approved historic preservation grant of about $888,000 from the Downtown Redevelopment Authority. The grant is subject to the completion of the construction of the façade and starts in the authority’s fiscal year 2012.

The Downtown Redevelopment Authority operates the tax increment reinvestment zone that encompasses 60 downtown city blocks. In such zones, some of the property taxes collected from property owners in the area are set aside for reinvestment in the zone.

The building has about 30,000-square-feet of space.

Below is a picture I took this morning, but here’s a flickr page with pictures of the building before it was boarded.

–Purva Patel

http://blog.chron.com/primeproperty/2011/04/makeover-for-historic-downtown-building/ Posted by Purva Patel on April 18, 2011 at 11:16 am

This is a very exciting office building project for downtown Houston that will enhance the immediate area significantly and add quality office space to the North side of downtown Houston east of Main Street.

Houston Site Acquisitions specializes in Houston Commercial Real Estate including , Houston Industrial Space, Houston Warehouse Space, and industrial investment property. For commercial real estate assistance please contact us at 713-789-8700 or fill out the easy to fill out form located at the top right hand corner of this page. http://www.hsacq.com

by Patsy Fretwell on January 26, 2011

On average, Houston’s landlords saw positive net absorption of office space during the fourth quarter, with the suburban sector outperforming the Central Business District (CBD). As a result of the year-end push, vacancy rates decreased slightly, with the year-over-year occupancy rate increasing from 83.5% to 84.0% citywide. Despite the overall net absorption gains, tenants were still able to take advantage of a drop in average CBD rental quotes for Class A buildings, which fell by 7.9% to $34.60/SF, down from $37.30/SF. During the same period, Suburban Class A rates decreased by 0.6% to $27.11/SF.

Macro factors driving the absorption of office space ultimately ties back to job counts. According to the Texas Labor Market Review, total nonagricultural employment in Texas rose by 19,100 jobs in November, gaining jobs in eight out of eleven months. At the local level, Houston’s MSA had the laragest monthly job increase, with 10,900 jobs added in November. Dallas followed with 5,200 jobs added. Houston also led in the monthly growth of retail and government jobs, adding 7,400 and 2,300 jobs, respectively.

Looking forward, the outlook for the downtown office market reveals the potential for additional softness based on projected new vacancy in 2011, with approximately 1.2M SF of Class A space scheduled to become vacant during the next 12 months. This influx of new availability will add an additional 4.2% of vacancy on top of the current 10.4% registered for YE 2010. However, the majority of the additional vacancy will result from one of the city’s newest office towers, BG Group Place, officially coming on line during the first quarter. This 972,000 SF Hines development will carry a LEED Platinum pre-certification and approximately 480,000 SF of yet-to-be-leased Class A space. Additional large blocks of space coming on line during the year can be found on One Allen Center with 438,000 SF available in the third quarter and approximately 130,000 SF in the Bank of America building available in February. The Continental/United Airlines merger is expected to reduce the need for the newly merged company’s 650,000 SF of downtown space. With the company’s primary lease not expiring until 2014, it is expected that some of the Continental space may come to market as sublease space. Stay tuned.

VACANCY & AVAILABILITY
Vacancy levels were down overall for suburban properties and up slightly overall for CBD properties. Houston’s citywide office vacancy for all property classes averaged 16.0% in the fourth quarter, compared to 16.6% this time last year.

Vacancy in CBD Class A properties continued to soften reaching 10.4% compared to 8.4% a year ago. CBD Class B properties posted 21.5% vacancy, down from 22.8% 12 months earlier.

While the overall suburban vacancy rate remained in double-digits, Class A Suburban vacancy actually dropped between quarters to 17.6% from 19.3%. By comparison, suburban Class B vacancy remained unchanged at 16.3%.

Citywide, a total of 53 office properties had a minimum of 100,0000 SF available for lease in both direct and sublease space – 16 of those properties had over 200,000 SF available – at the end of the fourth quarter. Sublease space totaled 4.3 million, including 2.0 million SF of vacant space and 2.3 million SF of subleases available for occupancy over the next 12 months. The largest sublease space being marketed in Devon Energy’s space, 282,000 SF in Two Allen Center and 121,000 SF in Three Allen Center (available for occupancy 4/2011) in the CBD. In Westchase, 3600 Briarpark has the largest suburban contiguous block of sublease space available, 160,000 SF.

ABSORPTION & DEMAND
Houston recorded positive net absorption of 618,000 SF in the fourth quarter, compared to 46,000 SF negative net absorption at the same time last year. City-wide year-end net absorption was positive 476,000 SF with suburban Class A space contributing most of that total with year-end positive net absorption of 748,000 SF, followed by suburban Class B space with positive net absorption of 191,000 SF. In contrast, CBD Class A and Class B space both reported negative net year-end absorption of 560,000 and 54,000 SF, respectively.

Prevailing economic uncertainty is likely to continue negatively impacting CBD absorption levels throughout 2011.

RENTAL RATES
Citywide rental rates have declined throughout the year.

On a year-over-year basis, CBD Class A average quoted rental rates dropped by 7.9% to $34.61/SF (from $37.36), while suburban Class A rates decreased 0.6% to $27.11/SF. CBD Class B rates increased by 0.2% to $23.95/SF (from $23.91), while suburban Class B rates fell 5.7% to $17.11/SF on a full-service basis. Until demand outpaces supply, the current tenant-friendly market is expected to continue.

SALES ACTIVITY
Investment sales activity in the fourth quarter remained at a slow pace with a handful of properties changing hands. According to CoStar, there were 57 office sales transactions with a total dollar volume of $1.1 billion, averaging $169/SF with a 7.3% capitalization rate.

Among the most significant transactions closed in the fourth quarter were:

Brookfield Properties acquisition of the 1.2M-square-foot Heritage Plaza from Goddard Investment Group for $322 million ($280/SF) in the CBD submarket. The building was completed in 1987 and at the time of sale was 84.0% leased.

LNR Property Corporation’s acquisition of the 466,026 SF One Westchase Center office building in the Westchase submarket from Walton Street Capital for $63 million ($135/SF).
LEASING ACTIVITY
Houston’s office leasing activity reached 3.0 million SF in the fourth quarter, compared to 3.6 million SF in the same quarter last year. Leasing activity is still below levels prior to the economic downturn, and an increasing number of office tenants are renewing lease commitments with better concession packages or relocating to buildings/submarkets offering more attractive terms.

The most significant new office lease signed in the fourth quarter in the CBD was the British Gas lease of 354,000 SF in Hines’ new pre-certified LEED Platinum development, BG Group Place (Formerly MainPlace). The new lease includes naming rights to the building, which will be ready for occupancy in February 2011. BG Group will be relocating from their existing Galleria area space in mid-to-late 2011.

The largest office lease renewal signed in the fourth quarter 2010 was Invesco’s renewal of 400,000 SF in 11 Greenway Plaza located in the Greenway submarket.

OFFICE DEVELOPMENT PIPELINE
Houston’s development activity remained slow during the fourth quarter 2010, with only Griffin Partner’s four-story 102,000 SF Nassau Bay Town Square office building being added to the list of office buildings already under construction. Located in the NASA/Clear Lake submarket, this pre-certified LEED Silver office building is scheduled to come on line 60% pre-leased with Hamilton Sundstrand Corporation as the lead tenant. Also included in the 2.0 million SF currently under construction is Greenwood Corporation’s 156,000 SF Chasewood Crossing II in the FM 1960-Highway 249 submarket (scheduled for completion in April 2011).

Two CBD office projects – Hines’ 972,000 square-foot BG Group Place (formerly MainPlace, slated for delivery by February 2011) and Trammel Crow Company’s Hess Tower (formerly Discovery Tower, scheduled for completion January 2011 – continue to be the sole high profile buildings under construction at the end of the fourth quarter 2010. Notably, both downtown projects began construction before the economic downturn of late 2008.

Transera International Logistics.

http://www.dukerealty.com/PR_PDF/HOU_Sam%20Houston%20Crossing%20I.without%20Brock.pdf

Houston Site Acquisitions specializes in Houston Commercial Real Estate including Houston Office Space, Houston Industrial Space, Houston Warehouse Space, Houston retail Space, and investment property. For commercial real estate assistance please contact us at 713-789-8700 or fill out the easy to fill out form located at the top right hand corner of this page. http://www.hsacq.com