Category: Ray’s Buzz

O’Connor Land Forecast Luncheon: Simmi Jaggi – Jones Lang LaSalle

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BY RAY HANKAMER
rhankamer@gmail.com

Takeaway: Demand for retail and industrial sites remains strong, and multi-family is having some activity, but no demand exists for office sites. There is a healthy demand for
residential both in infill and in the far suburbs. There are some transactions for land for medical development, but now that the large 20 acre satellite hospitals are mostly in place
around the far suburbs, future development should be on smaller sites.

 

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CCIM LUNCHEON: Bob Ethington-Director of Research and Economic Development, Uptown Houston Association

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BY RAY HANKAMER
rhankamer@gmail.com

Takeaway: Uptown Houston, otherwise loosely known as “The Galleria Area”, is equal to Houston’s Central Business District (CBD) in total developed square footage, including retail, office, hotel, and residential [!]. It is equal to the downtowns of Denver, Portland, Cleveland, or Baltimore. Mobility to and within the Uptown area has not yet caught up with the rapid growth. The project currently underway is set to correct these deficiencies. Uptown Houston’s designated area has been expanded to include Memorial Park, which is almost twice the size of Central Park in New York City. Exciting new enhancements are well underway in our park.

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CCIM Luncheon – Major Texas Market Broker Panel

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Jane Nodskov, ICO Commercial-Moderator; Phil Crane, Providence Commercial Real Estate Services, Inc (San Antonio).; Saadia Sheikh, ESRP (Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex); Travis Waldrop, Carr Development, Inc. (Austin)

Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex:

  • This megamarket is 7 million people and growing; its economy is very diverse; commercial real estate segments enjoying 2.5% annual rent growth
  • Huge corporate inbound relocation to North Dallas-1.7 mm SF Toyota; 2 mm SF State Farm; 1.4 mm SF JP Morgan; 1.1 mm SF Liberty Mutual, and many many smaller moves
  • Frisco and Plano – two northern suburbs – have more office SF than all of Austin
  • There is some new office development in CBD although there is an overhang of old space as tenants vacate and move to the northern suburbs
  • Industrial market is huge and getting bigger
  • The commercial center of gravity in Dallas is moving to the north, where a new CBD of sorts is forming

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A Shady Business: Houston Developers and Operators-AND our City Fathers- Discover the Sycamore Tree

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BY RAY HANKAMER
rhankamer@gmail.com

For years the oak tree, so prevalent around Rice University and the Museum District, has been the signature tree of Houston.

But the beautiful ‘tree tunnels’ in the Montrose, West University, and Museum District don’t come without problems, as voraciously thirsty iron-hard oak roots heave up sidewalks all over town.

The sycamore, a native Houston tree, is much faster-growing than the oak, providing shade in the summer, and letting the warming sun penetrate its bare branches in winter time.

The first cousin of the sycamore, the plane tree, lines many of the grand boulevards of Europe, and other streets as well. Plane trees line country roads all over France and have for centuries.

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O’Connor & Associates Hotel Forecast – Randy McCaslin Managing Director of CBRE Hotels Consulting, Speaker

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BY RAY HANKAMER
rhankamer@gmail.com

Takeaway: 2014 was a boom year for hotel occupancy in Houston (69%), but in 2015 there was the beginning of the drop in oil prices and the decline in demand (-2.6%). By 2021 occupancies will
have climbed slowly back to 66% barring any unforeseen events. The Super Bowl in the first quarter of 2017 was boon PR-wise for our city, but over the year it will have contributed only nominally to hotel occupancy / revenue.

  • 2016 was the bottom, as demand fell and new supply was coming on stream; 2017 transition year, with gradual return to stabilization over next 4-5 years
  • 2014 had been a stellar year with occupancies about 10 % over traditional levels
  • The new downtown Marriott convention hotel will be a ‘game-changer’ in Houston’s ability to attract future conventions-we now have an attractive number of rooms within 3-4 blocks of the George R. Brown Center
  • 5,200 new hotel rooms will have opened in the CBD by the end of 2017
  • Katy-Westchase-Energy Corridor, NW, and IAH have been hardest hit by lower levels of O & G industry travel

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CCIM Luncheon – Casey Wagner of Walker Parking: The Impact of the Self-Driving Car / Autonomous Vehicle (AV) on Commercial Real Estate

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BY RAY HANKAMER
rhankamer@gmail.com

  • Risks associated with AV include insurance, regulations by multiple government agencies, affordability, tech limits for cars, infrastructure limitations/cost, competition from transit, and other
  • Trust in the feature-by-feature addition to today’s cars is slowly increasing, with such features as automatic parallel parking [but as with so many ‘high tech’ gimmicks, who really needs many of them?]
  • “By 2025-2030 most new cars will have fully autonomous features…or maybe by 2040-2060.”

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