Longtime Houston investors and others new to the market pumped money into high-profile office properties across the region in 2017.

E-commerce continued to make an imprint on the local industrial market as Amazon expanded and developers added massive warehouses before securing tenants. Big-name grocery stores and even a longstanding farmers market prepared for upgrades befitting their urban location captured our attention.

When it comes to the highs and lows of 2017, Preston Young called Houston’s commercial real estate market “a tale of two cities.”

Young, who serves as regional managing partner for Dallas-based Stream Realty Partners, noted the contrasting storylines in Houston’s office leasing market, which is still struggling under the weight of several million square feet of sublease space, and the office investment market, which saw a tenfold increase in deal volume compared to 2016. Houston’s office investment market saw $4 billion in assets trade hands in 2017, compared to $400 million in 2016.

Click to read more at Houston Business Journal. 

Texas added more people than any other state from 2016 to 2017, according to national and state population data released last week by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Between July 1, 2016 and July 1, 2017, the Texas population increased by nearly 400,000 people, No. 1 nationwide. The Lone Star State’s population was about 28.3 million at that time.

That 1.4 percent growth rate was the seventh-fastest in the U.S. in terms of percentage growth.

Click to read more at Houston Business Journal.

Demand from consumer goods companies fueled much of 2017’s robust industrial activity in Houston, but several other factors helped drive the market’s strong performance.

“I think 2017 can really boil down to three basic demand drivers: The rise of e-commerce in Houston, petrochemical expansion and Hurricane Harvey,” said Justin Bennett, senior vice president of Denver-based DCT Industrial’s Houston office.

Some of the year’s noteworthy e-commerce leases include Amazon’s 1 million-square-foot build-to-suit distribution center in Katy and Best Buy’s prelease of 550,000 square feet in Fort Bend County to beef up its e-commerce offerings. Several other national brands, including The Woodlands-based Conn’s Inc. (Nasdaq: CONN), are widely known to be looking for distribution space in Houston.

Click to read more at Houston Business Journal.