Chronicle roundtable to tackle Houston’s changing office market
A cloud of uncertainty looms over Houston’s office market as companies reopen and employees return to a different reality.
Businesses, many already struggling with a falloff in business in the wake of the decline in oil prices and a pandemic-induced economic slowdown, are now grappling with how to move forward.
Will they continue to have a portion of their employees work at home, potentially saving on their real estate expenses in the future? Or will they expand into more space to better enable social distancing? Maybe a combination of the two? What will the new workplace look like?
The Houston Chronicle will hold a webinar on June 30 with a panel of local commercial real estate experts to identify issues and present possible solutions facing the market. Real estate reporter Nancy Sarnoff will moderate.
The questions come as Houston experiences a surplus of available office space.
Houston’s office vacancy rate reached 23.8 percent in the first quarter, according to Reis, the real estate information arm of Moody’s Analytics. The vacancy rate is up from a low of 11.4 percent in 2007, before the Great Recession.
Since then, the volume of office space in the Houston region has grown by nearly 20 percent, according to Reis.
Demand, meanwhile, has not kept pace.
Companies have downsized, merged or gone out of business as a result of the energy downturn of 2014, and many are facing a new crisis with the recent plunge in oil prices. Businesses have become more efficient with their space, moving toward more collaborative work areas with smaller footprints overall.
Houston has more than 44 million square feet of empty office space, according to Reis. That’s enough to fill the city’s tallest tower, downtown’s 75story 600 Travis building, more than 27 times.
The panel will discuss how the office market has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and identify concerns looking ahead.
The participants are Stephanie Burritt, a principal and co-managing director for Gensler’s Houston office; Dan Bellow, president of JLL–Houston, responsible for JLL’s operations in Houston and Louisiana; and John Mooz, senior managing director for Hines and its Houston market head for Houston, Austin and San Antonio.
To join the webinar, register at HoustonChronicle.com/CREwebinar.