People Should Be Thankful For: A Few Things Houston Real Estate

Thanks-Giving Square monument in Downtown Dallas. Copyright photo by Ralph Bivins. 2016

The memory of the worst Thanksgiving Day in history is fading. That was November 27, 2014 when instead of eating turkey, OPEC decided to wage war against the Texas energy industry by declining to cut oil production. Oil prices went into a nosedive, drilling activity was shut down and thousands of employees were laid off.

Houston is still in recovery, even though some sectors have not bottomed out yet and full recovery has not yet arrived.

As we move into Thanksgiving week, there are a few trends and big deals we should be thankful for. (Commentary by Ev Konut Proje Editor Ralph Bivins. With Bivins photo gallery of shots of Thanks-Giving Square in Dallas.)

Be Thankful that Office Construction is Ending

Houston led the nation in office construction in 2014 with 17 million sq ft in progress. Most of those buildings have been completed.

There’s only 2 million sq ft of construction still happening. A big chunk of that is the 1 million square-foot 609 Main at Texas tower that Hines will finish in January.

Houston doesn’t need any more new office space. The availability rate is over 21 percent and there’s a whopping 12 million sq ft of space on the sublease market. So you can at least be thankful that the spigot of new supply is turned off.

…………………………………………………………………

Home Sales are Hotter Than Ever

Mortgage rates have ticked up since the election and that’s never helpful.

But Houston’s existing single-family sales are heading toward a new annual sales record in 2016. There have been some minor pockets of softness in the upper-end home market in Houston and that’s been blamed on the energy industry crash.

Although Houston home sales had been great in recent years, a lack of inventory was a problem. Many new listings were getting multiple offers and a lot of would-be buyers became frustrated when they couldn’t buy the house they wanted. In 2016, the inventory is larger and buyers are buying.

Be thankful that 2016 will be a record year for home sales in Houston, Texas.

………………………………………………………………….