Coy Davidson – The Tenant Advisor

Houston Office Isn’t Recovering. It’s Splitting in Two

Coy Davidson — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 17:39:49 +0000

Houston Office Market: Why Class A Demand Is Rising While Class B Vacancies Grow

A flat vacancy rate looks like a market standing still. Houston’s office vacancy sits at 27.6%, unchanged from last quarter and unchanged from a year ago. Read only that number and you miss the quarter.

Underneath the headline, Houston is running two different office markets. One is tightening fast. The other is still losing tenants. Your leverage depends entirely on which one you are shopping in.

Here is what the Colliers Q3 2026 Houston Office Report shows.

The Numbers That Matter

Availability is falling. Overall availability dropped to 26.8%, down 190 basis points from Q2 and 210 basis points year over year. Space is coming off the market even while vacancy holds steady.

Leasing slowed. Tenants signed 2.2 million SF in Q3, down 12.0% from Q2 and 23.7% from Q3 2025. Small and mid-sized deals drove the volume. The largest lease of the quarter was Harris County Flood Control District at 86,743 SF at 4425 Westway Park Blvd in the West Belt.

Absorption barely registered. Net absorption came in at roughly 12,200 SF for the quarter.

Rents keep climbing. Average asking rent reached $34.18 per SF full service gross, up from $33.15 last quarter and $32.13 a year ago. That is a 6.4% annual increase in face rent.

The pipeline is nearly empty. Zero SF delivered in Q3. Only 232,100 SF remains under construction, down from 777,900 SF a year ago. Total inventory shrank by roughly 700,000 SF over the past year.

The Split: Class A vs. Everyone Else

The year-to-date absorption numbers make the divide impossible to ignore:

Class A: +821,397 SF
Class B: (756,702) SF
Class C: (89,661) SF

Class A captured more than 70% of all leasing activity in Q3. Premier Class A buildings now run 12.5% vacancy and 16.8% availability, less than half the market average.

The rent gap reflects it. Class A asks $39.51 per SF. Class B asks $22.38. That $17 spread is the price of quality in Houston right now.

Submarkets Worth Watching

Katy Freeway East is the tightest Class A market in the city. Class A availability sits at 7.2%, asking rents average $62.38 per SF, and the submarket absorbed 533,303 SF of Class A space year to date, including 324,450 SF of new deliveries.

The Woodlands posted 14.0% vacancy and 146,228 SF of positive absorption year to date. Class A rents average $44.75 per SF.

West Loop Class A absorbed 312,569 SF year to date, making it one of the strongest Class A performers in the market.

Katy Freeway West/Energy Corridor led the city in leasing with more than 310,000 SF signed in Q3, about 14% of all Houston activity. Activity is not growth. The submarket still sits at (399,724) SF of net absorption year to date, driven by Class B losses.

The CBD and Greenway Plaza remain under pressure. The CBD posted 32.8% vacancy and (264,988) SF of absorption year to date. Greenway Plaza lost 305,012 SF year to date.

FM 1960 and North Belt both carry vacancy above 44%.

Capital Is Coming Back

Investors bought more than $1.1 billion of Houston office in Q3, pushing year-to-date volume past $3.0 billion. That already nearly matches all of 2025.

The headline deal: Williams Companies acquired Williams Tower for more than $300 million, one of the largest Houston office sales since 2019. Institutional buyers accounted for about 53% of acquisition volume this year.

New ownership means recapitalized buildings. Recapitalized buildings can fund tenant improvements that distressed owners could not.

5 Takeaways for Occupiers

1. Know which market you are in. A tenant targeting premier Class A in Katy Freeway East or The Woodlands negotiates in a landlord’s market. A tenant open to well-located Class B negotiates in a tenant’s market. Same city, opposite leverage.

2. Negotiate net effective rent, not face rent. Asking rents rose 6.4% year over year, yet concessions keep net effective rents below face. Free rent and TI allowances are where the real deal gets made.

3. Do not wait for new supply. With 232,100 SF under construction and zero deliveries this quarter, no wave of new buildings is coming to soften top-tier pricing. Every quarter of Class A absorption shrinks your options.

4. Start early on renewals in tight submarkets. If your lease expires in 2028 or 2029 and you occupy premier space, your landlord already knows availability is drying up. Start the process 24 to 36 months out.

5. Use the ownership turnover. Buildings trading to institutional capital often come with fresh budgets for capital improvements and tenant packages. Ask who owns the building and when they bought it. The answer shapes your negotiation.

Houston’s office market is not one market. Quality space is tightening, rents are rising, and the supply pipeline has gone quiet. Commodity space still offers meaningful leverage. Occupiers who understand that split will make better real estate decisions than those reading only the vacancy rate.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why is Houston’s office market splitting between Class A and Class B buildings?

Houston’s office market is splitting because tenants are concentrating demand in higher-quality Class A buildings while Class B properties continue to lose occupied space. Through Q3 2026, Class A recorded 821,397 square feet of positive net absorption, while Class B recorded 756,702 square feet of negative net absorption. Premier Class A buildings had a 12.5% vacancy rate, compared with 27.6% across the overall Houston office market. This divide means tenants face tighter options in premier properties but retain greater negotiating leverage in many Class B buildings.

2. How can tenants negotiate a better office lease in Houston’s divided market?

Tenants can negotiate a better Houston office lease by comparing buildings within their target submarket and focusing on net effective rent rather than asking rent alone. Free rent and tenant improvement allowances can materially affect the economics of a lease. Well-located Class B buildings may offer stronger negotiating leverage, while premier Class A properties in Katy Freeway East and The Woodlands offer fewer alternatives. Tenants occupying premier space in tight submarkets should begin evaluating renewal and relocation options 24 to 36 months before their lease expires.

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Healthcare Real Estate Is No Longer a Support Function

Coy Davidson — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 20:43:09 +0000

Top Trends Shaping Healthcare Real Estate

For decades, health systems treated real estate as overhead. Buildings housed the care. The care was the strategy. That model is finished.

Colliers hosted its National Healthcare Conference in Boston on October 7 through 9, bringing together providers, investors, developers, and industry experts. Across every panel and every hallway conversation, one message came through clearly: healthcare real estate is no longer a support function. It is now a growth lever, a revenue source, and a competitive weapon.

The forces driving that shift are converging at once. Outpatient migration, creative capital, reimbursement pressure, workforce shortages, and an aging population are all pushing real estate decisions into the boardroom. Here is what that means and how occupiers should respond.

Five Takeaways from Boston

1. Health systems are becoming real estate operators.

Outpatient growth remains the top priority, and health systems are pursuing it with the tools of a developer. Joint ventures, land banking, and mixed-use projects are now standard plays for driving growth and creating new revenue streams. At the same time, hospitals keep investing in their campuses through destination-campus strategies, new patient towers, children’s hospitals, and modernization projects in high-growth markets. The ambulatory network and the flagship campus are being built in parallel.

2. Patient access now drives site selection.

Care is moving to where patients live, work, and shop. That makes outpatient and ambulatory facilities the primary growth engine and reduces reliance on the traditional hospital campus. Demographics alone no longer settle a site decision. Accessibility, parking, visibility, and provider convenience carry equal weight, and a location that fails on any of them fails.

3. Capital is abundant, but quality assets are not.

Investors remain committed to healthcare real estate. Ample equity and debt capital are chasing a limited supply of quality assets, and transaction activity continues despite rate volatility as buyers and sellers adapt to a higher-for-longer environment. To overcome supply constraints, investors are turning to development: new outpatient facilities, inpatient rehabilitation hospitals, freestanding emergency departments, and other higher-acuity outpatient properties. On the provider side, large philanthropic gifts, strategic partnerships, and joint ventures are filling more of the funding gap.

4. Reimbursement pressure is forcing discipline.

Healthcare finances have largely returned to pre-pandemic levels, but the structural problems remain. Federal efforts to address rising debt will keep pressure on government reimbursement. Medicaid funding cuts and stricter eligibility requirements will hit safety-net, urban, and rural hospitals hardest. The loss of Affordable Care Act marketplace subsidies is growing the uninsured population and reducing elective procedure volumes. Add CON reform and heightened scrutiny of healthcare transactions, and the result is clear: every square foot must justify itself. Providers are modernizing, consolidating, repurposing, and optimizing their portfolios accordingly.

5. Workforce is the new limiting factor.

Demographics remain a powerful tailwind, with the 65+ population set to grow substantially over the next decade. Demand is not the problem. Staffing is. An aging workforce, lower labor participation, reduced immigration, and growing physician and nurse shortages mean a facility in a high-demand market can still fail if it cannot be staffed. Workforce availability now belongs on the site selection scorecard next to population growth and payer mix. Meanwhile, interest rates are likely to stay elevated with inflation above target, and a bifurcated economy is widening the gap between higher-income consumers and those under financial strain.

What This Means for Healthcare Occupiers

When landlords and investors have more capital than product, the occupier’s leverage depends on preparation. Here is how providers and health systems should act on what Boston made clear.

1. Treat real estate as a strategic plan, not a transaction list. Map every location against your growth markets, service line strategy, and capital plan. Lease expirations should be decision points, not deadlines.

2. Score sites on access and workforce, not just demographics. Add parking, visibility, drive times, provider convenience, and local labor supply to your site selection criteria. A strong population profile cannot rescue a location you cannot staff.

3. Rationalize before you expand. Audit utilization across the portfolio. Consolidate underperforming space, repurpose what can be repurposed, and fund growth with the savings.

4. Start early in a supply-constrained market. Quality outpatient space is scarce and investors are competing for it. Begin renewal and relocation planning 24 to 36 months out so build-to-suit, development, and joint venture options remain on the table.

5. Use the capital markets to your advantage. Investor appetite for healthcare assets creates opportunity for owner-occupiers. Sale-leasebacks, development partnerships, and joint ventures can unlock capital for clinical priorities while keeping control of critical locations.

6. Protect flexibility in your lease terms. Reimbursement and regulatory uncertainty will continue. Negotiate expansion and contraction rights, assignment provisions for transactions, and renewal options that preserve your ability to adapt.

Real Estate Is Now a Strategic Decision

The organizations that win the next decade of healthcare delivery will be the ones that treat real estate as strategy. Access, capital, cost, and staffing all run through the real estate decision now. Providers that plan early, negotiate from a position of knowledge, and align every location with their growth strategy will turn real estate into a competitive advantage. Those that do not will find the market has already moved past them.

Source: Colliers Knowledge Leader, key takeaways from the 2026 Colliers National Healthcare Conference, Boston, October 7 to 9, 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are health systems shifting real estate investment from hospital campuses to outpatient facilities?

Health systems are shifting investment to outpatient facilities because patients want care closer to where they live, work, and shop, and ambulatory settings deliver that care at lower cost. Outpatient and ambulatory facilities are now the primary growth focus for providers, reducing reliance on the traditional hospital campus. Regulatory changes and the expansion of ambulatory care delivery continue to accelerate this migration. Health systems still invest in flagship campuses in high-growth markets, but outpatient networks are where patient access, market share, and revenue growth are won.

How should healthcare executives factor workforce shortages into site selection?

Healthcare executives should treat workforce availability as a core site selection criterion, equal in weight to demographics and payer mix. An aging workforce, lower labor participation, reduced immigration, and growing physician and nurse shortages mean a facility in a high-demand market can still underperform if it cannot be staffed. Strong site analysis now evaluates local labor supply, commute patterns for clinical staff, proximity to training programs, and provider convenience alongside population growth. Demand alone does not support growth. Staffing capacity does.

How can healthcare occupiers gain leverage when investors are competing for limited medical office space?

Healthcare occupiers gain leverage by starting early, knowing their alternatives, and using investor demand to their advantage. Ample equity and debt capital are competing for a limited supply of quality healthcare assets, which tightens availability for tenants. Providers that begin renewal and relocation planning 24 to 36 months before expiration keep build-to-suit, development, and joint venture options open. Owner-occupiers can also use strong investor appetite to execute sale-leasebacks, unlocking capital for clinical priorities while retaining control of critical locations. Engaging an experienced healthcare tenant representation advisor early ensures these options are evaluated before the market narrows them.

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Colliers Healthcare Services Report | Q3 2026

Coy Davidson — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 02:29:48 +0000

Physician Practices in Transition: Consolidation, Capital, and the Future of Healthcare Delivery

The Tenant Is Changing. Most Leases Haven’t Caught Up.

The independent physician practice is no longer the default tenant in medical office. That shift already happened. What the market has not absorbed yet is what it means for how space gets leased, owned, and underwritten.

Colliers’ Q32026 Report, Physician Practices in Transition: Consolidation, Capital, and the Future of Healthcare Delivery, lays out the numbers. The share of physicians in private practice fell from 60.1% in 2012 to 42.2% in 2024. By 2022, roughly 74% of physicians were employed by a hospital system or corporate entity. Between 2019 and 2022, corporate ownership of practices grew nearly 10 times faster than hospital ownership.

Read that last figure again. The fastest-growing decision maker in physician real estate is not the health system. It is private equity, insurers, and multi-practice corporate platforms. They evaluate space differently, commit differently, and leave differently.

Why Physicians Are Selling

The report is direct about cause. Inflation-adjusted Medicare physician payments dropped 33% from 2001 to 2025. Practice costs rose 3.5% in 2025 alone while Medicare cut another 2.8%. Among physicians who sold in the last decade, 70.8% cited inadequate payment rates as an important reason, and 64.9% cited the need for access to capital and resources.

This is not a cyclical squeeze. It is a structural one, and it falls hardest on the physician nearing retirement. More than 40% of active physicians will reach 65 within ten years. For many of them, a sale is the only realistic exit, and the buyer is increasingly a platform rather than a younger partner.

Meanwhile, demand keeps climbing. The 65 and older population is projected to grow 39% between 2020 and 2035, and the 75 and older cohort by 74%. Fewer independent physicians, more patients, and more capital chasing the gap. That combination guarantees consolidation continues.

Where the Capital Is Going

Physician medical groups accounted for a record 46% of first-quarter 2026 healthcare deal volume, up from 37% a year earlier. PE groups were responsible for 65% of physician practice acquisitions from 2019 to 2023. Many platforms have completed more than five acquisitions; some have completed 20.

The target list is telling: dermatology, ophthalmology, gastroenterology, and primary care. These are office-based, procedure-heavy, fragmented specialties. In other words, they are medical office tenants. Every roll-up in those specialties is a real estate event, whether or not anyone treats it like one at closing.

The report also notes growing selectivity. Deal counts are falling while capital stays concentrated in assets with strong margins and scalable operations. Buyers are writing fewer checks and taking longer to do it. That discipline will show up in how they approach occupancy costs.

What This Means for Real Estate

The report’s implications section covers demand for larger, technology-enabled space, standardized layouts, and MSOs as a distinct occupier class. All accurate. Here is how it plays out on the ground.

1. The decision maker moves upstream. When a practice sells, the physician who signed the lease rarely controls the next renewal. An MSO or platform real estate team does, often from another city, with a portfolio view and a cost target. Landlords who built relationships with individual doctors will find those relationships matter far less than they assumed.

2. Hold periods and lease terms are misaligned. PE operates on a 3 to 7 year holding period. Medical office leases with heavy tenant improvements typically run 10 years or longer. That mismatch will define negotiations over the next cycle. Expect platforms to push for shorter initial terms, assignment rights that survive a sale, early termination options, and portfolio-level flexibility to consolidate or exit locations. Landlords will push back with credit requirements and guaranties. Whoever understands the platform’s exit timeline holds the leverage.

3. Credit gets harder to read. A 15-location PE-backed dermatology platform looks stronger than a single independent practice. It may not be. The platform’s balance sheet often carries acquisition debt, and the report shows real operating risk: PE-acquired ophthalmology practices saw a 265% increase in physician turnover within three years, and only 44% of physicians at PE-owned practices remained two years post-sale compared with 60% at non-PE practices. Physicians generate the revenue that pays the rent. When they leave, a location can go dark under a lease that still has years to run. Owners underwriting these tenants need to look past the logo.

4. MSOs need office space, not clinic space. Billing, HR, IT, marketing, and facilities management get centralized when practices consolidate. That work lands in conventional office buildings, separate from patient-facing clinics. This is a real and growing occupier segment that general office brokers and landlords mostly overlook because it does not look like healthcare.

5. Standardization changes what “good space” means. Consolidated platforms want repeatable layouts, efficient patient flow, adequate IT infrastructure, and supply logistics that work across dozens of sites. A one-off buildout designed around a single physician’s preferences is now a liability at renewal or resale. Buildings that can accommodate a prototype will lease. Buildings that require custom solutions will discount.

6. The footprint splits in two directions. Platforms will aggregate into larger hub facilities for multi-specialty and procedural care while also adding smaller community locations close to patients. The middle, a mid-sized standalone practice in an aging building, is where vacancy risk concentrates.

What Occupiers Should Do Now

Physician groups considering a sale should treat real estate as a deal term, not an afterthought. Lease assignment provisions, personal guaranties, and any ownership interest in the building directly affect valuation and post-closing liability. Physicians who own their real estate have a separate asset to negotiate, and a sale-leaseback negotiated before the practice transaction often produces a better outcome than one forced after it.

Platforms acquiring practices should audit inherited leases immediately. Expiration dates, renewal options, relocation rights, and assignment restrictions across a newly assembled portfolio usually reveal both risk and opportunity. Consolidating three underperforming sites into one well-located hub is often the fastest margin improvement available.

Health systems competing against these platforms need to recognize who they are bidding against for the same space. Corporate buyers move quickly and price occupancy as an operating expense to be optimized. Systems that still treat site selection opportunistically will lose good locations to buyers with a plan.

Underwrite the Platform

Consolidation is not a trend to monitor. It has already rewritten the tenant roster in medical office. The occupiers that win will be the ones that align real estate commitments with their actual ownership horizon and operating model. The owners that win will be the ones that underwrite the platform, not just the building.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does physician practice consolidation affect medical office leasing?

Physician practice consolidation shifts lease decisions away from individual doctors and toward private equity platforms, management services organizations (MSOs), and health systems that manage real estate at the portfolio level. According to Colliers’ Q3 2026 report, the share of physicians in private practice fell from 60.1% in 2012 to 42.2% in 2024, and corporate ownership of practices grew nearly 10 times faster than hospital ownership between 2019 and 2022. Because PE firms typically hold practices for 3 to 7 years while medical office leases with significant tenant improvements often run 10 years or longer, consolidated tenants increasingly negotiate for shorter initial terms, assignment rights that survive a sale, early termination options, and the flexibility to consolidate or exit locations across a portfolio.

What should physicians consider about their real estate before selling a practice to private equity?

Physicians should treat real estate as a negotiated deal term rather than closing paperwork, because lease assignment provisions, personal guaranties, and building ownership all affect practice valuation and post-sale liability. A physician who signed a personal guaranty may remain liable for rent after control of the practice passes to the buyer unless the guaranty is released or replaced as part of the transaction. Physicians who own their medical office building hold a separate asset, and a sale-leaseback negotiated before the practice sale typically produces better pricing and lease terms than one arranged afterward, when the buyer already controls the occupancy decision.

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Stop Opening Clinics. Start Building Networks.

Coy Davidson — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 00:00:21 +0000

Build the Network First: Why Outpatient Growth Demands Flexible Facilities

Some health systems do not have an outpatient strategy. They have an outpatient collection.

A clinic opened because a building came available. An imaging center signed because a physician group pushed for it. A surgery center placed where the land price was attractive. Each decision made sense on its own. Together, they form a portfolio that is expensive to run, confusing for patients, and poorly positioned for what comes next.

And what comes next is significant. Outpatient volume is projected to grow 20% over the next decade, compared with 7% for inpatient discharges. Systems that keep adding sites one at a time will spend more capital and capture less of that growth than systems that plan the network first.

Here is the framework.

Plan the network before the building. The first question is not “Where should our next clinic go?” It is “Which markets and services must we serve over the next 10 to 20 years?” That answer comes from patient-origin data, market growth, travel patterns, specialty demand, physician supply, and competitive conditions. The building is the last decision, not the first.
Match the site model to the service. Not every service line belongs in every neighborhood. Primary care performs best when it is broadly distributed and close to home. Oncology, orthopedics, and ambulatory surgery perform best as larger regional hubs or centers of excellence. Treating them the same produces either underused specialty space or overcrowded primary care.
Define convenience the way patients do. Proximity is only part of it. Patients judge convenience by parking, fast scheduling, short waits, easy navigation, and diagnostics on site. Multi-service outpatient centers that combine physician visits, imaging, labs, and procedures remove friction from the entire patient journey. One trip beats three.
Standardize operations across every location. A distributed network only works when it runs like one system. Common scheduling, repeatable clinic layouts, shared support resources, coordinated staffing, and clear referral pathways make the network easier to operate and easier for patients to use.
Separate what is permanent from what can wait. Some investments are nearly impossible to change later: floor-to-floor height, structural load capacity, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing capacity, parking, and utilities. Get those right up front. Interior buildout and service additions can be phased as demand becomes clear. Flexibility is a capital strategy, not a design afterthought.
Follow the right sequence. Market demand. Services. Operations. Capital. Design. Systems that reverse this order end up forcing clinical operations into a predesigned box. Systems that follow it get facilities built around how care is actually delivered.

Where to Start

Build a portfolio map and scorecard of every outpatient site you control. Measure utilization, volumes, service mix, patient origin, market growth, and strategic importance. That analysis tells you what belongs close to patients, what belongs concentrated on the acute-care campus, and which sites no longer earn their place in the network.

The Real Estate Implication

This is where occupier decisions get made or lost. A system with a clear network plan negotiates from strength: it knows which locations are core, which are flexible, and which are exit candidates. It can structure lease terms, expansion rights, and building specifications around a 10- to 20-year view instead of reacting to whatever space is available this quarter.

In a medical office market with high occupancy and a thin construction pipeline, that discipline is the difference between securing the right sites and settling for the leftover ones.

Network first. Buildings second.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an outpatient network strategy for health systems?

An outpatient network strategy is a plan that determines which markets, services, and site types a health system needs over a 10 to 20 year horizon before it commits to any individual building. Instead of adding clinics, imaging centers, or ambulatory surgery centers one at a time as opportunities appear, the system uses patient-origin data, market growth, travel patterns, specialty demand, physician supply, and competitive conditions to design a connected portfolio. With outpatient volume projected to grow 20% over the next decade compared with 7% for inpatient discharges, health systems that plan the network first spend capital more efficiently and capture more of that growth.

How should health systems decide which outpatient services to centralize and which to distribute?

Health systems should match the site model to the service line. Primary care performs best in broadly distributed locations close to where patients live. Oncology, orthopedics, and ambulatory surgery perform best in larger regional hubs or centers of excellence that concentrate specialists, equipment, and procedural capacity. The starting point is a portfolio scorecard of every outpatient site, measuring utilization, volumes, service mix, patient origin, market growth, and strategic importance. That analysis shows what belongs near patients, what belongs on the acute-care campus, and which sites no longer justify their cost.

What makes an outpatient medical facility flexible enough to support future growth?

A flexible outpatient facility gets the permanent elements right at the start and phases everything else. Floor-to-floor height, structural load capacity, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing capacity, parking, and utilities are difficult and expensive to change later, so they should be sized for future services such as imaging or procedures. Interior buildout and service additions can then be phased as demand becomes clear. For health systems leasing medical office space, flexibility also means negotiating expansion rights, renewal options, and building specifications that align with a long-term network plan, which matters more in a medical office market with high occupancy and limited new construction.

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Houston Medical Office Market: Vacancy, Rents, and Investment Trends

Coy Davidson — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 17:53:28 +0000

Houston Medical Building Market Report | 2026 First Half

Houston’s medical office market delivered a resilient performance in the first half of 2026, absorbing a historic wave of new supply while continuing to push rents higher. For physician groups, healthcare systems, and healthcare real estate investors, the data points to a market where landlords still hold pricing power.

Net Absorption Stays Positive Despite a Rough Q2

The Houston medical office market closed H1 2026 with net absorption of 296,087 SF, a 6.2% increase over the same period in 2025. That’s notable given the market recorded negative net absorption in the second quarter alone. The full-half figure ranked Houston No. 4 among the top 50 U.S. metros for year-over-year net absorption, and Houston posted the second-highest volume of medical office deliveries among those same top 50 metros.

Vacancy Ticks Up as New Supply Hits the Market

Overall vacancy rose to 11.7%, a 30-basis-point increase from year-end 2025’s 11.4%. New deliveries totaled 489,551 SF, up 55.9% compared to the second half of 2025. As those projects came online, the under-construction pipeline fell to 850,521 SF, down sharply from 1.25 million SF six months earlier and 1.425 million SF a year ago.

That declining pipeline matters. Less space in the ground means less competition for tenants down the road, and it’s one reason rents haven’t softened despite higher vacancy today.

Rents Continue Their Upward Climb

Average asking NNN lease rates reached $25.34 PSF in H1 2026, up from $25.14 at year-end 2025 and $24.62 in H1 2025. Rising rents alongside rising vacancy is a signal worth paying attention to: it suggests landlords are absorbing new supply through genuine demand rather than concessions, and that pricing power currently sits with ownership, not tenants.

Investment Sales Volume Jumps 59%

Medical office sales volume topped $230 million through H1 2026, a 59% increase over the same period last year. The average sales price per square foot climbed to $306, continuing an upward trend visible across recent quarters.

Recent notable transactions include:

MedPlace (170,554 SF) — Medical Properties Trust acquired from Healthpeak Properties, June 2026
Greenhouse Medical Plaza (116,870 SF) — Edloe Ventures acquired from Transwestern Real Estate Services, March 2026
Bellaire Medical Plaza (57,988 SF) — Edloe Ventures acquired from Rycore Capital, May 2026
Memorial Hermann Convenient Care Center (44,000 SF) — Memorial Hermann Health System acquired from Inland Private Capital Corporation, January 2026

The consistent buyer activity from both institutional (Medical Properties Trust) and regional (Edloe Ventures) players signals broad-based confidence in the asset class.

Life Science Sector Gains Real Momentum

Houston remains an emerging life science market relative to established hubs, but H1 2026 brought a headline commitment: Bristol Myers Squibb announced a $2.3 billion investment in a 600,000-square-foot manufacturing campus at Generation Park, the second major pharmaceutical manufacturing investment at that location within the past year.

Houston’s life science inventory now totals approximately 5.0 million SF, with an additional 1.4 million SF under construction, a pipeline representing 27% of existing inventory and underscoring the sector’s growth trajectory.

Key Developments to Watch

Memorial Hermann has two facilities under construction: a 51,800 SF building in Mont Belvieu (completing November 2026) and a 51,000 SF medical office/freestanding ER in Bridgeland (completing December 2026)
Houston Methodist opened a 65,580 SF facility at 6601 Cinco Rose Dr in Katy, TX

What This Means for Healthcare Real Estate Decisions

For physician groups and healthcare systems evaluating lease renewals, expansions, or new market entry, the data points to a narrowing negotiating window. Vacancy is rising, but the pipeline that would eventually create tenant leverage is shrinking, not growing. Groups with near-term real estate decisions should engage now, while multiple existing and under-construction options remain, rather than waiting for a supply correction that current construction data doesn’t support.

Source: Colliers H1 2026 Medical Building Report, Houston.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the vacancy rate for medical office space in Houston in 2026? Houston’s medical office vacancy rate reached 11.7% in the first half of 2026, up 30 basis points from 11.4% at year-end 2025. Despite the increase, vacancy remains below the 11.5% mark recorded in the first half of 2025, and asking rents have continued to rise alongside it.

Are medical office rents in Houston going up or down? Medical office rents in Houston are rising. Average asking NNN lease rates reached $25.34 per square foot in the first half of 2026, up from $25.14 at year-end 2025 and $24.62 in the first half of 2025. Rents have increased even as new supply entered the market, indicating sustained tenant demand.

How much medical office investment sales activity happened in Houston in 2026? Houston recorded more than $230 million in medical office sales volume through the first half of 2026, a 59% increase over the same period in 2025. The average sales price reached $306 per square foot. Notable transactions included the 170,554-square-foot MedPlace building, acquired by Medical Properties Trust, and Greenhouse Medical Plaza, acquired by Edloe Ventures.

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How to Effectively Negotiate a Commercial Office Lease

Coy Davidson — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 04:15:39 +0000

Seven strategies to protect leverage, control cost, and not leave money on the table

Negotiating a commercial office lease is less about arguing over the asking rent and more about creating leverage, modeling total occupancy cost, and locking in flexibility before you are out of time. Start 12 to 18 months before expiration, know your comps, and put a tenant advocate across the table from the landlord’s team.

Finding the ideal office is only part of the challenge. Navigating the negotiation, understanding the market, and protecting your organization’s long-term interests is where most tenants lose ground, often without realizing it until year three of the lease.

After more than thirty years representing occupiers in Houston and across the country, I can tell you this plainly: the tenants who get strong outcomes are not the ones who push hardest on day one. They are the ones who start early, create real competition among landlords, and negotiate the clauses that never appear on the first proposal page.

What “negotiating” actually means

A commercial lease is not a standard form. It is a long-term financial instrument covering base rent, escalations, operating expenses, tenant improvement allowances, free rent, renewal and expansion rights, sublease and assignment, restoration, guarantees, and default remedies, often over three to ten years.

The landlord’s leasing agent negotiates these agreements every day. Most tenants do it once every five to ten years. That imbalance is the entire problem. Your job in the negotiation is not to match their experience overnight. It is to put equivalent expertise, market data, and process discipline on your side of the table.

1. Start 12 to 18 months before you need a deal

Time is leverage. Begin evaluating your lease and the surrounding market well before expiration, ideally 12 to 18 months out for a standard office renewal or relocation.

That runway lets you:

Confirm whether your current footprint still fits how the company actually works
Tour alternatives without panic
Run a stay versus go analysis with real proposals from competing landlords
Walk into renewal talks with credible options, not a calendar crisis

Waiting until the final few months does not save time. It transfers negotiating power to the landlord, who can see that your relocation clock is running out.

2. Right-size the requirement before you tour

Do not start with listings. Start with what you actually need.

Define current and projected headcount, hybrid patterns, meeting-room demand, and growth or contraction scenarios before you schedule a tour. Landlords are not in the business of rightsizing your footprint. Their incentive runs the other direction. Excess square footage compounds every month for the life of the lease.

If you cannot explain why you need the square footage you are asking for, you are not ready to negotiate rent.

3. Negotiate total occupancy cost, not the face rate

Base rent gets the attention. Operating expenses, load factor, tenant improvement shortfalls, parking, and restoration obligations are where the real cost hides.

Before you accept any proposal, model:

Effective rent after free rent and escalations
Your share of operating expenses, taxes, and insurance, and whether annual increases are capped
Who controls the build-out and whether the TI allowance covers a space that actually works for your team
Restoration obligations at lease end (broom-clean versus return-to-original can be a six-figure difference)

Ask for two years of operating expense history and a clear explanation of what is capped versus what floats. A lower face rate with uncapped pass-throughs is often the more expensive deal.

4. Create competition, that is where leverage comes from

Leverage in a lease negotiation does not come from making demands. It comes from competition.

Structure the process so multiple landlords are competing for your tenancy at the same time. That competition is what moves pricing on base rent, TI, free rent, and the flexibility provisions that matter later. Even in tighter submarkets, a credible alternative changes how the preferred landlord behaves.

The presence of an experienced tenant representative also changes the tone before the first proposal arrives: the landlord knows you have a professional advocate who understands the market and will evaluate every option.

5. Fight for flexibility as hard as you fight for rent

In my experience, optionality often delivers more long-term value than a slightly lower rental rate.

Prioritize:

Renewal options with clear notice windows
Expansion rights with economics you can plan around, not only a vague right of first refusal
Contraction or early termination rights when the business case supports them
Sublease and assignment rights with landlord consent not to be unreasonably withheld

These provisions are not free. Landlords price them in. Model the downside with and without them. The math usually favors buying the flexibility.

6. Use a letter of intent before the 80-page lease

Align on the business terms in a short LOI first: rent, term, renewals, TI, free rent, expense structure, and the flexibility items that matter to you. Getting those points clear in two or three pages saves weeks of attorney time and prevents “standard form” surprises later.

Then have counsel review the full lease for default remedies, casualty language, guarantees, holdover, and dispute resolution. The cost of that review is small next to discovering an unfavorable clause two years in.

7. Put a tenant advocate on your side of the table

The landlord already has professional representation. You should too.

A qualified tenant representative’s job is not only to find space. It is to level the information gap, create competition, protect you in the document, and quarterback the moving parts from market survey through occupancy. In most commercial office transactions, the tenant representative’s fee is paid by the landlord as a cost of doing business. Choosing to go without representation does not reduce your rent. It simply leaves negotiating advantage on the other side of the table.

I have written separately about why lease outcomes depend on who represents you. The short version: sophisticated occupiers treat tenant representation as standard operating procedure, not an optional add-on.

Why local market knowledge matters

Houston office and medical office negotiations turn on submarket vacancy, landlord capital position, and how motivated a particular ownership group is to fill space. National talking points help. Comparable deals in your submarket close the gap. If you are evaluating a healthcare space in Greater Houston, the same process applies, with the added complexity of clinical adjacency, parking ratios, and provider schedules when the user is a health system or physician group.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. When should I start negotiating my office lease renewal?

Start 12 to 18 months before your current lease expires. That runway gives you time to evaluate whether your footprint still fits, tour genuine alternatives, and build a credible stay-versus-go analysis with real competing proposals. Landlords track your lease expiration date closely. If you wait until the final few months, the landlord knows your options have narrowed and negotiates accordingly. Early timing is the single biggest source of leverage in any lease negotiation, and it costs nothing to start early.

2. Is a lower base rent always the better deal?

No, and this is where many tenants lose money without realizing it. Base rent is one line in a much larger calculation. Operating expenses, load factor, tenant improvement shortfalls, parking costs, and restoration obligations at lease end all affect what you actually pay. A space quoting a lower face rate with uncapped operating expense pass-throughs often costs more over the term than a higher quoted rate with capped increases. Always model total occupancy cost before comparing proposals, not just the headline rent.

3. If the landlord pays my tenant representative’s fee, why would I skip representation?

There is rarely a good reason to. In most commercial office transactions, the tenant representative’s commission is paid by the landlord as a standard cost of doing business, already built into the deal economics whether you use a representative or not. Declining representation does not lower your rent. It simply means you negotiate alone against a landlord’s leasing team that handles these transactions every day, while you likely negotiate a lease once every five to ten years. That imbalance, not the fee, is the real cost of going without an advocate.

The post How to Effectively Negotiate a Commercial Office Lease appeared first on Coy Davidson - The Tenant Advisor.

The Nuances of Leasing Medical Office Space

Coy Davidson — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 20:22:06 +0000

What Healthcare Providers and Physicians Need to Know

The shift toward outpatient care is no longer a trend worth watching. For health systems across the country, it has become a defining strategic priority. Driven by rising inpatient facility costs, evolving reimbursement models, and patients who increasingly expect healthcare to be as convenient as any other service they use, health systems are aggressively expanding their ambulatory footprints in 2026.

Medical office buildings, suburban clinical campuses, and community-based care sites are absorbing a growing share of services that were once anchored to the hospital campus, from imaging and infusion to surgical and specialty care. For health systems competing for patient volume in crowded markets, where and how they deploy outpatient real estate has become as important as the clinical strategy itself. Getting the real estate right, securing the right locations, structuring leases that protect long-term operational flexibility, and managing the economics of an expanding portfolio, requires a level of expertise that goes well beyond standard commercial real estate practice.

Leasing medical office space is a fundamentally different exercise than leasing general commercial space. The regulatory requirements, operational demands, and financial stakes are in a different category entirely, and the decisions you make during lease negotiations can affect your practice for a decade or more.

The migration of healthcare to off-campus locations has only intensified this dynamic. Physician practices are increasingly moving toward suburban locations and community retail centers that put them closer to where patients actually live. The growth of urgent care clinics and smaller medical office developments in virtually every major metro area reflects this shift. At the same time, rising construction costs have made securing favorable lease terms more critical than ever.

Medical tenants also tend to sign longer leases than general office users and relocate far less frequently. That means when a healthcare provider does enter the market, the transaction needs to be done right, because the next opportunity to correct a mistake may be seven to ten years away.

The single most important early decision a physician practice or healthcare organization can make is to retain a tenant representative with direct experience in medical office leasing. An experienced healthcare real estate advisor understands which buildings and spaces are genuinely suited to clinical use, how to structure lease terms that protect the provider’s interests, and where the leverage points are in a negotiation. That expertise pays for itself many times over.

Here are the key issues that distinguish a medical office lease from a standard commercial transaction:

1. Use and Regulatory Compliance

Medical tenants handle hazardous materials, generate biomedical waste, and operate equipment including X-ray machines and CT scanners that produce radiation. These uses create specific compliance requirements that must be addressed in the lease document. Leaving this language vague or generic creates real liability exposure.

2. After-Hours Access and Utilities

Many medical practices see patients outside of standard building hours, and urgent care clinics may operate around the clock. How after-hours utility costs are measured and allocated can have a meaningful impact on your occupancy expenses over the life of the lease. This is worth negotiating carefully upfront.

3. ADA Compliance

Patients are statistically more likely than the general public to have accessibility needs, which means healthcare facilities face heightened ADA scrutiny. Medical tenants should pay close attention to the ADA compliance clause in any lease, including which party bears responsibility for upgrades and under what circumstances.

4. Landlord Access and Patient Privacy

Standard commercial leases give landlords broad rights to re-enter the premises for inspections, to show the space to prospective tenants, and to access the building’s infrastructure. For a healthcare provider, unrestricted landlord access conflicts directly with patient privacy requirements and HIPAA obligations. The lease must specifically limit access to exam rooms, clinical areas, and any space where patient records are maintained.

5. Anti-Kickback Compliance

Federal anti-kickback statutes create specific requirements for leases involving hospital-owned or physician-owned properties. If any ownership relationship exists between the landlord and the tenant, the lease must be structured to comply with applicable safe harbor provisions, and that compliance needs to be properly documented.

6. Exclusivity Provisions

An exclusivity clause prevents the landlord from leasing other space in the building or development to a direct competitor. In a medical office building with multiple specialties, this protection matters. Securing exclusivity for your specific practice type is a reasonable ask and worth pursuing in negotiations.

7. Death and Disability Clauses

For solo practitioners, this provision deserves serious consideration. A well-negotiated death and disability clause allows the practice to terminate the lease, typically with a penalty, in the event the physician is unable to practice due to death or permanent disability. Landlords will push back, but this provision can be successfully negotiated into an agreement, particularly when the practice has meaningful leverage.

8. Parking

A steady patient flow during business hours makes parking both a practical and a patient experience issue. As a general benchmark, 4.5 spaces per 1,000 gross square feet of building area is typically sufficient to meet peak demand for most medical office users. Evaluate this carefully for any space under consideration.

9. Signage

Signage is a branding and patient acquisition issue, not just an aesthetic one. Visible, well-positioned signage helps patients find you and reinforces your practice’s presence in the community. At a minimum, negotiate for placement on the monument sign. If your footprint is large enough, you have the leverage to pursue building signage as well.

10. Tenant Improvements

Medical build-outs are expensive. Even a standard clinical design in today’s market can run $150 to $250 per square foot, and that number climbs with imaging equipment, procedure rooms, specialized plumbing, and compliance-driven requirements. Several sub-issues flow directly from this reality:

Lease Term: Because build-out costs are so high, medical office leases commonly run seven to ten years, compared to three to five years for general office tenants. A longer term should translate to a larger tenant improvement allowance from the landlord, and that relationship should be built into the negotiation strategy from the outset.

Architect and Contractor Selection: Landlords typically prefer to use contractors and design professionals they have worked with before. That preference is understandable, but medical tenants need the right to select their own architect and contractor, specifically professionals with proven experience in healthcare design and construction. Clinical build-outs have unique requirements that generalist contractors often underestimate.

Relocation Provisions: Many leases include language allowing the landlord to relocate the tenant to a different suite if it serves the landlord’s interest. For a medical tenant that has invested heavily in a purpose-built clinical space, this provision is unacceptable. Resist it.

Lien Subordination: When a practice finances leasehold improvements or medical equipment above the landlord’s allowance, the landlord’s lien rights should be expressly subordinated to the tenant’s lenders. This is a technical but important point that protects your financing relationships.

Restoration Obligations: Most leases include provisions governing what happens to the space at the end of the term. For a medical tenant with significant specialized infrastructure, the restoration clause can create substantial end-of-lease cost exposure if it is not negotiated carefully.

For any healthcare provider or physician practice, a medical office lease represents a major multi-year financial commitment that touches nearly every aspect of how the practice operates. Working with a real estate advisor who genuinely understands healthcare real estate, from regulatory compliance to construction economics to lease structure, is not optional. It is how you protect the long-term interests of your practice and your patients.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How much does it cost to build out medical office space, and how do I negotiate a tenant improvement allowance that covers it?

Medical build-outs are significantly more expensive than standard office construction. Depending on the market and the complexity of the clinical program, costs commonly range from $150 to $250 per square foot, and specialized spaces involving imaging, procedure rooms, or custom millwork can push well beyond that. The key to negotiating a meaningful tenant improvement allowance is leverage, and leverage comes from lease term. Medical landlords are generally willing to invest more when a tenant commits to a longer term, typically seven to ten years. Going in with a detailed scope of work, real contractor bids, and a clear understanding of the market allowance range puts you in a far stronger negotiating position than relying on the landlord’s numbers alone.

Q: Should a physician practice hire a tenant representative when leasing medical office space, and does it cost anything?

Every healthy system and physician practice leasing or renewing office space should have dedicated tenant representation, and in virtually all cases it costs the practice nothing directly. Leasing commissions are paid by the landlord, not the tenant. What matters is hiring a tenant rep with specific healthcare real estate experience, not just general commercial leasing knowledge. Medical office transactions involve regulatory compliance, clinical build-out economics, HIPAA-sensitive lease provisions, and anti-kickback considerations that a generalist broker may not fully understand. The right advisor helps you identify the best locations, structure the lease to protect your practice, and negotiate terms that reflect the true value you bring as a long-term, creditworthy tenant.

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Texas Office Market Snapshot – Q2 2026

Coy Davidson — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:05:27 +0000

The State of the Texas Office Market

Texas’s major office markets sent a consistent signal in Q2 2026: demand is healing, but at different speeds. DFW led the pack with vacancy dropping below 20% for the first time in three years and rents rising; Austin showed gradual stabilization with softer rents cushioning still-positive absorption, and Houston held resilient despite a slowdown in leasing, buoyed by continued flight-to-quality and a strengthening corporate base.

Austin Stabilizing, but leasing momentum cooling

Vacancy down to 20.6% (from 21.2% Q1), below year-ago levels
Net absorption positive at 735.3k SF, but softer than Q1’s 1.1M SF
New supply jumped to 279.3k SF; 459k SF under construction
Asking rents softened to $44.79/SF overall ($54.88/SF Class A)
Northwest submarket led absorption (1.46M SF YTD); CBD posted negative absorption
Notable deals: Texas Capital Bank (27,012 SF), Ryan LLC (24,532 SF); $197/SF Northwest sale

Download the Austin Office Market Report | Q2 2026

Dallas-Fort Worth: Strongest quarter in years

Vacancy fell to 19.9% — first time below 20% in nearly three years
Net absorption surged to 1.4M SF, up from 444.4k SF in Q1
New supply modest at 173.1k SF; 3.1M SF under construction
Sublease space contracted to 7.3M SF
Asking rents climbed to $34.01/SF overall ($38.93/SF Class A)
Notable deals: Mercury One (172,230 SF), Stellantis Financial (83,278 SF)

Download the DFW Office Market Report | Q2 2026

Houston — Resilient despite softer leasing

Vacancy flat at 27.7%; leasing volume down 23% QoQ
Net absorption still positive at 425k SF, offsetting Q1’s decline
Class A captured 60%+ of leasing activity (flight-to-quality continues)
Construction pipeline shrank to 127.7k SF (just one project, Autry Park)
Asking rents up modestly to $31.35/SF
Katy Freeway East led activity: Dow Chemical (203k SF), Superior Energy (56,256 SF)
Tailwind: Expand Energy’s planned HQ move from OKC could push Houston to No. 2 in Fortune 500 count

Download the Houston Office Market Report | Q2 2026

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Flight to Quality Keeps Reshaping the Houston Office Market

Coy Davidson — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 02:15:22 +0000

Houston Office Market Report | Q2 2026

Market Trends

Net absorption saw an increase in 2Q 2026, boasting positive net absorption of 425,021 SF. This increase offset the negative absorption seen in the prior quarter, resulting in positive net absorption of 208,782 for the first half of 2026.
Katy Freeway East submarket saw the largest net positive gain in absorption with Dow Chemicals occupying 203,000 SF at City Centre Six.
Flight to quality persists, with Class A buildings accounting for over 60% of leasing activity.
New supply was added to the market, with the delivery of The RO (150,794 SF) bringing year-to-date office completions to 650, 244 SF.
Gross asking rents rose slightly to $31.35 PSF, marking modest quarterly and annual increases. While asking rents have increased, net effective rents remain below face rents due to landlord concessions.

Houston’s office market is splitting into two very different stories, one for top tier buildings and one for everything else.

Absorption turned positive again

Net absorption came in at 425,021 SF for the quarter, a strong reversal after Q1’s negative absorption. For the first half of 2026, that puts total net absorption at 208,782 SF. Overall vacancy ticked down slightly to 27.7%.

Leasing velocity, though, actually slowed. Tenants signed 2.2 million SF of new leases in Q2, down 23% from the prior quarter and roughly 20% below the same period last year. Fewer deals are getting done, but the deals that are happening are increasingly landing in premium buildings. Class A space accounted for more than 60% of all leasing activity in the quarter.

Katy Freeway East is the market’s clearest bright spot

No submarket illustrates the flight to quality better than Katy Freeway East. Dow Chemical’s 203,000 SF occupancy at CityCentre Six was the single largest driver of absorption in the quarter, and it helped pull submarket vacancy down 180 basis points to 14.4%. Class A vacancy in the submarket fell even further, dropping 310 basis points.

The submarket also produced two of the quarter’s largest lease transactions: Superior Energy took 56,256 SF at 8020 Katy Freeway, and Capgemini signed for 30,262 SF at 990 Town and Country Boulevard. Class A asking rents in Katy Freeway East now average $64.11 PSF, nearly double the metro average, a reflection of how tight the top of that submarket has become.

CBD’s headline vacancy hides a two tier market

The CBD posted the second highest absorption total in Houston at 135,708 SF, even though overall CBD vacancy remains elevated at 32.1%. That number is misleading on its own. Class A properties drove the bulk of the positive absorption, while older, less competitive Class B and C stock continues to weigh down the average. Newer Class A towers downtown are holding occupancy well; it is the aging inventory that is inflating the headline vacancy figure.

The Woodlands also had a strong quarter, with roughly 233,000 SF leased, including Quanta Infrastructure Solutions’ 30,983 SF lease at 10000 Energy Drive and NAES Corporation’s 28,000 SF lease at 1725 Hughes Landing Boulevard.

New supply has nearly stopped

Houston delivered just one building in Q2: The RO, a 150,794 SF project that came online 100% preleased, with Vitol taking occupancy during the quarter. That brings year to date deliveries to 650,244 SF.

Looking ahead, the construction pipeline has shrunk to just 127,000 SF, consisting entirely of the Autry Park office project, which is already 95% preleased and expected to deliver later this year. Developers are simply not speculating in this market, which should help support occupancy in the buildings that do get built.

Rents are rising, but concessions are still doing the heavy lifting

Overall gross asking rents rose slightly to $31.35 PSF, a modest increase both quarterly and year over year. That said, net effective rents remain below face rates because landlords are still offering significant concessions to get leases signed. Asking rent growth on paper does not yet translate into meaningfully higher net rents for landlords.

Houston’s corporate base keeps growing

Houston’s underlying economic story remains a tailwind for the office market. The metro is already home to 27 Fortune 500 headquarters, tying Chicago for the second highest concentration in the country. In the first half of 2026, Expand Energy announced plans to relocate its headquarters from Oklahoma City to Houston later this year. Once that move is complete, Houston’s Fortune 500 count climbs to 28, moving the metro past Chicago into the No. 2 spot nationally.

What this means for occupiers

If you are touring space right now, the bifurcation in this market is not just a data point, it is something you need to plan around. Trophy and Class A product in Katy Freeway East, The Woodlands, and the CBD is tightening quickly and pricing accordingly. Class B space, on the other hand, is still where occupiers hold real negotiating leverage, particularly in submarkets carrying higher vacancy.

Whether you are approaching a renewal, evaluating a relocation, or just trying to understand how these trends affect your next lease negotiation, the details matter more than the headline vacancy rate.

Download the full report as a PDF

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is Houston’s vacancy rate still around 27 percent if leasing activity is strong?
The headline vacancy rate blends premium buildings with older, less competitive stock. Class A space is absorbing well and tightening in key submarkets, while aging Class B and C buildings continue to sit vacant and drag down the citywide average.

s now a good time for a tenant to negotiate a Houston office lease?
It depends heavily on the submarket and building class. In tight submarkets like Katy Freeway East and the CBD’s newer Class A towers, landlords have less room to negotiate. In submarkets carrying higher vacancy, particularly Class B space, tenants still have solid leverage on rent, concessions, and term length.

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What AI Said About Business Development in CRE Brokerage in 2026

Coy Davidson — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 22:18:57 +0000

The Broker Who Wins in 2026 Isn’t the One Who Calls the Most. It’s the One Who Matters the Most.

Back in 2010, I wrote a blog post arguing that commercial real estate brokers needed to stop interrupting prospects and start educating them. The core idea was simple: if you consistently deliver valuable information to the people you want to do business with, they will eventually reward you with their business and their loyalty.

Sixteen years later, that idea hasn’t just held up. It has become table stakes.

I asked Claude to breakdown business development in CRE in 2026. I gave it some parameters and here is what it told me to do.

Business Development in Commercial Real Estate Has Been Completely Rewritten. Here’s the New Playbook.

The rules of business development in commercial real estate have shifted again, faster and more dramatically than at any point in the history of this industry. The technologies reshaping how prospects are found, how relationships are initiated, and how trust is built are not coming. They are already here, already being used by your competitors, and already being used against you by the office occupiers and healthcare systems you’re trying to win.

If you are still running a 2015 business development strategy, even a good one, you are already behind.

The Old Interruption Model Is Finally Dead

For decades, CRE business development operated on a remarkably simple and brutally inefficient model: reach as many people as possible, as often as possible, and hope that your timing lines up with their need. Cold calls, direct mail, email blasts, conference circuits: all of it designed to interrupt the prospect and insert yourself into their awareness before a competitor did.

Even in 2010, that model was losing its edge. Today it is functionally extinct.

The Battle of the Bots

Here is what has changed: your prospects are no longer reachable through traditional interruptive channels in any meaningful way. AI-powered call screening tools from Google and Apple now answer unknown calls on their behalf, summarize the purpose of the call, and let the recipient decline with a single tap, without ever hearing your voice. Email inboxes are being managed by AI filters trained to surface what matters and bury what doesn’t. Generic prospecting emails, even well-crafted ones, are being recognized, filtered, and deleted at scale before human eyes ever reach them.

The “spray and pray” model isn’t just inefficient anymore. It is actively counterproductive. Every cold touchpoint that gets ignored trains the algorithm, and the prospect, to tune you out permanently.

The New Battleground: Relevance, Not Reach

The brokers winning new business in 2026 have abandoned the pursuit of reach and replaced it with the pursuit of relevance. The question is no longer how many people can I contact? It is how precisely can I identify the right person at the right moment with exactly the right message?

This is the era of signal-informed outreach, and it changes everything about how a commercial real estate advisor should be building a book of business.

What is a signal? A signal is a trigger event: a data point that tells you a specific company or decision-maker is likely to be in the market for your expertise right now, whether they’ve articulated that need or not.

In office and healthcare real estate, signals look like this:

A healthcare system announces a new service line, a department expansion, or an ambulatory care initiative. They will need real estate to support it.
A corporate tenant’s lease is 24 to 36 months from expiration in a market you cover. The decision window is opening.
A company posts a cluster of new job listings in a specific city. Headcount growth precedes space decisions.
A health system receives a credit rating upgrade or closes a major capital raise. Their appetite for real estate investment shifts.
A CFO or Chief Real Estate Officer transitions into a new role. New leadership almost always conducts a strategic review of the portfolio.

In the past, tracking these signals required armies of researchers, subscription services, and expensive database platforms. Today, AI tools synthesize this information continuously and surface it in real time. The broker who identifies a tenant’s expansion signal six months before their current broker does isn’t just ahead. They’re winning.

Content Is Still the Foundation, But the Bar Has Moved

In 2010, simply having a blog put you ahead of 95% of the commercial real estate market. The bar was that low. Today, content creation is widespread. The question is no longer do you produce content? It is does your content actually move the needle for the people who matter most to your practice?

Shallow content, from market stats repackaged from CoStar to generic commentary on interest rates and listicles about “top trends in commercial real estate,” is being generated by AI at industrial scale. It floods LinkedIn feeds, clutters inboxes, and immediately signals to a sophisticated reader that the author has nothing original to say. If your content could have been written by anyone, it is worth nothing.

What wins in 2026 is perspective. Depth. A point of view that could only come from someone who has sat across the table from hundreds of occupiers, negotiated thousands of lease clauses, and developed genuine conviction about what works and what doesn’t.

The occupiers and healthcare executives who are your best prospects are sophisticated professionals who consume enormous amounts of information. They do not need more information. They need someone who can make sense of the information and tell them what it means for their specific situation.

Your content strategy in 2026 should be built around three principles:

Specificity over breadth. Write for your exact niche. If you represent healthcare occupiers in suburban markets, your content should speak directly to the CFO or Real Estate Director, not to “anyone interested in commercial real estate.” The narrower your focus, the more credible and magnetic your content becomes to the people who need you.

Conviction over neutrality. The safest content is also the least effective. Take positions. Make predictions. Disagree with the conventional wisdom when you have evidence that it’s wrong. In an era of AI-generated content trained to be balanced and inoffensive, a broker with a clear, defensible point of view stands out like a voice in a quiet room.

Distribution over production. A single piece of genuinely valuable content, distributed through the right channels to the right audience with strategic precision, is worth more than fifty posts that disappear into the feed. Email newsletters to a curated list of decision-makers. Direct outreach to executives when your content is directly relevant to something happening in their business. A podcast or video series that your niche actually consumes. Channel matters as much as content.

The Phone Call Isn’t Dead. But It Has to Earn Its Place.

I have spent years watching brokers endlessly cold call. Dialing down a list. Stumbling through an unsolicited pitch to a distracted gatekeeper. Moving on to the next number. Repeat.

That model is gone. The technology has made it impossible, and frankly, the prospects have made it unwelcome. But the phone itself, the act of having a real-time voice conversation with another human being, remains the highest-converting business development tool in commercial real estate. It is not going anywhere.

What has changed is the context required before you pick up the phone.

The brokers I have seen succeed in 2026 treat the phone call as a culmination, not an opening move. By the time they dial, they have already:

Engaged with that prospect’s content, announcements, or digital presence in a visible and authentic way.
Delivered something of genuine value, whether a relevant market analysis, a pointed article, or an introduction, without asking for anything in return.
Established enough name recognition that when the call comes, it lands not as an intrusion but as a natural continuation of an existing interaction.

This sequence turns a cold call into a warm one. And in commercial real estate, where the sales cycle is long, the relationships are deep, and the transactions are high-stakes, warm conversations with informed prospects convert at a rate that cold interruption simply cannot touch.

The Relationship Is Still Everything. But It Now Starts Earlier.

Here is what has not changed, and will not change, regardless of how sophisticated the AI becomes: commercial real estate decisions are made by human beings who are taking professional and personal risk. The stakes are high. The lease terms are long. The consequences of a bad decision, whether choosing the wrong building, misjudging a market, or missing a critical clause, can follow a company for a decade.

Occupiers don’t just hire a broker. They hire a trusted advisor. And trust, in this business, is still built the same way it has always been built: through demonstrated expertise, through reliability, through the experience of watching someone perform under pressure.

What AI changes is not the nature of the relationship. It changes when the relationship begins. Prospects are now doing deep, independent research, consuming content, evaluating credentials, and forming opinions about brokers, long before they ever reach out or take a meeting. By the time they contact you, they may already have a strong impression of who you are and whether you are worth their time.

If you are not actively shaping that impression through your content, your digital presence, and your reputation in the niche, then someone else is shaping it for you.

The 2026 Business Development Stack for CRE Advisors

For brokers who want to build a durable practice in this environment, the playbook looks like this:

Your platform. Maintain a professional website, blog or social media accounts that clearly communicates your specialty, your market perspective, and your track record. It is the anchor for everything else. This has not changed since 2010. The bar has simply risen.

Your intelligence layer. Use AI-powered tools to monitor trigger events in your target market. Set up systematic tracking of lease expirations, executive transitions, organizational announcements, and capital activity for the companies and sectors you serve. Let technology do the surveillance so you can do the relationship work.

Your content engine. Publish with a point of view and a specific audience in mind. An email newsletter to 200 CFOs of regional health systems who actually read it is worth more than 2,000 LinkedIn followers who don’t. Build the list. Earn the attention. Protect both by only sharing content worth their time.

Your outreach sequence. When a signal fires, don’t cold call. Engage first: add a genuine comment to a relevant announcement, send a short, personalized note referencing something specific to their situation, share a piece of content that is directly relevant to what they’re navigating. Then, when you call, you’re a known quantity.

Your referral network. In 2026, as in every era before it, the highest-quality business development still happens through trusted referrals. The attorneys, accountants, capital advisors, and C-suite executives who can send you qualified introductions are worth more than any technology stack. Invest in those relationships first.

The Broker Who Survives This Moment

The commercial real estate brokers who will build lasting practices in the years ahead are not the ones who master any single technology or platform. They are the ones who understand what was always true about this business: that clients hire people they trust, that trust is built through demonstrated expertise and reliability, and that genuine relationships are the durable competitive advantage. They use the new tools to accelerate those timeless dynamics rather than replace them.

The bots can screen calls. They cannot replace the broker who has become genuinely indispensable to a client’s real estate strategy.

The AI can generate content. It cannot replicate the credibility of an advisor who has closed transactions in the buildings your prospect is considering, who knows the landlords personally, and who has navigated the exact kind of deal the client needs to get done.

The algorithms can surface prospects. They cannot close the relationship.

In 2026, the brokers who matter are the ones who have invested in becoming irreplaceable to a specific set of clients, in a specific niche, with a level of expertise and commitment that no platform can replicate.

That was true in 2010. It is still true now. It will still be true in 2036.

Everything else is just the tools we use to get in the room.

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