A planned $2.9 million clinic build-out puts Baylor’s Four Oaks move in a different category from the usual office lease.

Houston’s office market is increasingly divided: high-quality buildings are attracting tenants and higher rents, while older properties can cost as much to renovate as they do to buy, leaving some owners unable to keep them competitive. bisnow.com/news/houston/offi…

The national industrial vacancy rate is 7.2%, a full point above its 15-year average. Read that alone and you would assume occupiers still hold the leverage. In a growing list of markets, they no longer do.

TUESDAY MARKET RECAP Tech and small caps drove the day while the Dow sat still: • Nasdaq +1.18% • S&P 500 +0.60% • Dow +0.03%

The 10 metros with the highest net domestic migration averaged gains of 19,000 people in 2025, down 44% from 34,000 in 2019. Former leaders cooled most, with Phoenix, Tampa, Las Vegas, and Dallas dropping sharply. Lower home turnover and weak hiring are suppressing long-distance mobility.

New home sales: 676K annualized in September, barely off August's pace and well above the 650K consensus. Median price $400K, down 3.9% YoY. 8.4 months of supply. Builders are still buying demand with price cuts. The South was the soft spot.

Commercial real estate opportunities are expanding for 2027, so why are investors less optimistic about profitability?

US consumer confidence rebounded in October, rising 7.5 points to 91.7 as views of business and job conditions improved. But inflation concerns persist and spending plans softened, a better mood, not a spending boom.

The S&P Cotality Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index posted a 2.1% annual gain for August 2026, up from a 1.9% rise in the previous month. Home values fell in real terms for the 15th consecutive month, as August’s 3.4% inflation ran roughly 1.3 percentage points above the 2.1% home price gain.

Durable goods orders rose 1.8% month over month to $345.4 billion, following an upwardly revised 0.1% increase in August.

Anthropic’s IPO filing flags a core risk: it must commit enormous sums to data centers and computing capacity years before knowing exactly how much it will need. Its biggest infrastructure bet isn’t on AI demand. It’s on signing data center deals lasting up to 20 years while the chips inside may become obsolete far sooner.

Houston is testing whether demand for premium offices can support new development despite overall vacancy of about 19%. Modern buildings are much more tightly leased, showing that abundant space in older properties does not necessarily meet tenants’ needs. The city is marketing 611 Walker St. and 1200 Travis St. for redevelopment. The Walker site could accommodate roughly 1 million square feet of office space, but neither site is a committed tower project yet. A proposed 32-story tower at 4701 Westheimer Road would deliver more than 520,000 square feet, though no construction timeline has been disclosed. Another speculative office tower is already underway near River Oaks and Highland Village. Limited new supply: about 1.5 million square feet is under construction, a record low, with more than 85% already preleased. Market improvement is expected to remain gradual and uneven through 2027.

Two law firms, Kane Russell Coleman Logan and Jordan, Lynch & Cancienne are relocating their Houston offices from Uptown to downtown, citing proximity to clients, courthouses and the legal community

Rice University plans to break ground on The Arc, a 200K SF, laboratory and office building in Midtown’s Ion District, with an estimated cost of at least $75 million. At 4151 Main St., next to the existing Ion building. Construction slated to begin Nov. 5 and finish in March 2028.

MONDAY MARKET RECAP Stocks rose Monday as semiconductor makers rallied after Anthropic’s IPO filing revived AI trade enthusiasm. • Dow: +146.42 pts (0.28%) to 52,361.58 • S&P 500: +0.7% to 7,676.77 • Nasdaq: +0.82% to 26,169.38

Audi plans a $4 billion SUV factory near Fort Valley, Georgia, south of Macon. It would be the Volkswagen-owned automaker’s first U.S. manufacturing plant. Approximately 1,100 acres owned and developed by the state and a local economic development authority. The plant is expected to manufacture Q5 and Q9 SUVs. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2027, with completion estimated for 2028.

Houston’s 29% monthly sales jump needs a reality check: September was up just 3.2% from a year earlier, and year-to-date sales remain down 1.2%. A strong month, not proof the market has turned.

U.S. office vacancy is falling even though companies are not hiring at anything close to a normal pace.

U.S. healthcare spending is growing faster than the economy, driven by rising prices rather than a sicker population. Total spending reached $5.3 trillion in 2024, up 7.2% from the previous year.