Bolding: I'm amazed by the city's construction and development projects currently underway covering nearly every submarket in Houston. We are essentially adding another Uptown District (Galleria area) to the Houston Class A portfolio with built-to-suit projects accounting for 60%. The 17.8M SF of office space currently under construction is due primarily to growth in the Energy Industry. About ½ of that will be occupied by Fortune 500 oil & gas companies such as ExxonMobil and Shell.

GlobeSt.com: Do you foresee these favorable conditions continuing for some time?

Bolding: As someone who views this market through the tenant's lens, favorable is an interesting word. In the well-performing submarkets we are experiencing as much as a 30 to 50% increase in occupancy costs with new leases. Companies who have historically have renewed in-place are now evaluating ways to create efficiency or find competitively priced alternatives. While increases in corporate real estate overhead for the E&P companies can be likened to a rounding error, these increases have a greater impact on professional services firms; changing the way they approach and use their real estate. But to your question, we are starting to see job growth numbers trend away from professional / business services and move towards education, health services and labor, thereby relieving demand for additional office space. There are protections in the market today that should prevent us from experiencing a repeat of the downturn we saw in the 80's.

GlobeSt.com: Where do you expect to see the market in a year's time?

Bolding: The large commercial development projects we see today were committed to years ago and I think we have seen the peak of new construction, however the economy of Houston will continue to thrive for several factors. Houston remains the energy capital of the world and with the recently approved $10 billion LNG export facility, Texas' abundant supply of natural gas can be monetized; fueling new jobs and further development. Houston is also home to the Texas Medical Center, the largest medical center in the world, attracting 3,300 patient visits per day. Considering these factors plus being recently named one of the top five cities globally for foreign investment, Houston's future looks bright.

GlobeSt.com: What do you think is the most telling statistic at the moment to indicate the current state of the market?

Bolding: One glance at the market indicators and it is evident we have an unmet demand for office space and the office space we do have is becoming increasingly more valuable. Job growth and unemployment are the culprits and Houston continues to outperform nearly every other city in the country. Houston's unemployment rate hit 5.0% in May, down from 6.1% in May 2013 and annual job growth has been consistently between 3.0% - 3.5% over the past few years. These are strong economic indicators of a healthy economy.