'Building Out On This Promise': Manufacturing Brings Houston's Biggest CRE Wins In 2025

Manufacturing and life sciences investments, particularly Eli Lilly’s $6.5M monster pharmaceutical production facility, provided the biggest reasons for Houston’s commercial real estate industry to be optimistic this year.

Professionals in the office, retail and multifamily asset classes had to look a little harder for data points to energize their entry into 2026, though limited construction pipelines and solid performance at the top end of the market bolstered rental rates and occupancies.  

Life Sciences

Houston is finally in the midst of its new life sciences horizon after being on the verge of one for years.

Eli Lilly’s investment in Houston is a vote of confidence in the region’s resources and qualities that will make it a successful life sciences market, said Verena Kallhoff, senior director of global life sciences for Greater Houston Partnership.

Investments from biotech companies United Therapeutics and Bionova Scientific also point to a growing life sciences ecosystem that is getting Houston more national recognition, she said. 

“Houston is building out on this promise that we have the potential and the resources to grow into a really broad and also very comprehensive life sciences hub,” Kallhoff said. “We’re right at the cusp. We’re making it happen. So we’re watching it in real time.” 

When attending national life sciences conferences over the past three years, Kallhoff has seen conversations evolve from her pitching Houston as a potential life sciences market to already interested parties asking about the specifics of moving into the Houston market, she said.

Another major life sciences investment announced this year is the second phase of Texas Medical Center’s Helix Park, which will include a 250-room hotel, a 300-unit apartment tower and an 18K SF convention center. 

Industrial

Houston industrial brokers have seen manufacturers account for a significantly larger share of industrial tenants in the Houston market. This is also exemplified by Eli Lilly’s facility, where it will develop the first oral GLP-1 weight-loss medication along with ingredients for other medicines.

Tariffs caused uncertainty and delayed decisions toward the beginning of the year. But they also encouraged onshoring, boosting manufacturing interest in the Houston area and creating a shining example of the diversification of Houston’s industrial tenant base since the onset of the pandemic, said Jacob Bravo, associate director specializing in industrial tenant representation in Savills’ Houston office.

“All of the dynamics that made industrial such a strong asset class continue to be the case,” Bravo said. 

Despite continuous development — Savills reports the industrial construction pipeline increased 5.5M SF year-over-year in the third quarter — absorption remains strong, keeping supply and demand well balanced. 

The increase in interest from data centers and manufacturers has forced industrial brokers to learn more about power and other utilities than they ever thought would be necessary, Bravo said. Major infrastructure upgrades are planned and ongoing to prepare for these investments. 

“We'll see more AI-tangential use,” Bravo said. “That's going to continue to be the case.” 

Retail

A lack of new development has kept Houston’s retail market much more stagnant as high rental rates put pressure on tenants. This is especially true for restaurateurs struggling with inflation of food and labor costs, said Thomas Nguyen, restaurant practice leader for CBRE.

“I don’t know if this is a year that anyone’s going to say is their most profitable year,” Nguyen said.

Houston is still a highly demanded market for top restaurateurs, but with vacancy consistently below 6%, it is hard to find a suitable location.

“We work with several groups that wanted to come in gangbusters and start opening stores,” Nguyen said. “But there’s not a lot of quality spaces that are available.” 

It is better to be patient and wait for an ideal space, so there is a holding pattern, he said. Nguyen expects some relief next year with the delivery of some retail projects, including Greenside in the Memorial City area and The Swift BLDG in The Heights.

The retail construction pipeline stood at 2.5M SF in the third quarter, according to Partners Real Estate, down 22% year-over-year. Most construction consists of 30K SF or smaller neighborhood retail centers near recently developed residential subdivisions.

Other nonsuburban retail projects under construction include the second phase of The RO, scheduled for completion in 2027.

Availability of second-generation spaces is low right now, which is typical for the end of the year, Nguyen said.

“You have people that are circling the wagon, trying to see what second-gen spots are going to be available,” he said. “We have a feeling there’s going to be a slew of them in the first quarter next year.” 

Multifamily

Houston apartment operators and investors are also in somewhat of a holding pattern, and Pagewood Senior Vice President Susan Pohl has deemed her crystal ball broken.

While interest rates finally saw multiple cuts in 2025, it didn’t affect yields on five- or 10-year Treasury bonds, the more important metric for multifamily investment sales.

“That was a bummer,” Pohl said. “I thought that we would have seen some relief in interest rates. That would have kick-started the whole process of people coming to the table to buy and sell.” 

There is still a big disconnect between potential buyers and sellers.

Many operators focus on maintaining occupancy and rental rates through the holiday season, and rent growth is largely flat in Houston, Pohl said. That is better than the sharp rent declines in cities like Austin, but it shows that a slowdown in new construction hasn’t significantly boosted the market. 

There were only 840 construction starts in the third quarter, a sharp decline from more than 5,000 units at the start of 2024 and more than 9,000 at the start of 2022. A replenishing of construction pipelines isn’t expected anytime soon. 

Another trend this year was the difference in demand for Class-A and older, workforce housing. The latter has experienced significant financial distress, but many lenders remain hesitant to proceed with foreclosures.

“I think everybody in our business thought this was going to be a more active year for acquisitions and dispositions, and it just wasn't,” Pohl said.

There should be some rent growth in 2026, but job growth is a key factor in predicting that, she said.

Office

The spread in demand for newer, top-tier office buildings and the rest of the market has been a defining trend for Houston’s office market for years. But the trend heightened this year, pushing vacancy in premier office properties down to just 6.1%, according to Cushman & Wakefield.

Overall, Class-A office properties are 29.5% vacant. The tightness in the Class-A-plus market — vacancy rates for premier properties in certain submarkets like Westchase and Katy Freeway are under 3% — started to push some tenants into the next class of buildings this year, Cushman & Wakefield Senior Research Manager Sherra Gilbert said.

“Our 12 largest new leases signed in 2025, six of them were signed in that next class of good A buildings,” Gilbert said.

But more than 40% of new leasing activity over the past year was captured by Class-A-plus office towers, according to Cushman & Wakefield, which translated into rent growth. Premier building rental rates grew 25% since the beginning of 2022, closing Q3 2025 at $35.02 per SF, compared to $23.90 for all remaining Class-A buildings, a 46.5% spread. 

The extreme tightening of occupancies among premier buildings should lead to the next tier of office buildings garnering noticeable attention from occupiers in 2026, according to Cushman & Wakefield. 

Houston also saw a huge uptick in office investment sales in 2025 compared to the year before, largely driven by distressed sales pushing prices down. There had been more than $1.5B in year-to-date activity in November, if counting the ownership transfer of Houston Center, up from $650M for all of 2024, according to JLL.

Office construction remains subdued except for some premier, largely preleased projects like CityCentre Six and The RO. The Arc at the Ion District, a nearly 200K SF research, laboratory and office building, is slated to break ground in the second quarter.