The year for Houston's commercial real estate sector ended with a bang as The Howard Hughes Corp. announced a $565M deal with Occidental Petroleum to purchase the company's two Class-A office towers, warehouse space and land in The Woodlands and a 63-acre Energy Corridor campus. All told, the deal included 2.7M SF across three sites.

What exactly Occidental Petroleum, commonly known as Oxy, would do regarding its real estate footprint in the wake of its $57B acquisition of Anadarko Petroleum in August has been the source of much speculation. Howard Hughes said Oxy will maintain occupancy at The Woodlands Towers, formerly Anadarko's HQ. Oxy's Century Park Campus in the Energy Corridor, a 17-building complex, will immediately be remarketed, in line with the firm's recently announced commitment to sell noncore properties.

The Howard Hughes Corp., which recently announced its HQ would be moving to The Woodlands, has settled on a new office, and will be relocating its corporate headquarters into the approximately 595K SF tower at 9950 Woodloch Forest Drive. The company owns the master-planned community The Woodlands and nearby communities Bridgeland and The Woodlands Hills.

The deal bolsters the firm's office portfolio by 50%.

Oxy was represented by CBRE's Brandon Clarke, Jared Chua and Steve Hesse.