It won't be accurate anymore. Houston’s skylines will look drastically different in three years, and energy companies are to thank. (And right as we finished making the skyline out of Legos. Now we have to start over.) Cushman & Wakefield executive vice chairman Tim Relyea says we have over 15M SF of office product under construction, more than any other major metro, and 8.5M SF of it will be occupied by energy companies. (We'll likely see that number increase as the remaining spec space is leased.) It’s spread across our submarkets, from Exxon, Southwestern Energy, and Anadarko up north to Hill Corp, Chevron, and BHP in our central core and Phillips 66 out west.

Of course, this is also having a domino effect, spawning residential, hotel, and retail development around town. (BHP’s new employees will benefit from 25 multifamily midrise and highrise projects going up in the Galleria alone.) Tim believes that our primary office markets have been defined (he doubts we’ll see a new major submarket spring up anytime in the next two or three decades), but new pockets of retail and residential activity will be born. (First up: the Outer Loop.)