Even in Dallas--where the economy is almost as good as Houston--all fingers are pointing to H-town as the hot spot in the state. At Bisnow's fourth annual Dallas State of the Market event last week,Granite Properties prez/CEOMichael Dardick saidin investors minds, Houston is a coastal market(though the surfing leaves something to be desired) that is way out front, vying only with San Francisco for development. Theres 9.5M SF of projects under construction (and 70% of that is pre-leased), which is phenomenal, he says. Almost all of it is oil and gas companies.

The Dallas crowd of 400 at its downtown Fairmont. Granites development team is delivering 300k SF of office space in Houston this summer; and it hasnt been leased yet. But, it doesnt appear Michael is worried. The firm has three prospective tenants looking at the entire space with prices quoted. Two of those deals look to be viable, he says. Perhaps he's not too nervous because he saysonly three buildings across Houston can accommodate a 300k SF tenant. In the last 12 months, there have been more than a dozen 100k SF deals in Houston, making it a spectacular place to be. (Now if only we had a decent baseball team.)