Real Estate Rumblings

Oil giant's old grounds to be turned into a $1 billion development: From chemical campus to luxury digs?

The 35-acre Exxon Mobil Chemical campus on the Katy Freeway in west Houston has been purchased by a developer planning to build $1 billion mixed-use project with office buildings, shops, a hotel and residential units.

Houston-based PM Realty Group will be developing the site in conjunction with Atlas USA Holdings of Greenwich, Conn. The site is on the south side of the Katy Freeway and west of North Eldridge Parkway.

“Our vision is to create a strong sense of place within a premier business community. Here, all of the corporate user’s needs will be met in one location, unlike the single purpose office park that forces users into automobiles to obtain amenities and services,” says Dan Leverett of PM Realty Group.

Exxon Mobil Chemical will continue to use its offices there until 2015 when it relocates.

Plans for the project are not finalized, but the new development is expected to be an urban-styled project.

“Together, we intend to transform this highly desirable land into a distinctively special development, unparalleled in the Corridor, in which to live, work, play, and learn,” says Rick Kirk, PM Realty Group chairman and chief executive officer.

The site has frontage on Memorial Drive and Interstate 10 and it borders Terry Hershey Park.

Exxon Mobil Chemical will continue to use its offices there until 2015 when it relocates to the new Exxon Mobil campus, just south of The Woodlands.

Exxon Mobil is vacating a number of its office facilities around Houston, including its downtown skyscraper, to make the move to its new 400-acre campus on the north side of Houston The new Exxon Mobil campus, which will have three million square feet of office space in 20 new buildings, is reportedly the largest privately-owned construction project currently underway in the nation.

The Exxon Chemical site on the Katy Freeway is in the heart of Houston’s Energy Corridor, where scores of energy companies have their offices. A number of office buildings are under construction in the Energy Corridor and the vacancy rates in Energy Corridor office building have reached a record low of three percent, according to the CBRE Group.

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red-hot housing

Houston boasts No. 20 hottest real estate market among big U.S. cities

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It doesn't get much hotter than the Houston housing market. A new report has ranked H-Town as the 20th best real estate market among America's biggest cities right now.

WalletHub's annual study, "Best Real Estate Markets (2026)," compares the real estate markets in 300 U.S. cities based on 17 relevant metrics, such as "housing market attractiveness," home value forecasts, housing affordability, population growth, and many others. Cities were also ranked by size: large cities with over 300,000 residents; midsize cities with 150,000-300,000 residents; and small cities with fewer than 150,000 residents.

In the overall ranking of the best housing markets in America, regardless of city size, Houston ranks 90th out of all 300 cities.

WalletHub ranks Houston's real estate market No. 102 nationally, and its "affordability and economic environment" ranks 111th overall.

This is how WalletHub ranks the "health" of Houston's housing market (where No. 1 is the best and No. 150 is average):

No. 51 – Job Growth Rate
No. 96 – Home Price as a Percentage of Income
No. 99 – Median Home-Price Appreciation
No. 128 – Foreclosure Rate
No. 159 – Share of Seriously Underwater Mortgages
No. 172 – Percentage of Delinquent Mortgage Holders
No. 173 – Median Days on the Market
No. 192 – Maintenance Costs as a Percentage of Income

Despite Houston's good standing among the biggest cities in America, a separate WalletHub report claims Houston is one of the worst cities for first-time homebuyers. Instead, Houstonians are turning to popular ZIP codes in suburbs like Cypress and Katy, which rank among the hottest places to move to in the U.S.

Other high-performing housing markets in Texas
Two popular North Texas suburbs — Frisco and McKinney — topped WalletHub's overall list of the best real estate markets in the U.S. for 2026 at Nos. 1 and 2, respectively, and they locked in the top two spots in the midsize city ranking, too.

Frisco tops the nationwide "affordability and economic environment" category, and ranks No. 2 nationally for its real estate market.

"When you look at home prices as a percentage of income, [Frisco] is the 95th-cheapest among the 300 cities in our study," the report said. "But it’s the 11th-cheapest city for phone service and the 11th-cheapest for maintenance and energy."

Frisco boasts the highest share of houses that were built between 2010 and 2024, at nearly 47 percent, which WalletHub says is "good news for people who want all the benefits of a recently-constructed home," without having to "put in a lot of work" to renovate an older or run down home.

"If you aim to make a profit in the long run with your housing purchase, you’ll need to look beyond tangible factors like square footage and style," the report's author wrote. "Those factors certainly drive up property values. From an investor’s standpoint, though, they hold less significance than historical market trends and the economic health of residents."

Nearby Denton and Allen also made the overall top 10, respectively ranking as the 5th and 8th best real estate markets in the U.S. for 2026. Denton similarly ranked 5th in the midsize city rankings, and Allen topped the list of small cities.

The top 10 best real estate markets in America for 2026 are:

No. 1 – Frisco, Texas
No. 2 – McKinney, Texas
No. 3 – Murfreesboro, Tennessee
No. 4 – Durham, North Carolina
No. 5 – Denton, Texas
No. 6 – Cary, North Carolina
No. 7 – Madison, Wisconsin
No. 8 – Allen, Texas
No. 9 – Charlotte, North Carolina
No. 10 – Irvine, California

wallethub housing market real estate reports houston