Real Estate Rumblings

Energy Corridor booms: Swedish giant plans major office building on west side

Skanska USA Commercial Development has confirmed it will build a major office building in the Energy Corridor of west Houston.

Skanska USA’s parent company, Skanska AB, is a giant global construction and development company based in Stockholm. The company is mentioned in chapter one of the best-selling fictional book, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Steig Larsson.

The building is not a “spec” or speculative project. A large tenant, Petroleum Geo-Services,will occupy 122,000 square feet of the 12-story building, called West Memorial Place. The 325,000-square-foot building will be completed in the first quarter of 2015. HOK is the architect.

“Are you telling me Skanska don’t do speculation?” — from Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Skanska acquired the site in February 2012 and is financing 100 percent of the development costs with internal Skanska funds. It is extremely rare for a real estate firm to internally finance a project of this magnitude, at least for domestic real estate companies. Usually a typical developer relies primarily on borrowed money to build office towers. But Skanska is a very deep-pocketed European company. The parent company took in $19.5 billion in revenue in 2012.

The firm has other projects in Houston – a new office tower at 3009 Post Oak Blvd., right across the street from the Water Wall in the Galleria, and the downtown redevelopment of the Houston Club site at 811 Rusk.

With the Energy Corridor building, Skanska is taking no great risk. Class A office space in the Energy Corridor is over 99 percent occupied and rents are strong. Occupancy rates that high are incredible, a rarity around the world. But the commercial real estate market has been enjoying a boom thanks to the energy industry, which has been expanding partly because because fracking exploration methods have taken off wildly in the United States.

Skanska says its new building will green and classified as LEED Gold in the sustainability rankings.

We are thrilled to welcome PGS (Petroleum Geo-Services) as the first tenant to our new sustainable development,” says Mike Mair, executive vice president of Skanska USA Commercial Development in Houston. “With expanses of green space throughout the property, direct connection to Terry Hershey Park and easy access to I-10, as well as the Energy Corridor’s hotels, restaurants, retail and support services, it is an ideal location for our newest development.”

Another Skanska company, Skanska USA Building, will be the general contractor, handling the construction of the new building. A rendering of the building also shows a second tower, which Skanska will pursue in the future based on market demand.

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renter report

Houston home to No. 2 biggest drop in rent prices in U.S. since last year

Photo by Pierre Châtel-Innocenti on Unsplash

Houston nearly topped the list with the second-biggest year-over-year decline in rent prices nationwide.

A new Zumper rent report has revealed that Texas is leading the nation in annual rent declines since 2025, and Houston rent prices have fallen as much as 14 percent since last August.

Zumper's monthly report analyzes one- and two-bedroom rent prices from the previous month across 100 U.S. cities, and tracks one-month and year-over-year changes.

Austin, Houston, and Dallas, respectively, locked out the top three cities where one-bedroom rent prices have plummeted more than anywhere else in the country.

A one-bedroom apartment in Houston had a $1,050 monthly rent price in August, down 14.6 percent since this time last year. Two-bedroom units were 5.4 percent cheaper than they were a year ago and now sit at $1,400 per month.

The reports findings show a similar pattern across Texas' biggest metros as "elevated multifamily supply" was "absorbed through the boom years." Renters currently have the advantageous opportunity to negotiate lower rent from their landlords, according to Zumper CEO Shawn Mullahy.

"Texas is showing exactly what happens when supply materially outruns demand," Mullahy said. "Austin, Houston and Dallas added enormous amounts of inventory, and renters now have leverage because owners are competing to fill it. That won’t reverse until enough of that supply is absorbed."

For comparison, Zumper's National Rent Index for August 2026 found the median one-bedroom rent fell 0.1 percent year-over-year to $1,515, while two-bedroom rent increased 0.5 percent to $1,907

Rent prices across Texas
Austin tops the U.S. with the steepest decline in both one- and two-bedroom rent prices in August. A one-bedroom unit in Texas' capital city had a $1,260 monthly price, down 16.6 percent from August 2025. Rent for a two-bedroom unit declined even further, by 19.1 percent, to $1,610 per month.

One-bedroom apartments in Dallas weren't far behind. Rent for a single-bedroom unit dipped 13 percent year-over-year to $1,270, and the price for a two-bedroom unit fell 13.4 percent to $1,810.

Elsewhere in the North Texas region, rent prices for a one-bedroom unit in Plano have dipped 7.1 percent since last year to $1,310. Single-bedroom units in Irving are renting for $1,210 a month, or 4.7 percent lower than they were the year before.

In Fort Worth and Arlington, one-bedroom units had a monthly asking price of $1,160 and $1,080 in August. Arlington's one-bedroom rent price is unchanged from 2025, and Fort Worth's is down 3.3 percent.

This is how much it cost for a two-bedroom unit across DFW in August, compared to the previous year:

Plano: $1,920 per month, down 3.5 percent
Irving: $1,620 per month, down 4.7 percent
Fort Worth: $1,530 per month, down 5.5 percent
Arlington: $1,460 per month, down 2.8 percent

In San Antonio, single-bedroom rent prices fell 8.6 percent to $960 per month, and two-bedroom rent declined by 4.5 percent to $1,260.

apartments housing real estate rent rent prices zumper houston