{"id":251328,"date":"2026-04-15T19:25:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T19:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/251328\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T19:25:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T19:25:08","slug":"why-southern-land-co-s-beautiful-product-might-pull-houstons-highest-rents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/251328\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Southern Land Co.’s ‘Beautiful Product’ Might Pull Houston’s Highest Rents"},"content":{"rendered":"

Southern Land Co<\/a>. plans to ask for the market\u2019s highest office and multifamily rental rates at its first project in Houston.<\/p>\n

SLC broke ground on the 953K SF mixed-use<\/a> building at 2811 Kirby Drive on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\"Placeholder\"\/<\/p>\n

\n Southern Land Co.\n <\/p>\n

\n A rendering of the seventh-floor amenity deck at 2811 Kirby\n <\/p>\n

The development in the Upper Kirby<\/a> area, near River Oaks<\/a>, will include 812K SF of residential, 107K SF of office, 15K SF of ground-level restaurant space and six levels of podium parking. Designed by Solomon Cordwell Buenz architects, the 38-story apartment tower, Lily River Oaks, will be connected to a 10-story tower, 2811 Kirby, with four floors of\u00a0trophy office\u00a0space.<\/p>\n

The all-in estimated project cost is $270M, Southern Land Co. Chief Investment Officer Dustin Downey<\/a> said in an interview with Bisnow, adding that the developers and contractors trimmed the budget by about $7M to make the economics work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nashville-based SLC is a privately held, full-service real estate development company responsible for luxury apartments, master-planned communities and mixed-use projects in markets including Denver, New York, Las Vegas and Charleston, South Carolina.\u00a0<\/p>\n

SLC had to contribute significant equity to the Houston project \u2014 about $40M more than originally planned, CEO Tim Downey<\/a> said. SLC began looking for a development opportunity in Houston about 15 years ago, and Tim Downey said it was worth the wait to secure this project at this development site.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s a beautiful product. Any other developer would have cut a bunch of stuff and gotten $20M out of this deal,\u201d Dustin Downey said. \u201cBut because it\u2019s my family\u2019s money, it\u2019s part of our brand.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Triple-net asking rents for the office portion will start at $55 per SF, the highest rate ever seen in Houston, he said. The average asking rate<\/a> for Houston office space was $30.57 per SF in the first quarter.<\/p>\n

Although top-tier buildings have seen asking rates as high as $57 per SF<\/a>, Dustin Downey said any rents on par with 2811 Kirby\u2019s are in the small remaining spaces of Downtown Houston<\/a> trophy buildings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cPushing rents definitely helped us get started,\u201d Tim Downey said.<\/p>\n

Heightened construction costs and tariffs<\/a> delayed the project by about a year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Placeholder\"\/<\/p>\n

\n Southern Land Co.\n <\/p>\n

\n A rendering of 2811 Kirby\n <\/p>\n

Rates at 2811 Kirby will be justified by amenities like a full floor of wellness and fitness, a large outdoor deck, outdoor seating areas and easy-access parking.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut mainly it\u2019s the 3 L\u2019s of real estate: Location, location, location,\u201d Dustin Downey said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving a boutique style here at Upper Kirby, we really think that there\u2019s going to be a lot of very selective clients and people who want to move into this building for the address, for their proximity to C-suites\u2019 homes and, frankly, for proximity to other tenants in the building,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stream Realty Partners<\/a> will handle office leasing for the project, and brokers have already reported receiving inquiries.\u00a0It is\u00a0one of the very few<\/a> office buildings that have broken ground in Houston\u2019s Inner Loop during the past five years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The 145K SF office building being developed at\u00a0The RO<\/a>, a mixed-use development also near River Oaks,\u00a0is fully preleased<\/a>\u00a0and slated for tenant occupancy in June.<\/p>\n

Andres Construction is building 2811 Kirby, which is slated for completion in\u00a02028.<\/p>\n

Lily River Oaks\u00a0will include 331 rental residences, including 18 penthouses. Amenities will include rooftop indoor and outdoor spaces and a seventh-floor garden deck.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The groundbreaking comes as Houston\u2019s multifamily development pipeline hit its lowest level since 2011, according to CoStar<\/a> data. There were only 638 starts in the first quarter, and the under-construction pipeline now stands at just 12,000 units, most of which are luxury products,\u00a0according to CoStar.<\/p>\n

The project team includes Kimley-Horn for civil engineering and DeSimone Consulting Engineering for structural engineering. SLC is a leader in landscape architecture and horticulture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Southern Land Co. plans to ask for the market\u2019s highest office and multifamily rental rates at its first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251329,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[4904,95194,56,58,57,20417,36612,17075,21294,95192,95195,95193,1989],"class_list":{"0":"post-251328","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-downtown-houston","9":"tag-dustin-downey","10":"tag-houston","11":"tag-houston-headlines","12":"tag-houston-news","13":"tag-master-planned-community","14":"tag-mixed-use","15":"tag-river-oaks","16":"tag-river-oaks-district","17":"tag-southern-land-co","18":"tag-southern-land-company","19":"tag-tim-downey","20":"tag-upper-kirby"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}