{"id":270291,"date":"2026-04-28T21:10:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T21:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/270291\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T21:10:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T21:10:12","slug":"the-amazon-effect-is-creating-instant-demand-for-office-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/270291\/","title":{"rendered":"The ‘Amazon Effect’ Is Creating Instant Demand For Office Space"},"content":{"rendered":"

Building out move-in-ready spec suites<\/a> is\u00a0gaining popularity<\/a>, especially among\u00a0new owners of office properties<\/a> looking to boost occupancy.<\/p>\n

But those spec suites are almost never big enough to house a 20K SF tenant, and that\u2019s where the problem comes in. Chris Lewis<\/a>, co-managing principal at Lee & Associates-Houston, said he\u2019s seeing tenants touring 20K SF spaces and wanting to move in within a month.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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

These tenants are seemingly primed by online shopping, where they can get their products delivered within a day or two, which is why Lewis is calling it \u201cthe Amazon Effect,\u201d he said at a press briefing at Lee & Associates\u2019 Houston office on Tuesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s highly irresponsible, to be honest, from a business owner, but that\u2019s what\u2019s happening,\u201d Lewis said. \u201cThe mentality of the user today is instant gratification.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The average tenant takes about 3,800 SF today, down from about 6,000 SF pre-Covid. Tenants from 1,500 SF to 7,000 SF can often find spec suite options, depending on the submarket.<\/p>\n

Bigger tenants searching for move-in-ready space may not find a spec suite to fit their needs, but they could actually provide a boost to the lower-tier office buildings in Houston\u2019s\u00a0bifurcated market<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To find a 20K SF tenant office space within a month, brokers would usually first check listings to see whether sublease space is available in a Class-A building or how quickly a comparable building can get a space ready, Lewis said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If those options fail, the tenant might consider a Class-B<\/a> office, if it can be ready in their required time frame, he said.<\/p>\n

Even if tenants don\u2019t need office space move-in ready, they are still moving more quickly than some brokers might be accustomed to. Many of today\u2019s decision-makers are young and technologically advanced, so they want immediate responses, said Bill Insull, a landlord rep and principal at Lee & Associates.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If a broker waits 24 hours to return a phone call, they might find that a decision has been made and they missed it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe speed and breadth with which you communicate with these tenants is the key to succeeding,\u201d Insull said.<\/p>\n

What has remained constant since the onset of the pandemic is demand for high-quality office space. About 20% of today\u2019s expiring leases were executed before Covid, so tenants are still rightsizing, Lewis said.<\/p>\n

They may shrink from 20K SF to 10K SF but move to a building with a highly amenitized, walkable environment and a higher-per-square-foot\u00a0rent.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re halving their size and paying the same amount of rent in a better-quality asset,\u201d Lewis said.<\/p>\n

Despite this trend and negative absorption in the first quarter, Houston saw positive absorption for the full year of 2025<\/a>, the market’s first annual gain since 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Building out move-in-ready spec suites is\u00a0gaining popularity, especially among\u00a0new owners of office properties looking to boost occupancy. But…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[100607,53586,56,58,57,33900,53588,100606],"class_list":["post-270291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-bill-insull","tag-chris-lewis","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-lee-associates","tag-lee-associates-houston","tag-spec-suites"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270291","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=270291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}