Real Estate Sector

Hines, a $92 billion global real estate firm, is shifting its capital allocation from acquisitions back toward development after years of buying in a frozen construction market. According to Bisnow, the company's managing partner Alfonso Munk said development now offers the most attractive returns as financing costs stabilize, construction cost growth slows, and rents finally begin to outpace building expenses. U.S. industrial development has fallen 60% from its 2022 peak, London office development has halved since 2023, and European residential construction sits at a 20-year low—but Hines sees opportunity in this scarcity. The firm is targeting markets where historic supply shortages, steady demand, and reset land prices create what Munk calls a "scarcity advantage." Its focus areas are European residential (particularly Nordic countries), industrial assets requiring modernization, and data center land with secured power and planning permission. Multifamily rents across Europe have risen 5% on average; UK retail park rents jumped 5% last year and U.S. grocery-anchored retail rents rose 3%. Hines' thesis is that execution capability—not just capital availability—will drive returns in this cycle, making development skill more valuable than it was in the prior boom.

Cross Ocean Partners and Fuller Realty have acquired Eldridge Place, a 829,000-square-foot, three-building Class-A office campus in Houston's Energy Corridor, according to bisnow.com. The property is 94% occupied and anchored by Fluor Corp., which occupies 413,000 square feet across two buildings and relocated its entire 1.2 million-square-foot Sugar Land campus to the site in 2024. The seller, Granite Properties, had purchased the campus for $78.4 million in 2019 and invested more than $20 million in capital improvements since then. Cross Ocean, an international asset manager with more than $12 billion in assets under management, is pursuing high-quality office assets with strong in-place cash flow in markets showing durable tenant demand. Fuller Realty, a Houston-based operating partner with roughly $1 billion in assets under management, will handle day-to-day operations and leverage its local expertise. The partnership targets the Energy Corridor's sustained strength: West Houston has attracted major tenants including offshore driller Noble Corp. and engineering firm Bechtel in recent years, and the office development pipeline remains thin. The campus includes a fitness center, pickleball courts, a deli and conference facility.

CoStar closed its $800 million cash acquisition of Zonda, a new-home construction data and homebuilder software platform, according to commercialobserver.com. The deal, first announced in May, gives CoStar access to Zonda's lot-level construction and development data serving more than 3,000 homebuilders, developers, lenders and suppliers—a foothold in the $400 billion annual U.S. new-home sales market. Zonda generated approximately $170 million in revenue in 2025. CoStar gains two residential marketplaces, NewHomeSource.com and Livabl, and plans to combine Zonda's Envision visualization platform with CoStar's Matterport spatial technology to enhance digital home-shopping experiences. CoStar's residential revenue grew 33 percent year-over-year to $444 million in the second quarter of 2026, part of an 18 percent overall revenue increase to $925 million.