📈 CRE debt soars past $3T as office loans continue to bump budgets
🙈 Tariffs glitch office market comeback
🏞️ From office park to vibrant neighborhood—Sugar Land’s 53-acre transformation
📚 Upcoming courses for Selling Tech to Owners & Raising Money from Family Offices

Data Viz of the Week: Investors’ Favorite Markets

AFIRE’s International Investor survey polled the largest institutional allocators and investors on their favorite markets, and the results are in: Dallas and New York run away with the top spots followed by Miami, Boston, and Atlanta.

Notably, international investors are far less hot on two other Texas markets; Austin and Houston are at the very bottom of the list alongside Chicago.

Upcoming Thesis Driven Courses & Classes

• June 23: Selling Into Real Estate Owners (💻 Online): A bootcamp for people selling technology and products into the real estate industry - Sign up

• June 23 & 24: Raising Capital from Family Offices (💻 Online): A two-day workshop to build your family office capital raising strategy - Sign up

• June 30: Fundamentals of Underwriting (💻 Online): A bootcamp on real estate financial modeling & underwriting in an AI-enabled world - Sign up

Three Articles We Loved from Last Week

It’s not easy keeping up with everything. Here are three articles we loved from the past week that you may have missed:

1. (NAR) CRE Debt Hits $3 Trillion Despite Delinquencies Rising

   Total CRE debt now exceeds $3 trillion, though bank loan delinquencies ticked up to 1.57% in Q4—driven mainly by struggles in office lending. Industrial and multifamily remain strong despite the broader leverage.

2. (WSJ) Trump’s Trade War Is Threatening to Derail the Office‑Market Recovery

   The post-Covid office leasing revival—2025 Q1 saw the most space leased since 2019—is now at risk. Rising tariffs, economic volatility, and mounting recession fears are delaying or canceling leasing plans, jeopardizing fragile office market momentum.

3. (Houston Chronicle) Vacant corporate campus in Sugar Land to transform into luxe housing, park

   A 53-acre former Fluor campus in Sugar Land, Texas, is being redeveloped into Lake Pointe Green—a mixed-use community with up to 720 housing units, parks, civic buildings, and retail. The city is supporting the project with over $24 million in incentives.

Developer of the Week: NorthPoint Development

Kansas City Based NorthPoint Development is making a big bet on Chicago-area industrial properties, dropping $270 million to buy a dozen warehouses in the Chicago suburbs.

NorthPoint has been an aggressive developer in recent years, adding more industrial assets to their growing portfolio which also includes data centers and multifamily properties.

You can read more about NorthPoint on the Thesis Driven GP database here.

Know about a developer doing something cool? Reach out to [email protected] with the tip!

—Brad and Paul