Downtown Austin Office Building Hits Market

A 1970s-era office building in the heart of Downtown Austin is up for grabs.

Houston-based Highland Resources placed 211 Seventh on the market, according to a release from JLL Capital Markets managing director Jeff Coddington. The Austin Business Journal reported that the brokerage team, which includes Coddington, Joe Dowdle and Ryan Stevens, is marketing the 12-story building at 211 East Seventh Street.

Built on roughly 0.7 acres, the 162,000-square-foot office building sits across the street from the historic Driskill Hotel and the Omni Austin Hotel Downtown. It’s also adjacent to Stream Realty Partners’ ongoing remake of East Sixth Street, part of a broader effort to turn the once-raucous “Dirty Sixth” corridor into a more polished, all-day destination with restaurants and daytime foot traffic.

JLL is pitching flexibility. A buyer could hold the building as offices, redevelop the site or pursue adaptive reuse, converting the structure to residential or hospitality. The asking price was not disclosed in JLL’s marketing brochure, but the property was most recently appraised at $23.8 million, according to the Travis Central Appraisal District.

The optionality of the building comes against a challenging office backdrop. Austin’s office vacancy rate stood at 25.8 percent in the third quarter, according to JLL. Still, Stevens told the outlet that some investors are positioning ahead of a projected rebound.

“We expect the Austin office capital markets to remain fertile ground for opportunistic, contrarian buyers positioning ahead of a 2026/2027 leasing rebound,” Stevens said in an emailed statement to the publication, pointing to historically low basis levels despite elevated vacancy.

About 62,000 square feet of the building at 211 Seventh is currently being marketed for lease. Based on tenant listings and signage, the building is roughly 61 percent leased, with occupants including Dealerware, ThinkOnward, Brightpearl by Sage and Suvida Healthcare. Those tenants are largely on short-term leases, Coddington said.

The site also carries density upside. While Austin recently imposed a temporary 350-foot height cap downtown, developers can exceed it by participating in the Downtown Density Bonus Program. According to the publication, the parcel is eligible for a floor-to-area ratio of up to 25-to-1 and sits outside Capitol View Corridors, removing another common constraint.

The adaptive reuse angle could also attract interested parties, as only about 1.1 percent of Austin’s office inventory is considered viable for conversion, according to research from Partners. JLL’s Coddington insisted the building at 211 Seventh is an exception, citing its relatively small floor plates of about 16,700 square feet and high window-to-floor ratio, features that can make residential or hotel conversions more feasible.— Eric Weilbacher