A bilingual school operator recently bought a six-story office building in the North Houston suburb of Greenspoint from a California investor.
The 60,000-square-foot building, located at 11947 North Freeway, sits on nearly 2.5 acres at the junction of Interstate 45 and Beltway 8/North Sam Houston Tollway. The seller, Contender Two, acquired the property last May with the intention of relocating its headquarters to Houston, according to a media release from NewQuest Properties. However, the company has since altered its plans and decided against the move.
NewQuest Properties’ John Nguyen represented the seller in the deal, while Albi Neziri of Texas Advantage Realty represented the buyer, Fidencio Macias. The price wasn’t disclosed.
Macias, who is known as Frank, is the owner of Progresso Learning, an inactive Texas company, and a social media personality with one million followers on a Facebook page dedicated to teaching English to Spanish speakers.
The educator was involved in a legal dispute with the previous owners of the Greenspoint building regarding his eviction. The landlord, Friends of Down Syndrome, won a default judgment in August 2020, after Macias didn’t respond to the filing, court records from the Harris County Justice of the Peace show.
A few years and one sale later, Macias arranged a 24-month seller financing deal to acquire the property. Harris County’s Appraisal District last appraised the Greenspoint office at $2.1 million in 2022. The building was 30 percent occupied at the time of the sale.
Macias plans to use the majority of the building’s square footage for a bilingual school. Data from Greenspoint Elementary shows 55 percent of students are enrolled in English learners or bilingual programs. Marcias plans to keep the remaining space available for multi-tenant use after the renovation of the property, according to the media release.
Greenspoint took an economic hit when ExxonMobil exited its 2 million-square-foot campus at 396 West Greens Road in late 2015, moving to the Woodlands’ Springwoods Village. The massive vacancy sent reverberations throughout the area’s office market. Realty Com North Belt put its 386,000-square-foot office building up for sale for $29 million just last year.
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Today, Greenspoint is Houston’s worst-performing submarket in the office sector, with 46 percent vacancy, according to fourth-quarter 2022 data by real estate research firm Avison Young. That’s more than double the metro’s average, 21 percent, and 18 percentage points higher than the second-worst performing area, west Houston’s San Felipe/Voss submarket.
It hasn’t been all bad news for the North Houston district, however. California-based investor the Khoshbin Company purchased a 20-story office tower for $13 million in 2021. However, the 400-square-foot complex was 60 percent vacant at the time.