Accesso Partners has decided now is the time to test the choppy waters of Houston’s office market.
The Florida-based investor has listed 3900 Essex Lane in Houston. Built in 1981, it spans 235,600 square feet on 3 acres in the Greenway submarket. Accesso has owned the property since 2010, during which time vacancy has grown by roughly 10 percentage points in Houston’s office market.
3900 Essex is 73 percent leased, placing it slightly worse than the average Houston office vacancy rate of 25.4 percent. However, it sits near the wealthy neighborhoods of River Oaks and West University, offering what listing agents, Martin Hogan and Kevin McConn of JLL, call “an infill, walkable location at a fraction of replacement cost” in promotional materials.
The largest contiguous space available in the building covered 33,000 square feet, according to a leasing brochure from last February. Accesso was charging $16 per square foot in rent and incurring $14.11 per square foot in operational expenses, according to the brochure. That stands well below the average asking rent in Houston of $30 per square foot, and even the average for Class B offices of $22.64 per square foot, according to data from Newmark.
No asking price was included with the listing, but the property was most recently appraised at $30.5 million. That’s a $3.5 million increase from 2023, but not far off the $31 million assessed value from 2020.
Accesso owns five other offices in Houston, according to its website, including downtown highrise One City Centre at 1021 Main Street, which is a remarkable 90 percent vacant. That building was transferred to special servicing last June but still belongs to Accesso, according to Harris County Appraisal District property records. The firm has faced problems in Chicago, where Newmark is among a host of firms suing it for allegedly not paying bills on time. In March, it defaulted on $91 million in Loop and Naperville office debts.
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