Benefit Company Halves HQ Footprint In West Houston Move

First Continental, a Houston-based lending company, closed on the largest loan in its 30-year history. The $41.8M loan for Johnson Development Services will fund a master-planned community in Hockley. 

The lender and developer identified Hockley as an underserved community in need of housing opportunities. The 318-acre master-planned development will have more than 1,000 homes and 11 acres of recreational and amenity space. The first set of homes is expected to be delivered in the third quarter of 2025. This is…

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Hopes are high that projects to convert defunct or underperforming malls and office buildings to alternative uses will start again next year.

But a lot of things will need to line up between now and then.

“We need [interest] rates to go down, employment to go up, rents to go up and construction costs to come down,” said Colin Cannata, executive vice president on CBRE’s Central Texas multifamily team. “So all we need is all four of those things to be in our favor.” 

Cannata and other panelists at a National Association of Real Estate Editors conference session in Austin, Texas, set their sights on June 2025 as the time when a slew of new conversion projects could get financed and put under construction. That’s an educated guess, though, and panelists agreed that because…

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When Mauricio Umansky first shot to fame as a real househusband of Beverly Hills, few people expected him to become one of the most successful real estate agents in the U.S. 

Fast-forward to today, and Umansky owns one of the top brokerages in the world, with more than 120 offices across 12 countries.

The last two years have shaken residential brokerage to its core, yet The Agency has forged ahead, having launched several new offices and an industry trade group despite record-high mortgage rates and a historic lack of supply. 

But Umansky is a strong proponent of striking while the iron is less than scorching.

“If you’ve followed anything I’ve done in my life, when there is a recession, when there is turmoil, that’s always the opportunity for growth,” Umansky told Bisnow. “There’s amazing opportunities to take advantage of.” Umansky became a public figure more than a decade ago after his now-estranged wife, Kyle Richards,…

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