Spotlight On: Ford Noe, Senior Managing Director & Market Leader, Marcus & Millichap

Key points:

• • Houston’s strong fundamentals, including population growth and capital inflows, continue to drive long-term demand.
• • Transaction activity is stabilizing with more disciplined underwriting and a focus on high-quality, income-producing assets.
• • Investors are prioritizing flexibility, data-driven decisions, and creative deal structures in a higher-rate environment.

April 2026 — Invest: Houston sat down with Ford Noe, senior managing director and market leader of Marcus & Millichap, to discuss Houston’s commercial real estate outlook, capital flows, and the firm’s role in a more disciplined transaction environment. “Job growth, foreign investment, population growth, and business migration are not trends that are going away. Those drivers create long-term demand for infrastructure and, by extension, for commercial real estate across the region,” Noe said.

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How would you describe Houston today, and what trends are having the biggest impact on your work?

When you look at Houston as a whole, the fundamentals are strong. Recent GDP data places Houston near the top nationally in growth, which aligns with what we are seeing on the ground. Population growth, business relocation, and foreign investment continue to reinforce Houston’s position as one of the country’s most attractive markets.

From our perspective, that translates into sustained interest in real estate from both in-state and out-of-state investors. Within our firm alone, we see billions of dollars of outside capital flowing into Texas every year. A large portion of our buyers are not local. They are coming from other parts of the country, and in many cases from entirely different regions. One of Marcus & Millichap’s strengths is the ability to move that capital through relationships across the country and connect it with opportunities here in Houston.

Which asset types are the most active in Houston right now, and what is driving demand?

Transaction volume has slowed compared to the extraordinary pace we saw in 2021 and 2022, but that has largely been a function of interest rates and changing expectations. Sellers who did not transact during that peak period often felt like they had missed the market, so their pricing expectations stayed elevated well into 2023 and 2024. It has taken time for those expectations to reset.

Now, we are in a healthier environment where dealmaking is happening again, but with more discipline. Buyers are underwriting more carefully and paying closer attention to fundamentals. Among asset classes, retail has been particularly strong, especially multitenant retail. There is definitely a flight to safety, both in terms of location and tenant quality. Industrial has also remained active from a sales standpoint, even if leasing vacant product has become more challenging in some segments.

What are you seeing in mixed-use and development activity across Greater Houston?

From a development standpoint, the biggest challenge right now is construction cost. Costs escalated rapidly during the inflationary period, and we are starting to see early signs that certain raw goods and construction inputs may begin trending upward again. How that develops over the next several months remains to be seen.

That said, construction will always be an important part of Houston’s story because of the amount of land available and the way the region continues to grow outward. As new housing is built to accommodate population growth, it creates demand for the surrounding infrastructure as well. That includes retail, mixed-use product, and other supporting uses that may be less centrally located and more suburban in nature.

How are you positioning your team to support clients and capture new opportunities?

It starts with understanding the client’s goals and recognizing that, for some owners, selling today may not be the best decision. Our job is to help them not only in the present, but also prepare for the future. That means providing relevant research, actionable materials, and real-time market intelligence.

Because we close such a high volume of transactions, we have access to more proprietary data than anyone else. That is especially meaningful in Texas, which is a non-disclosure state and where reliable sales comparables can be difficult to obtain. Our collaborative culture allows brokers to share transaction information internally, which helps us give clients a more accurate picture of where the market truly is.

Our clients do not want broad generalizations. They want real data. They want to understand what assets are trading for, how buyers are behaving, and what that means for their own strategy.

How are technology and AI shaping your workflows and client service?

We are a company that has been around for more than 50 years, and we were founded in Northern California in the heart of Silicon Valley. Technology has always been part of our DNA. Today, that includes using AI and other tools to improve how we match opportunities with investor demand.

One of the most important applications is ensuring clients receive listings that are actually relevant to them, instead of simply being flooded with everything that hits the market. Through tools like MyMMI, clients can define exactly what they are looking for, and we can better align outreach and inventory with those preferences. That helps connect buyers directly with brokers and ensures that when a listing is launched, it gets in front of the right audience.

What are clients prioritizing today in terms of returns, structure, and risk?

There is clearly a flight to quality right now. Buyers are focused on well-located, well-tenanted assets, and cash flow remains critically important. Interest rates may not be dramatically above long-term historical norms, but compared with the unusually low-rate environment of 2019 through 2021, the market feels different.

Because of that, buyers are paying closer attention to how deals are structured. They are looking for more creativity, and they are also relying more on our capital markets team to help source the right debt. That is a critical part of today’s environment. Clients are still focused on leverage and yield, and they do not want to put substantially more equity into a deal unless they have to.

We have also seen less appetite for pure value-add strategies than we did 10 or 12 years ago. There are still opportunistic buyers in the market, but the center of gravity has shifted more toward quality, stability, and reliable income.

Are you seeing more creativity from lenders and sellers as deals get structured?

Yes, definitely. There is more willingness across the board to be flexible and creative. That applies to lenders, but also increasingly to sellers. Seller financing, for example, is something more private clients are willing to consider today, at least for a portion of a transaction.

We are also seeing deal structures that are much more complex than what was typical in the past. Not all of those structures make sense, and not every seller wants to entertain something overly complicated, but the broader takeaway is that this is no longer a purely traditional transaction environment. There is a genuine willingness on both sides to find ways to make deals work.

Looking ahead, where do you see the biggest opportunity in Houston?

Houston remains extremely well positioned. Job growth, foreign investment, population growth, and business migration are not trends that are going away. Those drivers create long-term demand for infrastructure and, by extension, for commercial real estate across the region.

I am optimistic about where the market is headed. Each year since 2022 has felt incrementally better because we are moving farther away from the dislocation that followed that extraordinary peak period. As stability in interest rates improves, transaction volume should continue recovering. Even in 2025, Houston posted its third-best year ever by number of transactions, behind only 2021 and 2022. That says a great deal about the resilience of this market.

For us, the path forward is clear. We need to keep doing what we are doing: staying in front of clients, meeting with them consistently, and remaining active in the market. Job growth, population growth, business migration, and capital migration into Texas are all going to continue to support the demand, not only for Houston, but also for Texas as a whole.

Want more? Read the Invest: Houston report.