Because we say so.....

That seems to be the evidence used by Nancy Sarnoff of Chron.com to speculate that Downtown Houston is on the verge of a building boom.....

(New Downtown Tower Could Take Shape, Nancy Sarnoff, Chron.com)

A new skyscraper in downtown Houston could be announced this year, a sign of strength in the local property market, real estate executives said Thursday.

"I think that every developer has a new building in their drawer ready to pull out as soon as the market's ready," Laura Van Ness, director of business development for Central Houston, said during a panel discussion on the future of downtown. The event was held by the Houston chapter of CoreNet Global, a corporate real estate association.

So you have an unelected bureaucrat, providing an opinion backed by no hard data (that was provided in the story) and that's sufficient enough to say that new buildings are going to be popping up soon?

Near as I can tell, the biggest argument FOR development is that rents are rising. Um, OK, rising rents are good for the renter, which makes it odd that many of the same who are benefiting from increased rents would really do all that much to build just because.

Later in the story, following a tactic called "buying the lede", was a statement by Hines saying NOTHING will happen until tenant demand (in the form of lease agreements) is sufficient to fill 50% of any proposed hi-rise and that, right now, that's just not there.

If it ever DOES get there then expect companies to build as necessary to fulfill demand, until then, take glorious pronouncements of a downtown building boom with a hefty grain of Gulf Cost salt.