HOUSTON – (Realty News Report) – Mike Spears, co-managing principal at Lee & Associates – Houston, has spent more than two decades crafting a career in industrial real estate, one encompassing sales, leasing, and development of large business and office properties for both corporate users and investors.
In addition to managing the daily operations of the brokerage firm, he has played a vital role in some of the company’s largest deals involving several million SF.
While working on projects throughout the state, he has established himself as an expert in the North Houston market area, including Bush Intercontinental Airport, Greenspoint, Aldine and surrounding areas.
Below are edited excerpts from Spears’ recent appearance on the Ralph Bivins Project podcast.
To listen to the entire podcast, Click Here for Spotify – or – Click Here for YouTube.
Ralph Bivins: What’s going on in Houston? How are you feeling about things in general, your sentiment for the market and the economy?
Mike Spears: I would say I’m very optimistic. Just about anyone you talk to is relatively excited. You know there will always be turmoil in the market. But there are certain things that are exciting me.
More so than in previous years we are seeing change, especially when we start talking about industrial. Let me rephrase that and call it ‘recalibration.’ I think it’s a testament to how diverse Houston has become, how much stronger Houston has become, how good our infrastructure has become. I won’t talk about – and get everybody worked up – the ‘80s and how difficult things were at the time. Houston is an entirely different city now, one that can greatly benefit when the energy market is doing great. But it is set up in such a way that we are not as dependent as we used to be on that economic segment alone. So, this has really given Houston a lot of strength, allowing us to pursue the potential we have.
I think that for the next several decades, we’ll see very exciting things happening here. One in particular – as I was saying about recalibration – we have had a boom of sorts – well, I say ‘boom,’ but it’s been a ‘surge’ for the past few years – post-COVID – primarily with distribution space, and I think Houston has started to grow into itself. Dallas to the north has always been a major distribution hub. As big as Houston is, it still had a lot of catching up to do and I think we did a really good job doing that for the past few years.
But what we are seeing now – and this is something that will affect everyone across the U.S. and all parts of the industrial market – are the big deals. These are firms that have found their homes – everything from Home Depots to Apple, Tesla, and all the big names. Guess what? Everyone is moving into this area and there is a big reason for that as things continue to change on a global basis. You know, supply chains and what not have really never made that much sense. But they make a lot of sense when you start putting things in this area right here (taps the table). We still have work to do, but we are transitioning into more of a manufacturing surge.
You’re starting to see deals – aside from the distribution which has remained steady. There has been a surge.
You might hear some sentiment that, well, it’s cooling off or it’s not as good or some other negative comments. The truth is, it’s like saying Michael Jordan only scored 41 points last night. Yeah, he scored 68 the night before. Are you really let down that he scored only 41? That’s still pretty good.
Ralph Bivins: There’s a ton of construction out there. I don’t know exactly what the figure is – 20 million SF in the pipeline. It is unbelievable. In the past, Houston didn’t get these huge buildings. Now, the city gets million SF buildings, all up and down. It’s everywhere. Beltway 8 has a ton of them. It’s wall-to-wall; millions and millions of SF. It’s pretty phenomenal. We never saw that before, not like this.
Mike Spears: No, and there’s more coming. Interestingly, it’s all being absorbed. We had a tremendous amount of absorption of these deliveries in the last year, for example. Heading into 2026, it still looks really, really good.
Funny thing, you look at those statistics and primarily you are looking at leasing, right? We had the better part of about 20 million SF being absorbed with only about 18 or 18½ million SF that was delivered. It was absorbed at a faster pace than we were delivering.
One thing that often gets overlooked is that in addition to the 20 million SF of absorption and leasing that was done, you had 20 million SF of sales transactions that occurred. That in itself is also absorption. The product is moving. We are really looking at a big uptick in the manufacturing sector as things begin to move back to the states. This is the best area on the planet, I’d say, to be thinking about doing that. We still have some obstacles and challenges, but I think we will overcome them. For now, if you zoom out a bit and say, ‘Why Houston?’ or ‘Why this area?’ consider this. Just look at the Texas Triangle. You see how Austin operationalizes the ideas that come out of Silicon Valley. You have Dallas that leverages their banking system to take Austin’s brainwork and turn it into mass manufacturing. You have San Antonio that has a lower than even the Texas average cost of labor and they are really, really good at moving around hunks of metal and putting them onto assembly lines.
But the real rock star of the bunch is Houston. Why? We play with Austin and tech. Same with Dallas and automation. We are the best at value-add manufacturing. We’ve got cheap food, cheap labor, relatively easy regulatory measures. We’ve got the port. We’ve got airports that are expanding. We’ve got a great medical center. All the things a lot of us already know and have been talking about for years. We will really see, over the next 10 to 20 years, the real benefits of that as we grow and we bring this in. It just makes sense. Why would you build something all the way over in China when you can build it here – and do it better with a higher-skilled labor force and all the benefits that come with it?
Ralph Bivins: Regarding manufacturing, we recently heard an announcement from Apple that they are going to begin U.S. production of its Mac mini-computers here in Houston. The Houston facility began producing artificial intelligence servers last year.
Mike Spears: They’re doubling the size of their place. They’re adding another 250,000 SF and 20,000 SF for a training facility.
Ralph Bivins: That whole Beltway 8 North near 290 area. Nvidia, the chip maker, has a plant going in there, too. If you count Nvidia and Apple, you’ve got well over 1 million SF of new manufacturing that’s just popped up recently.
Mike Spears: You need to mention Tesla with 600,000+ SF. Another 300,000 SF that Daikin took. Mahindra USA with another 300,000+ SF. These are also that are relatively recent.
I think we’re well on our way to figuring it out. The United States in general has got to increase its manufacturing output by 100% within the next 10 years. We’re going to do it, but the big challenge is going to be power. I’m in the middle of my 26th year in this business. In the earlier days in my career, that was never a problem, making sure we had enough power to get to the facilities. With all the data center activity that’s occurring, that uses up a ton of juice. You’ve also got this manufacturing. Well, manufacturing uses up a lot of power. The challenge is going to be getting enough power to the spaces and things of that effect. In some cases, you can see buildings that are somewhat functionally obsolete because of the need for the power, and they don’t have it. Some of those buildings are going to need to be repurposed or demolished even as we grow into what’s coming.
Mike Spears bio
Mike Spears, co-managing principal at Lee & Associates – Houston, has achieved extensive industrial real estate success in a career that spans more than 25 years. He oversees daily operations and supervises a team of 40 brokers and additional support staff at Lee & Associates, which focuses on the greater Houston area.
Concentrating on industrial property, land and investment sales, Spears has been involved with more than $1.5 billion in transactions.
Prior to his affiliation with Lee & Associates, he spent 15 years with TNRG, serving as the company’s president for seven years, where he was involved in more than 700 transactions, including leasing, sales and industrial project development.
On a national level, Spears serves on Lee & Associates’ corporate board of directors, which governs the licensing and/or growth of the organization across North America.
March 31, 2026, Realty News Report Copyright 2026
Mark Your Calendar: Commgate’s annual Developer Showcase will be held April 29 from 4:30 to 7:00 PM at the Houston Country Club. The Commgate event will provide Houston’s brokerage community an overview of significant Houston area commercial real estate developments in a small-scale trade show format. For more information: www.Commgate.com
THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT PODCAST
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File: The Ralph Bivins Project: Podcast Guest Mike Spears