Houston ranks No. 2 in America for office vacancies, study finds

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Why go into the office when your job can be completed from home? Photo via Getty Images

Anew study of the office rental market in the U.S. has revealed Houston has the second highest rate of office vacancies nationwide. In fact, the total square footage of Houston’s empty office space adds up to 1,153 football fields.

The report by Indian service provider Outsource2India discovered 18.6 percent of all office space in Houston is sitting empty, a figure that has grown by 1.6 percent since 2023.

To put the football fields comparison into perspective, that means about 1,522 acres of office space around the city is sitting empty, or nearly 66.30 million square feet.

Rent prices for office space around the U.S. has largely remained unchanged, the report says, except for a very slight uptick in Houston and Austin. Rent prices have gone up just one dollar since the last year to $30 per square foot in Houston, and $44 in Austin.

It's not hard to see why so many offices are sitting empty, especially considering the rising demand (and popularity) of remote and hybrid professions since the COVID-19 pandemic. In a 2020 analysis, Forbes said companies prioritizing the "remote work revolution" saw an increase in teleworker productivity, performance, engagement, retention, and profitability. In 2024, secondary benefits of flexible work environments include smaller carbon footprints, more women in the workplace, reduced operating costs, and more.

Outsource2India suggests major businesses in cities like Houston will need to reimagine their work culture and office spaces in order to compete with flexible work models.

“As remote work continues to reshape workplace dynamics, there is a pressing need for this market to evolve and adapt,” the report said.

After all, Houston commutes aren't getting any easier, and more workers are starting to look for less commute-heavy vocations in suburbs with top job markets.

San Francisco was the only U.S. metro area with a higher office vacancy rate than Houston, at 21.7 percent. However, the actual square footage of empty office space in the city only adds up to 721 football fields, or nearly 952 acres of space.

Elsewhere in Texas, Dallas-Fort Worth has the third highest office vacancy rate in the nation, at 18 percent, followed by Austin with a 16.7 percent vacancy rate. According to the study's football field comparison, the total square footage of empty office space in Dallas and Austin equals 1,328 and 392 football fields, respectively.

The top 10 metro areas with the highest office vacancy rates are:

No. 1 – San Francisco, California
No. 2 – Houston, Texas
No. 3 – Dallas, Texas
No. 4 – Austin, Texas
No. 5 – Washington, D.C.
No. 6 – Chicago, Illinois
No. 7 – Denver, Colorado
No. 8 – Phoenix, Arizona
No. 9 – Los Angeles, California
No. 10 – San Jose, California

Outsource2India tracked office rent prices in major U.S. metropolitan areas for 2023 and 2024 to discover the top 10 metro areas with the highest office vacancy rates using data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

The full report can be found on outsource2india.com.

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

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Rice University researchers unveil new model that could sharpen MRI scans

MRI innovation

Researchers at Rice University, in collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, have developed a new model that could lead to sharper imaging and safer diagnostics using magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI.

In a study recently published in The Journal of Chemical Physics, the team of researchers showed how they used the Fokker-Planck equation to better understand how water molecules respond to contrast agents in a process known as “relaxation.” Previous models only approximated how water molecules relaxed around contrasting agents. However, through this new model, known as the NMR eigenmodes framework, the research team has uncovered the “full physical equations” to explain the process.

“The concept is similar to how a musical chord consists of many notes,” Thiago Pinheiro, the study’s first author, a Rice doctoral graduate in chemical and biomolecular engineering and postdoctoral researcher in the chemical sciences division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said in a news release. “Previous models only captured one or two notes, while ours picks up the full harmony.”

According to Rice, the findings could lead to the development and application of new contrast agents for clearer MRIs in medicine and materials science. Beyond MRIs, the NMR relaxation method could also be applied to other areas like battery design and subsurface fluid flow.

“In the present paper, we developed a comprehensive theory to interpret those previous molecular dynamics simulations and experimental findings,” Dilipkumar Asthagiri, a senior computational biomedical scientist in the National Center for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said in the release. ”The theory, however, is general and can be used to understand NMR relaxation in liquids broadly.”

The team has also made its code available as open source to encourage its adoption and further development by the broader scientific community.

“By better modeling the physics of nuclear magnetic resonance relaxation in liquids, we gain a tool that doesn’t just predict but also explains the phenomenon,” Walter Chapman, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Rice, added in the release. “That is crucial when lives and technologies depend on accurate scientific understanding.”

The study was backed by The Ken Kennedy Institute, Rice Creative Ventures Fund, Robert A. Welch Foundation and Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Houston-area lab grows with focus on mobile diagnostics and predictive medicine

mobile medicine

When it comes to healthcare, access can be a matter of life and death. And for patients in skilled nursing facilities, assisted living or even their own homes, the ability to get timely diagnostic testing is not just a convenience, it’s a necessity.

That’s the problem Principle Health Systems (PHS) set out to solve.

Founded in 2016 in Clear Lake, Texas, PHS began as a conventional laboratory but quickly pivoted to mobile diagnostics, offering everything from core blood work and genetic testing to advanced imaging like ultrasounds, echocardiograms, and X-rays.

“We were approached by a group in a local skilled nursing facility to provide services, and we determined pretty quickly there was a massive need in this area,” says James Dieter, founder, chairman and CEO of PHS. “Turnaround time is imperative. These facilities have an incredibly sick population, and of course, they lack mobility to get the care that they need.”

What makes PHS unique is not only what they do, but where they do it. While they operate one of the largest labs serving skilled nursing facilities in the state, their mobile teams go wherever patients are, whether that’s a nursing home, a private residence or even a correctional facility.

Diagnostics, Dieter says, are at the heart of medical decision-making.

“Seventy to 80 percent of all medical decisions are made from diagnostic results in lab and imaging,” he says. “The diagnostic drives the doctor’s or the provider’s next move. When we recognized a massive slowdown in lab results, we had to innovate to do it faster.”

Innovation at PHS isn’t just about speed; it’s about accessibility and precision.

Chris Light, COO, explains: “For stat testing, we use bedside point-of-care instruments. Our phlebotomists take those into the facilities, test at the bedside, and get results within minutes, rather than waiting days for results to come back from a core lab.”

Scaling a mobile operation across multiple states isn’t simple, but PHS has expanded into nine states, including Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and Arizona. Their model relies on licensed mobile phlebotomists, X-ray technologists and sonographers, all trained to provide high-level care outside traditional hospital settings.

The financial impact for patients is significant. Instead of ambulance rides and ER visits costing thousands, PHS services often cost just a fraction, sometimes only tens or hundreds of dollars.

“Traditionally, without mobile diagnostics, the patient would be loaded into a transportation vehicle, typically an ambulance, and taken to a hospital,” Dieter says. “Our approach is a fraction of the cost but brings care directly to the patients.”

The company has also embraced predictive and personalized medicine, offering genetic tests that guide medication decisions and laboratory tests that predict cognitive decline from conditions like Alzheimer's and Parkinson’s.

“We actively look for complementary services to improve patient outcomes,” Dieter says. “Precision medicine and predictive testing have been a great value-add for our providers.”

Looking to the future, PHS sees mobile healthcare as part of a larger trend toward home-based care.

“There’s an aging population that still lives at home with caretakers,” Dieter explains. “We go into the home every day, whether it’s an apartment, a standalone home, or assisted living. The goal is to meet patients where they are and reduce the need for hospitalization.”

Light highlighted another layer of innovation: predictive guidance.

“We host a lot of data, and labs and imaging drive most treatment decisions,” Light says. “We’re exploring how to deploy diagnostics immediately based on results, eliminating hours of delay and keeping patients healthier longer.”

Ultimately, innovation at PHS isn’t just about technology; it’s about equity.

“There’s an 11-year life expectancy gap between major metro areas and rural Texas,” Dieter says. “Our innovation has been leveling the field, so everyone has access to high-quality diagnostics and care, regardless of where they live.”

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