One building, one deal story and one piece of market intelligence per episode.
No other brokerage gives its clients an app. Robertson Partners is the first with a client-facing app, so you see what we're working on the moment we're working on it: every step, every action, every document, every date. That is what the most responsive, most intelligent service in the business looks like.
You'll see it in your first meeting. Guaranteed.
See it live in 30 minutesOpen a sample portal ↗
Up 15 points since 2014 and the highest on record. One in four downtown square feet is empty, and landlords are competing for you.
Cushman & Wakefield, Q3 2026 · history: CoStarReal money, not deferred rent. Your negotiating floor, if you know to ask.
Landlords are funding full build-outs to fill empty floors.
Houston leads the country in a record wave of defaults. Distressed landlords make deals.
Three people you'll know by name, and four agentic team members working behind them around the clock. Every recommendation is reviewed by James before it reaches you.
The brain of the operation. Runs every system and agent for James, and pulls live intel on any building, submarket or landlord in seconds.
James's digital twin. Holds every step of the tenant-rep process to Fortune 500 corporate real estate standards.
Knows the market backwards and forwards. Connects the dots across outside data, comps and trends. Never sees client data.
Type A by design. Holds the calendar, critical dates and admin together so every train arrives on time.
Every recommendation is reviewed by James before it reaches you. Client data never goes into AI.
Downtown to The Woodlands, the Galleria to Sugar Land. Every published data point on every office and industrial building in Texas, kept current by our systems, our network and 18 years of James's own deals. Right now the market is fractured: Tier 1 towers are hot, everything else is soft, and the leverage lives in knowing which side your building is on.
In 30 minutes we'll show you what the Houston market means for your lease: the leverage you have, the concessions that are realistic, and what renewing without representation would cost. Bring your lease terms. We'll bring the data and open the app.
The deal, the workplace strategy, a workforce analysis worth $50,000 from any consulting firm, and the systems behind all of it. One engagement. One point of contact.
We were trained inside the largest firms in the world and we respect them. Then we built what they cannot: a connected intelligence system, an agentic team and a client app. Here is the difference, line by line.
Every one of these runs on the people you know and the agentic team behind them. Each card shows who's on it.
Every viable option in your target submarket, identified and analyzed, not just listed.
Current data on every published data point for every office and industrial building in Texas, scrubbed and analyzed around the clock and fed straight to the agentic team. No stone unturned. Client data stays private. Then James's 18 years decide where the leverage is.
Your deal, documents, dates and broker activity, live on your phone and shareable with your team.
Built around your timeline, budget and market position for maximum concessions.
Your team benchmarked against industry standards to find optimization and automation opportunities.
Once you're a client, you're always a client. Before, during and after the lease is signed, you have an advocate: lease audits, surprise landlord charges, any situation with your landlord. Moving in? We connect you with vendors and developers from one of the largest networks in the city. Direct access to James on every deal.
In 30 minutes we'll show you what the Houston market means for your lease: the leverage you have, the concessions that are realistic, and what renewing without representation would cost. Bring your lease terms. We'll bring the data and open the app.
Case studiesEvery engagement below started with a problem a typical brokerage would have priced and passed on. Read any one of them for what we saw, what we did, and what it was worth to the client.
Seventeen buildings, 183 small suites, serious security problems and a first-time owner. We fixed the safety problem first, then built the leasing and management machine ourselves.
Open the deal file
Four exam rooms to two, a landlord-paid build-out, medical use written into a lease that prohibited it.
Open the deal fileEvery email, exhibit and drawing in one sealed file. The reply quoted the record back line by line.
Open the deal file
The building wasn't built heavy. The renewal next door got free rent, an HVAC allowance and the wall at the landlord's cost while he found out.
Open the deal fileA 22,000-square-foot tenant negotiating like an institution.
Open the deal fileA nurse-led nonprofit, a landlord that reversed on a hospital bed, and sixty pages of rules read before the first tour.
Open the deal file
Three clauses fixed the same afternoon, the deposit cut, and a deal saved over a start date.
Open the deal fileA verbal "that's not a problem" became a termination right.
Open the deal file
Three free months and a landlord-funded build-out in 102 days.
Open the deal fileThree suites priced all-in, the meeting question answered in the lease instead of after it.
Open the deal fileDeferred maintenance the seller had already budgeted, done sooner. Nobody lost the price argument.
Open the deal fileHarris County consolidated into 1111 Fannin.
Open the deal fileThe first phase of a program past a billion dollars.
Open the deal fileA first-time owner bought an industrial park that the previous owner had walked away from after serious security problems on site. Most tenants had left, the ones who stayed were frightened, and no traditional brokerage would touch it. He needed leasing, management and a way out, all at once.
The call came from an investor buying his first real commercial property: an industrial park in Greenspoint with 17 buildings and 183 small suites, about 300,000 square feet in all. The previous owner had been spooked by serious security problems on the property and wanted out. Roughly one suite in five was occupied.
He had been told James was very active in Greenspoint, a submarket most of the industry had written off. His ask was blunt: I need property management, I need brokerage, I need this marketed, and then I want to sell it. James had never run property management. He said yes anyway.
Walking the park, the problem was not the buildings. The suites were dirty, not damaged. The problem was safety. One tenant's business was the reason the others were leaving, and until that changed, no amount of marketing was going to lease a single suite.
The surrounding market was no help. Greenspoint had earned a nickname brokers used to explain why they would not drive through it. The property had to earn its own reputation back, one tenant at a time.
James went to that tenant himself and had a respectful conversation. New ownership, more cameras, more lighting, more presence on the property, and an offer to release him from his lease with no chase. He got the message and left within weeks.
That was the whole turning point. As James tells it, leasing velocity did not pick up until the park was safe, and it picked up fast once it was.
The owner's plan was to paint and carpet every suite. James had already been inside all of them doing diligence and pushed back: for a Class C industrial suite, a tenant is not looking for exceptional, they are looking for clean. A cleaning crew went through methodically, suite by suite. Where paint and carpet were truly needed, contractors did that and James managed the work.
The owner saw the difference on the first tours and the savings in the budget. The suites smelled new and leased just fine.
Instead of touring every caller, James filmed every suite before video listings were common, and put the listings where small businesses were already looking: Craigslist, social media and local lists. A tenant could watch the video, pick a suite, fill out the application online and come pick up keys. Many deals closed with no tour at all.
Behind it sat an automated funnel and a remote team answering the phone around the clock, plus an outbound call list of nearby businesses built from market data. The 2019 lead sheets in the file show the mix: contractors, cabinet shops, churches, gyms, logistics and auto businesses, with Craigslist as the most common source and existing tenants referring their neighbors.
With 183 units, James decided the property looked more like multifamily than industrial, and built the management on multifamily software in about six weeks: online leases, rent collection, repair tickets. He staffed it with remote operators who ran that software every day, and replaced the owner's overwhelmed four-person staff with himself and that team.
By James's count the park went from about 20 percent occupied to more than 90 percent in under a year. The owner held it, then sold it in the summer of 2021 with, by the buyer's count, more than 150 tenants in place. The owner's team still calls James, as he tells it, on the properties where the usual brokerage model does not work.
A neurosurgeon was in year seven of a lease on a four-exam-room suite his practice no longer filled. By his own account his rent had roughly doubled over the term. He wanted out, he wanted a space that matched his taste, and he could not afford to get either one wrong.
A solo neurosurgeon had practiced on a hospital campus for years in a corner suite with four exam rooms. The lease had been negotiated years earlier by someone who, in his words, was not a good negotiator. By James's read, the build-out he had paid for had been rolled into the rent with maximum escalations, and by year seven the monthly number had roughly doubled while his practice had not.
He was skeptical when James told him he was overpaying. Then James showed him what the same money bought elsewhere, and the question became how to leave well and where to go.
Two problems, not one. The old landlord had to be managed so the exit did not become a fight, and a practice with real standards had to find a space it could afford. The client rated the first stop on the first tour one out of ten and the best of the day five. He wanted an eight: modern, finished, nothing that looked like an older building.
His first improvement wishlist on a 900-square-foot suite ran to six figures. The landlord's broker put it plainly: the glass wall alone would cost more than a year of rent. The job was to get him the look he wanted without his paying for it.
James ran the search the way he runs every one: an options deck the night before the first tour, a backup list that grew from twelve buildings to seventeen, and a second tour booked while the preferred suite was still being negotiated. Several stops died to zoning or plumbing, so he started asking every broker about medical use before anyone drove anywhere.
The right suite surfaced sideways. A landlord's broker they had met on another stop mentioned a space in The Woodlands that had been too big for the search but could be partitioned. Already renovated, in a building of mostly technology tenants, within the budget. The client's word for it was serendipitous.
The landlord had another prospect offering five years with no build-out. James held the client's three-year ceiling, declined a four-year offer dressed up as a concession, and traded the term for a turnkey build-out at the landlord's cost: a new private office, a solid door with the glass kept, built-in counters in both exam rooms. He got the build-out scope written into the letter of intent before the lease was ever drafted.
Then the thirty-nine-page lease arrived. James read it in full and found a clause that prohibited medical treatment in a lease for a medical practice. He got medical use written in, early access to move furniture without starting rent, and the death of the guarantor removed as a default. Three of six asks landed. When the fully executed lease came back, he caught a certificate of acceptance that had been signed before the build-out existed and confirmed with the landlord that it stayed blank until possession.
Signed September 11, 2026. Rent went from $8,128.95 a month to $1,917.21 in a suite with two exam rooms instead of four, sized to the practice he runs today. The client on the call a week before the move: everything is going fantastic, the contractors are way ahead, and, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.
A fast-growing law firm had been searching a long time for its first real office: built to its plans and finished to a standard. The lease was signed, construction was under way, and then an invoice arrived for work the firm believed the landlord had already agreed to.
A law firm that had gone from about 40 cases to about 250 in a year, with more lawyers than offices and clerks in a bullpen. The partner wanted a space that would be, in her words, hopefully the last one: private offices, a reception, glass, millwork, a finish level that matched the practice.
She had been looking for a long time. The process had been slow, and the lease had to work for seven years.
On a build-out this size, the question is not what gets built. It is who carries the risk when it costs more than planned. James negotiated a turnkey build-out: the landlord manages the construction and the schedule, and the overrun is the landlord's problem, not the tenant's. The scope went into a lease exhibit, and then kept evolving as the firm's space planner and the landlord's architect worked through the details.
Then the landlord's costs ran over. Delays, higher construction prices, unforeseen expenses. As James tells it, the natural response of a landlord over budget is to start reading the gray areas of the lease. A $30,000 invoice arrived for glass inserts, floor plugs and millwork.
The landlord's position was simple: it is not in the exhibit, so the tenant pays. The firm's position was that every one of those items had evolved out of the exhibit through the dialogue between the firm's space planner and the landlord's architect. The proof was scattered across the lease, its exhibits, the architects' exchanges and the emails on both sides.
James put all of it into one private, sealed AI workspace: the executed lease, the exhibits, the team and landlord emails, the call transcripts. Then he asked it the questions a litigator would. Which provision covers each item. Where the architects' exchanges had carried it. What each disputed line was worth in dollars.
The reply to the landlord cited the lease provisions, quoted the email record back to them, and priced every item. The hallway doors, the barn doors and the glass inserts stayed on the landlord's side of the ledger. The IT, cabling and electrical scope was resolved directly with ownership. More than 80 percent of the $30,000 came off the table, and the landlord absorbed most of its own overrun.
The firm moved in July 2026 on a seven-year lease with a right of second refusal on the space next door. James toured the finished office with the partner that month. Her words for James were responsive and understanding, and her word for the landlord's crew, after all the drama, was that they had been pretty good. His word for the office was the best in Houston.
A Houston cut-and-sew manufacturer had been in the same industrial park for fifteen years. The rent felt, in the owner's words, like a crazy amount. The rooftop units were a time bomb. He wanted to know whether to renew, move, or finally buy a building of his own, and he wanted the answer with numbers.
A family-run T-shirt maker that cuts and sews in Houston, with a production floor to match and a lease history in the same park going back to 2011. Three suites, an expiring term, six aging rooftop HVAC units with replacement quotes that could run five figures each, and an owner who had started asking out loud whether he should own instead of rent.
James opened the renewal with the landlord and, at the same time, built the alternatives: a lease option in a competing park, a survey of 86 northwest Houston listings graded against what the client was paying all-in, and two buildings to buy. A financing workup showed which combination of levers could clear the owner's own monthly ceiling, and which could not. The stay-versus-go math came out almost even before moving costs, which is exactly the kind of answer a client needs to see on paper.
One purchase candidate came with a story: a former laboratory, built heavy. Before the client spent money on an engineer, James's team pulled the 1978 permit drawings from the city's microfilm. At full resolution they showed a three-inch slab on non-composite deck over open-web joists: by the broker's arithmetic, about 75 pounds per square foot of live load on the second floor, against the 125 the client's equipment called for. The built-heavy story was gone in five days.
Then the team did the thing that matters more than being right. When the client's plan changed to sewing downstairs and offices upstairs, where the real load is a fraction of that, they reversed the recommendation in writing the same day, and added what else a conversion would trip: a sprinkler threshold the first floor crossed by 477 square feet, and an asbestos survey the permit desk would require. Every number carried the same label: broker's arithmetic, to be confirmed by a licensed structural engineer.
The landlord opened with no free rent, four percent annual increases and fresh security deposits. Over four months James moved the free rent to the front of the term, spaced the second suite's free months so they would survive the one-time termination right the client wanted, caught the landlord's expiration date that was off by a full year, and killed the deposit ask.
The best move came late. An improvement reimbursement the landlord had taken off the table came back as an HVAC allowance aimed at the client's real exposure. When the landlord's draft arrived with strings, James redlined it within hours: struck the maintenance-contract condition, made approvals deemed given after two business days, exempted emergencies, and added a section neither draft had, putting the demising wall repair at the landlord's sole cost. A third suite was surrendered so the client pays for the space he uses.
The amendments as drafted carry four free months up front on the main suite, three on the other, an HVAC allowance, the wall at the landlord's cost, no new deposit, and a one-time exit if his customer contracts change. The purchase sits on hold with a plan already written for the day he decides to buy. The client, mid-negotiation, in an email: that's why you're the pro.
An interiors contractor had been in its northwest Houston warehouse for a decade and believed it had more term left than it did. The landlord was Prologis. The first proposals came with no free rent, escalations of four percent and more, and an expansion the client thought he wanted. Preparation was the whole strategy.
A commercial interiors specialist running its operation out of a 22,000-square-foot Prologis warehouse since 2017, with a renewal coming and an adjacent space on offer. The owner's first assumption was that he had time. James read the lease: it ended in August 2027 and every option in it had been stripped. That changed the clock, and the leverage.
Prologis opened with two structures, no free rent, and escalations of four percent and more, plus a proposal for the expansion. Before the counter that mattered, James's team did three pieces of work.
A credit read of the client's own financials, to know what Prologis's credit desk would see and what could be traded for rate. A comp set of nine vintage-matched listings in the submarket, which placed the landlord's number well above the median and reversed the team's own earlier read that the rate was fair. And a written strategy memo to the client: focus on the space he has, take the longer term, trade the improvement allowance he did not need for free rent, and hold the fixed operating expenses where they were.
The expansion was kept alive as leverage for as long as it was useful, then set aside when the client deferred it. Along the way James caught two arithmetic errors in the landlord's proposals, a nine-month mismatch in an end date, and an updated draft that had quietly dropped two months of free rent and the deposit cap. Each one went back to the landlord.
When Prologis offered a structural switch that would have moved HVAC risk and floating expenses onto the tenant in exchange for a small rate cut, the advice was simple: stay on the fixed-expense structure unless the costs are capped in writing. The client did.
Terms were agreed with the client on a call at the end of October and sent to Prologis in writing the next morning, a day ahead of the deadline James had set himself: a longer term, a lower escalation, free rent up front, and a deposit capped at one month. The landlord's answer is due the first week of November. The client's note after the call: thank you, brother, I appreciate the help.
A nurse-led nonprofit that has put more than 600 students on the path to nursing careers needed a real classroom and a clinical skills lab near the Medical Center. Its landlord had reversed on letting it install a hospital bed. Its state grant would pay rent, but not one dollar of construction. The whole deal had to be designed around that rule.
A nurse and her husband run a nonprofit that takes under-resourced students from middle school through nurse-aide certification: camps, mentorship, clinical check-offs with a senior-care partner across the street. They were working out of a two-person office in a Medical Center innovation building, happy with the building and stuck with the landlord.
Months earlier the landlord had said yes to a bigger room with a hospital bed for skills training. The week they needed it, the answer changed. A workforce grant was on the horizon that would pay for the program, and the program needed a lab.
James's first advice was to wait. No grant in hand, no second cohort confirmed, no search. Most nonprofits in a holding pattern for a grant never move past it, and a vague brief to brokers only gets a nonprofit strung along. Once the application was in, the search started.
He read all sixty pages of it, plus the four documents of grant rules behind it. The rule that mattered: build-out and renovation are not allowable costs, rent is. His note to the client put it plainly: that is not a problem, it changes tactics. The landlord would build the lab and carry it in the rent.
The team ran a 58-listing screen anchored on the building the client already loved, wrote to six landlord brokers with a brief that said hospital bed and skills lab up front, and dropped two buildings that would not fund lab work before anyone toured. When the preferred landlord could not host the Friday tour, James moved the whole tour to Tuesday rather than show the client half a market.
The landlord's pricing moved three times in a month: triple-net, then a higher full-service number with the build-out baked in, then back to a base-plus-expenses structure in a proposal that expired in five days. James did not chase the structure. He priced it.
Against the landlord's own structure, James brought Houston medical-building comps to the base rent, capped the controllable operating expenses, cut the deposit in half, turned the parking charge into free spaces for the whole term, and wrote the turnkey as all design, permitting and construction at no cost to the tenant. Rent would start on completion, not on a calendar date, and a one-time exit was added for a nonprofit whose funding runs in cycles. No free rent was asked for, because the grant pays rent; that leverage went into the build-out and the parking instead.
The client's reply to the redline was five words: we are good with this.
A turnkey suite in the building the client wanted to stay near, with a skills lab the landlord builds, on terms the client has approved and a lease written so that every dollar the grant pays is a dollar the grant allows. James's team also read the grant budget line by line, flagged defects in the budget form before they became audit findings, and mapped out the bridge financing a reimbursement grant requires.
A new storm-roofing company needed its first office: furnished, affordable, and soon. The first space fell through when a listing broker would not even carry the owner's counter. The second one almost fell through over a start date. It closed because somebody read the lease and told the client the truth about it.
The owner of a young roofing and restoration company was ready for a real office: a one- or two-person operation, furnished, a conference room for training, in by summer. He had found a space on his own, offered six months at a lower rate and six at the asking rate, and the listing broker refused to take the offer to the owner. Then he was told the space was gone.
That is how most small tenants get treated. He told James the same day, and the search started over.
Within three days James had a one-page tour sheet pricing every suite in two buildings on an all-in monthly basis, which is the only number a small business actually cares about. When the landlord's leasing rep was out, James set up a self-guided tour and, when the door code failed and the client was locked out, got it fixed on the phone while he stood there.
The first-choice suite turned out not to be available in time. The landlord walked the client through the next one in person, and the search narrowed to one suite.
On a one-year lease this size, rent barely moves. So instead of chasing rate cuts, James asked for what the client would actually feel: the longest possible no-charge early occupancy, conference-room access from day one, the paint and the dividing wall written into the lease, and a smaller deposit. The landlord confirmed the early occupancy in writing, added conference-room access from signing, and cut the deposit from $850 to $500, all within hours.
The lease was the landlord's standard form, and James told the client exactly that: it leans landlord friendly, which is normal on a one-year deal, and most of it is not worth fighting on a space this size. He read all of it anyway and wrote a plain-English breakdown of every clause that mattered.
Three were worth pushing: an indemnity that would have made the tenant cover the landlord's own negligence, a sublease clause with no real right to assign, and the exact legal name of the company on the signature page. All three came back approved the same afternoon.
Then the start date landed. The suite would not be ready until the prior tenant left at the end of July, so the lease started September 1. The client wrote that night: if I cannot get in by August 1, let's keep looking.
The next morning James laid out every option honestly, including temporary space in another building with a double move, and then gave his real advice: do not spend your leverage on a date you will not gain from. The landlord's work would be done by mid-August, the early-occupancy right was already in writing at no charge, and the conference rooms were his from signing. The client thought about it and said: let's move forward. He signed that week.
Signed the first week of July. The landlord's rep wrote back with three exclamation points. The client had early access before the lease started, picked out his own furniture and accent walls, and sent James a referral two weeks after closing. In October, James's team delivered him a growth plan for the business that now has an address.
A tax advisory firm with a long track record was ready to leave its old suite. The team did not feel safe walking the parking lot or working alone in the office. They wanted a better building, a better suite, and a lease that stayed at the low end of the market. They got all three.
A tax advisory firm, more than fifteen years in business, with a principal who signs the lease and an office manager who runs everything else. She had the list ready on the first call: replace the carpet, paint, upgrade the lighting, wire it for the phones they already use.
The thing she did not have to write down was why they were moving. The sense of security walking through the parking lot, or being in the office alone, had gone.
The submarket was soft and the firm was, in James's words to the landlord, one of the strongest credit tenants in that part of the market. That changes the negotiation. James told the landlord's rep plainly that rent was not the fight, because the rate was already near the bottom of the market. The fight would be free rent, build-out, parking, and security in writing, not as a verbal promise.
The landlord pitched the suite with the newer finishes. The client chose the other one, with offices already sectioned the way a tax practice works, and the landlord agreed to redo the carpet, paint and lighting to match. James asked for seven months of free rent, citing what competing buildings were offering, and backed it with a submarket report listing where the better deals were.
The landlord came back with six months if the tenant paid for conference-room floor outlets, or five if the owner did. The client's answer was better than either: drop the floor outlets, add a fourth covered parking space. Ownership agreed to the terms the next day.
James returned a full redline with a plain-English reason beside each change. The one that mattered most survived: if the building ever cuts its security and does not replace it, the firm can terminate the lease. Base rent held with no build-out charge rolled into it, the lease stayed gross with no expense pass-throughs, the landlord's build-out credit rose from its opening offer, and the wall that split the suite came at the landlord's cost.
Days before signing, the principal asked about an ADA-specification dishwasher in the work exhibit. James confirmed nothing in the lease required it and had it swapped for a standard unit with the monthly add-on recalculated. Then he held the landlord off while the firm finished tax season.
Signed at the end of April, lease started mid-May. The office manager's note from the new suite, a few weeks in: the place is great, management, security and maintenance have been extremely helpful, and the sense of security walking the parking lot or working alone is a welcome change from before. In her words, they could not be happier with the outcome.
A consulting firm needed a small office near the airport corridor on a three-year term and a tight budget. Most brokers do not return the call. Robertson Partners ran the same search it runs for a 20,000-square-foot tenant: sixty-five buildings screened, seven shortlisted, five toured, three finalists, one lease.
Two principals running a strategic consulting practice who wanted a real office, not a coworking desk, in the Greenspoint and airport corridor where their work is. Small space, three-year maximum, and a budget that left no room for a bad lease.
A 65-building market report came first, cut to fourteen broker picks, then seven shortlisted, then six stops scheduled for a single tour day. The client toured on her own with the firm's work line monitored live, so every question got answered from the hallway.
The first stop, the suite everyone liked best on paper, leased the morning of the tour. The building stayed on the list. Seven weeks later a suite on the third floor opened up after a first-floor space went to a tenant with a right of first refusal, and that is the one the client took.
The landlord opened at about a thousand square feet on a two-year term with one free month. James pushed the term to five years to buy concessions; the client said three years, maximum, and the answer was to respect that and win elsewhere. The counter asked for a lower rate with three free months up front. The three free months came, spread across the term.
Then the trade that mattered on a suite this size: a small improvement allowance the landlord had mentioned verbally became a landlord-funded build-out written into the lease. A storage room, a demising wall, new carpet and paint, with a server room and a glass door added by hand before signature.
Tenant signed August 21, landlord August 24, lease commenced September 1 with the first month free. From the first kickoff call to the landlord's signature: 102 days. The client's last note before the move: we have it all done, just waiting on office renovations to complete so we can move in this week.
A financial services office needed about a thousand square feet, a hard ceiling on monthly cost, and somewhere to run its Tuesday night and Saturday morning team meetings. The first landlord stalled for weeks. The second's first written terms had no parking, no expense cap and a clock on them. The client changed his mind twice. The right suite was the one the comparison had favored all along.
A regional leader for a financial services firm, working mostly alone day to day, with six to eight people in the room on Tuesday nights and Saturday mornings. His brief was short: do not go over the ceiling, give me room to run my own meetings, and get it done.
The first building he liked took weeks to put terms in writing, and the terms never fit the ceiling. James chased the landlord four times in ten days and wrote the client the honest read: every year of this runs above your ceiling, the other suite is going nowhere, and the third one is the one that actually works for you today.
Then he built the three-space comparison: every suite priced all-in by month, by year, by term, with the meeting-room question answered for each. The client's reply: wow, this breakdown is phenomenal.
He chose a different suite anyway. Then another. By mid-August the first building had died outright, and James widened the search and ran a new tour with one instruction on the run sheet: ask whether the building has a conference room and exactly how tenants get access to it, because that question had ended the first deal, and better to find out on the tour than in a lease.
After the tour the client came back to the suite the comparison had favored, with a note that read like relief: management on site, parking at night, space to run our own meetings. Let's see if we can get the number down.
James told the landlord the shorter term was the driver, not the rate, and asked for one package: a three-year term at the client's number, interior wall demolition, building-standard white paint, and written permission for after-hours use one evening a week, music included. The landlord's best and final came back with demo, paint and carpet at its cost, a cap on expense increases, and the evening-use clause in writing; the lease added free use of the furniture in place. The client told James to get it done, and then fixed the paint color with the landlord himself.
Three years in the suite with its own training room, with the meeting question answered in the lease instead of discovered after it.
Months into buying an industrial building from a global manufacturer, our client and the seller were $200,000 apart and neither would move. The deal didn't get saved on price.
A local business owner needed an industrial building for his operation and had found the one. He was on a clock, and after months of work the two sides were $200,000 apart.
The listing broker's message was simple: there were other buyers behind us without a broker, and if we fell out, fine. Our client wouldn't go higher and was ready to walk.
Most deals die right here, with two sides staring at a number. But a price gap is only one way to measure value, and an industrial building always has more on the table than the price.
The listing team kept the door open because of the relationship. As James put it, if we were unknowns they would have said sorry guys, that deal's gone.
And after months of coordinating equipment in and out of the building, we knew it inside and out: the pits that had to be filled, the repairs already on the plan, and the property manager's room to run them.
What else counts besides price? The roof. Our client was going to fix it anyway. A $200,000 cut the seller had already refused, or roof work the seller had already budgeted, just done sooner.
Going around the brokers to the seller is a line James won't cross. So he went to the property manager and asked him to pull forward deferred maintenance that was already scheduled, starting with the roof.
About $300,000 of work moved up the calendar. That covered the $200,000 gap with $100,000 to spare, and our client bought the building. Nobody had to lose the price argument to win the deal.
One of the largest counties in the country had departments scattered across downtown Houston. It needed one Class A home, and a process its own people could trust.
Harris County had departments spread across downtown and wanted them under one roof. A government client brings its own weight: public money, several departments with a say, and every decision on the record.
Three towers could carry the consolidation. 1801 Smith, a 34-story tower, got a full stacking plan and asbestos analysis. 919 Milam put floors 6 through 17 on the table. And 1111 Fannin.
All three analyses ran at the same time, with working sessions every other week for more than four months alongside the county's Public Infrastructure Department, Budget Management and Real Property Division. Every decision had the data and the decision makers in the same room.
James did this work as part of CBRE's advisory team. His part ended in early 2021, when he moved to JLL.
The county selected 1111 Fannin and signed a lease LOI on February 25, 2021. Then it went a step further. On June 8, 2021, commissioners authorized buying the 17-story tower outright for up to $28.9 million, and the county closed on it that month.
A recycling company was expanding in Waller with a plastics extrusion line and truck and rail access. The technology was sophisticated. The building plan hadn't caught up with it. And the plant was only the first phase of what the client meant to build.
The client turns used plastic film into resin pellets. Its expansion in Waller meant a campus built around a technical extrusion process, with truck and rail access, on a schedule that mattered to the whole business.
This wasn't a brokerage assignment. The project was already moving when we were brought in, and the extrusion layout didn't fit the building as planned. Left alone, that kind of gap turns into change orders and lost months.
James brought in JLL's Project and Development Services group as the owner's representative. He went to the site, listened to the operators, and pulled in the specialists who knew this kind of process.
He stayed on the owner's side of every conversation and carried the relationships with the city's leadership and economic development team.
Initial site tour on July 1, 2023. On-site kickoff with the project team on July 10, 2023. From there, weekly progress reports to the owner on design, procurement and construction.
The new plant started up in late 2024. In May 2025 its owner unveiled the $150 million, 270,000 SF facility, its largest recycling plant by square footage. The building did its job. With the expansions James helped the client develop on the same program, he counts it as more than a billion dollars of development advised from site to start-up.
In 30 minutes we'll show you what the Houston market means for your lease: the leverage you have, the concessions that are realistic, and what renewing without representation would cost. Bring your lease terms. We'll bring the data and open the app.
James describes a tour he took with a client, a regional law firm in Houston, of the only tier 1 or A+ property they saw that week. He says there is nothing like watching a tenant walk through a tier one space and react to the sights, sounds and smells. The client's office manager had wide eyes and said every room was beautiful, and the property exceeded the expectations she had set.
He points to design as the main difference: a tier one space feels bigger than it is, and spaces of roughly 5 to 8,000 square feet felt twice as large. He compares space planning to a puzzle where many pieces are already done, so only light tweaking of walls and spaces is needed. At the end of the tour the client said the price was higher than expected but the space was so nice that they wanted to sell it to the rest of the team, which is why he says tier 1 does so well.
"a tier one space is going to feel bigger than what it is"
"This is why tier 1 does so well."
The newest episode plays here automatically, straight from the channel. Pick another below.
All episodes on YouTube ↗Hover to look around. Tiles with an episode open it right here.
▶ Episode
▶ EpisodeJames on the numbers, b-roll that shows what the numbers mean.
Vertical cuts from the episodes. They play as you scroll past.
Office Insiders is the commercial real estate show Houston never had. Every episode: one building, one deal story, one piece of market intelligence that changes how you think about your own space. Built for CEOs, CFOs and business owners who want to understand the market, not just be told what to do in it. Ten minutes to watch, or listen on your commute.
$2.5 billion closed over 18 years in Houston. Tenant and buyer side only.
Walks the buildings, asks what a tenant would ask.
Episode 27. What a record wave of defaults means for office tenants in the post-Covid era, and how to use it.
Written notes for each episode: what was covered and the key points.
OfficeEvery Tuesday: one market stat, one deal insight, and one thing your landlord hopes you don't know. Three minutes. Free.
Principal · Robertson Partners Houston
Outthink. Outmaneuver. Outperform.
Book a meeting
When a real estate decision is one the business will live with for years, owners and executives call James. He walks in already knowing the market, the building, and the people on every side of the table.
His career runs through Grubb & Ellis (Houston Top 10), CBRE, and JLL, where he chaired the Black Professionals Network and led the AI technology tiger team. He founded Robertson Partners on one rule: the client comes first, every time. Clients range from locally owned businesses to Fortune 500 companies and some of the nation's largest public institutions.
He hosts Office Insiders, Houston's Commercial Real Estate Show, on YouTube, Instagram and LinkedIn.
He helped my company find our first office space 10 years ago. Since that time, James has worked with us to expand and open 5 additional office locations across the US.
James was able to explain every detail regarding the operating costs and provided us with a detailed analysis of why they were so high… We were able to get the terms on the lease that protect us from inflated operating costs.
From locally owned businesses to Fortune 500 corporations and some of the nation's largest public institutions.
Renewing, relocating or evaluating a purchase, it starts with one conversation. No pitch. No obligation. Just data relevant to your situation.
Tell us your building, your lease expiration and your approximate square footage. We'll tell you what the market means for your position and whether an engagement makes sense. You decide.
Book a 15-minute snapshotBring your current lease terms. We'll bring the data and open the app. You'll leave knowing your leverage, what this market offers a tenant in your position, and what renewing without representation would cost.
Book a 30-minute strategy session