Houston's Leading Parking Consultants

Fundamental Supply & Demand Characteristics

Houston is a car-centric city. Its urban design has been shaped with wide streets and plenty of parking to accommodate residents who rely on private vehicles. This makes its parking market different from cities like New York or Boston, where public transportation systems are more robust and often eliminate the need for personal cars, thus reducing the demand for parking.

Despite Houston’s high level of car dependency, its parking rates are more affordable compared to similar-sized cities in the US. This is due in part to the abundance of parking supply in the Central Business District. Houston has a significant number of parking lots and garages, many of which are spacious and relatively easy to access, reflecting the city’s low-rise, spread-out nature. In contrast, cities like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco have more vertically oriented parking facilities due to limited space, making finding a parking spot more challenging.

Having a more spread-out urban grid also reduces the overlap between local traffic and event-driven or tourist-based parking demand in Houston. This overlap often causes a shortage of spaces and increased pricing in other markets.

Houston Submarkets and Destinations

Central Business District

Houston’s CBD is home to the headquarters of multiple Fortune 500 companies, and includes a high concentration of oil & gas industry leaders giving the city its reputation as the “Energy Capital of the World”. There is a high supply of parking in the CBD as most of the office towers were developed to include large parking structures for their tenants. Many of the buildings are also connected by an underground pedestrian tunnel system running 6 miles in length.

Theater District

This 17 block area includes many performing arts venues, Bayou Place, and the Houston Aquarium, and parking demand is largely event-driven. The submarket also includes several local government and public use buildings including City Hall, and the HPL Central Library.

Tenant Lease Language

In Houston, office tenants’ parking rights are closely negotiated since the majority of employees commuting Downtown are driving (only 4% of Houston’s population uses public transportation according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey). Often times, asset managers leave value on the table by not enforcing their tenants’ obligations to pay for a certain number of parking spaces each month. Parking Advisors specializes in analyzing lease language to ensure that the asset maximizes its parking revenue and makes efficient use of its spaces.

Parking Aggregators

Online parking reservation platforms are becoming more widely used across US markets, including Houston. Of the three largest aggregators, two charge significant commissions, resulting in a noticeable negative impact on the net parking fees earned by parking owners and the value of parking facilities. Parking Advisors collects sales and commission data nationwide and recommends taking steps to use alternative online sales strategies to maximize online sales revenues and mitigate the high commissions that these two vendors charge.

Rate Management

Effectively managing parking rates in a high-supply market like Houston is essential for maximizing asset value. Parking Advisors has access to a large set of parking rate data at facilities across Houston. We apply this information to specific submarkets in the city to optimize your asset’s rate structure.