Laura Hines-Pierce and Sarah Hawkins

Laura Hines-Pierce and Sarah Hawkins recognized 2025 as a market reset for Houston-based owner and developer Hines, noting improved leasing in best-in-class assets and a widening gap between scaled platforms and niche players.

“Across sectors, we stayed concentrated in our highest-conviction themes — especially living — where fundamentals remained strongest,” the pair said in a joint statement.

Hines continued to pivot from its office-first identity toward rental housing. Amid contractions in assets under management and employee counts, Hines’ core-plus fund achieved a total market value of $3.5 billion in 2025. As of December, it held $18.6 billion in assets under management in its East region.

In September, in one of Southern California’s largest trades of 2025, the firm’s Hines Global Income Trust paid $428.1 million for Runway, a 630,000-square-foot mixed-use asset in Los Angeles’ Playa Vista neighborhood. One month later, Hines U.S. Property Partners, another part of the firm, picked up Quarry Place, its second Westchester County, N.Y., multifamily property. Hines later broke ground on the first phase of Riverwalk, a 200-acre, 721-unit community in San Diego.

The firm took a notable exit from the for-sale residential land business with the approximately $800 million portfolio sale of 11 master-planned Dallas communities to a Starwood Capital joint venture.

Yet Hines has not departed from its roots in the trophy office market, at least not in New York City. It was selected as property and facility manager for J.P. Morgan Chase’s 2.5 million-square-foot headquarters at 270 Park Avenue, which debuted in the fall, and in December Hines signed Paypal to a 261,000-square-foot, 10-year lease at 345 Hudson Street. (Hines is a partner in that property.)

The year ahead promises yet another inflection point for global real assets, Hines-Pierce and Hawkins said.

“As pricing discovery improves and transaction activity normalizes, we expect disciplined capital to re-enter the market, which can create meaningful opportunities,” they said. “Especially for investors with scale and selectivity.”