Not to be crude, but Oklahoma City and Houston, we have a problem – Oklahoman.com

Office usage in Dallas-Fort Worth and Denver is more varied, and it shows in the stats, according to CoStar.

"The Dallas-FW office vacancy rate is the least impacted relative to the major energy markets, only rising from 18% currently to 19% in the worst-case scenario. Denver, with the lowest overall 4&5-Star vacancy rate among these markets, could see a slight rise in vacancies of 2.5 percentage points in the worst-case scenario but would still retain the tightest vacancy rate across the four metros."

Comparing not-so-lil-ol' Oklahoma City, population 655,057, to Houston, population 2.3 million, isn't quite as crazy as it seems when the historic-economic kinship of the oil business is taken into consideration. Plus we should probably get ready for more comparisons with bigger cities, and more caveats. In case you missed it, Oklahoma City is now the 25th largest city in the United States, up six spots since 2010, according to the Census Bureau.

Things change. Population isn't everything. Tulsa used to be known as the Oil Capital of the World, and CoStar didn't even look that direction.

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Email Real Estate Editor Richard Mize at rmize@oklahoman.com.

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Not to be crude, but Oklahoma City and Houston, we have a problem - Oklahoman.com