The office buyer pool is shrinking. This year, office investment was active in the first and second quarters, but over the summer activity slowed. While opportunities have returned—a good sign for more activity next year—the buyer pool is waiting on the sidelines in response to high prices, or it is leaving the market altogether. Next year, Tim Lee, VP at Olive Hill Group, expects private equity funds to dominate the market while private capital and opportunistic investors wait for better pricing and higher yields. We sat down with Lee for an exclusive interview to talk about the office activity this year and what he expects for the fourth quarter and beyond.

GlobeSt.com: How has the performance of the L.A. office market this year aligned with your initial expectations?

Tim Lee: At the beginning of the year, there was momentum from the previous year in terms of investment sale activity. We were quite busy. The summer months and quarter 3, however, got really quite. The number of deals went down and the opportunities and listings also went down. We were getting concerned because we had capital to deploy before the end of the year. We weren't sure that we were going to get the money in place before the end of the year. Starting at the end of September, there was an uptick in activity, and it looks like a number of owners held off until after Labor Day to begin marketing their projects. We are hearing this from some of our partners as well. It wasn't because of any economic issues. It seems like sellers wanted to wait until the end of the year to execute their sales. We are really excited now because it seems like quarter four will be back to where the first two quarters were in terms of activity.