The successful rebranding of the building created a modern lobby, common areas, and patio space that has broadened Live Oak Square’s tenant appeal. The successful rebranding of the building created a modern lobby, common areas, and patio space that has broadened Live Oak Square’s tenant appeal.

ATLANTA—Live Oak Square, a successfully repositioned class A office building in the core of Buckhead’s office market, has traded hands. The sale price was undisclosed.

CBRE’s Justin Parsonnet, Jay O’Meara, Will Yowell, and Ryan Reeth of the firm’s Institutional Properties team in Atlanta represented the seller in this transaction. Purchased by a joint venture between Anchor Capital of Atlanta and Sage Equities of Israel, the property is a strategic expansion of the partnership’s growing Buckhead portfolio.

“Emphasizing Live Oak Square’s irreplaceable location, nearly $6 million repositioning program, and leveraging CBRE’s global capital reach, we were able to develop deep and diverse investor interest for this offering, including several foreign investment groups,” says Parsonnet, executive vice president at CBRE Capital Markets. The building was 74% leased at the time of sale with 33,000 square feet of prime contiguous availability on the top two floors.

The successful rebranding of the building created a modern lobby, common areas, and patio space that has broadened Live Oak Square’s tenant appeal. As CBRE sees it, these improvements were central to securing several new TAMI (technology, advertising, media and information systems) sector tenants including Merchant E-Solutions and MRI Software, a high-growth tenant demand sector in Atlanta.

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“Based on our experience with Live Oak Square and our other recent offerings, we’re expecting continued strong investor interest in the Southeast and Atlanta, specifically, as the Metro area continues to post strong job growth, low office vacancy, and positive absorption momentum,” says Parsonnet. Live Oak Square is within walking distance to Buckhead’s high-end dining, luxury shopping, and two MARTA rail stations, the stage is set for ATPS Realty Partners to benefit from strong leasing fundamentals, an evolving tenant base, and a coveted live-work-play environment.

Over the last five years the CBRE Atlanta Institutional Properties Team has been the most active office investment sales team in Atlanta and Buckhead. In addition to Live Oak Square, the team has sold 3630 Peachtree, a 425,000-square-foot, class A office tower, Atlanta Plaza, and 632,000-square-foot, class A tower, and is scheduled to close soon on Three Alliance Center, Buckhead’s newest 30-story, 500,000-square-foot office tower.

“Office rents have increased in every primary tech submarket over the past two years, illustrating stiff competition among tenants to locate in talent-rich areas such as Tempe, East Cambridge, Minneapolis’s North Loop and South Orange County, all of which have very low office vacancy,” Colin Yasukochi, director of research and analysis for CBRE and the report’s author, tells GlobeSt.com. “If tech companies that are used to paying a premium for space in the top tech submarkets are forced to move to adjacent submarkets in order to expand, we could start to see significant rent growth in those more traditional markets as well.”