WASHINGTON, DC—There should be about $8 billion in office investment sales in the Washington, DC area this year, give or take, according to JLL's Managing Director of Capital Markets Bill Prutting. It will be a welcome achievement for the area, which has struggled to shake off the affects of the recession, the federal government's scale back of its real estate needs and BRAC. Basically, it will be the area's most active year since 2006.

Last year, the region posted approximately $6 billion in office sales and in 2013, office sales tallied $4.7 billion. Perhaps the only reminder of the slow progress of the post-recession years in 2015's numbers was the concentration of transactions in the District. DC proper took $5 billion of the $8 billion in deals. It is not surprising; given developments of the last few years investments have stuck to what is safe, namely the District's core submarkets.

But next year could well be different. Both Maryland and Virginia are positioned to post very robust office sales, Prutting said. Even this year will prove to have been good years for the states with Northern Virginia expected to deliver $2.5 billion in office sales and Maryland between $600 and $700 million.