I have plans to lease out an office in about a year. Could anyone who is heavily involved in Commercial real estate give me some insight as to where the market is heading as far as lease values? Are they going up or down and where would you guess they would be in a year or two from now? I am in southern California.

That is too broad a question. Leasing rates are very local down to the cities and towns.

What you can get a lease for will be based on many factors.The length of the lease you are going after and how much space you will be using.

Do you want to rent a stand alone building or be in a building shared with others?? Do you need easy highway access to be found easily by your customers or do you not need visibility and are more of an warehouse office space??

Core markets are the first to rebound with lease rates.Generally an older building will have lessor rates but will not have the upkeep or amenities of the newer buildings.With older buildings who is responsible to fix what becomes very important.If the building is struggling the property could go into receivership and have deferred maintenance issues etc.

Lease rates 1 year from now will be very different from today.I think what you are asking is will lease rates be higher in a year and if so you want to lease now.A leasing expert in your city can show trends but nobody has a crystal ball.

With low interest rates and depressed pricing you might be better off buying a space and leasing of the other spaces for cash flow.

Just depends on how strong you feel on the health of your business.Most value add will be in second or third generational space where the property was originally built for a credit rated tenant but they have moved out.

Your best bet will be to sit down and have lunch with a couple of local brokers that are more familiar with your local market. Real estate is tremendously location-dependent, and even locations and properties that are seemingly very similar can have very different pricing based on only small discrepancies. In other words, we can't predict the direction of your market because we don't know your market.