Marshall Prentice Trends Quotations

Trends in January and February are notoriously bad at predicting upcoming activity. Is the market taking a breather? Or is it starting to tumble? It's impossible to say, there's nothing really ominous in the numbers, but we won't know for another couple of months.

We're a bit surprised at how stable the market is in all categories. Usually one segment of the market will be outperforming the others. Right now, though, the same trends apply to all parts of the market from entry-level on up.

Today's Bay Area real estate market has all the characteristics of a relatively normal balanced market. We knew the year-ago numbers were unsustainably strong. Right now it looks like current trends will last well into 2006, with strong, but not record-breaking sales, and continued appreciation.

We won't know for another couple of months if this is a lull in the market or part of a longer-term downturn. It's always difficult to project from trends we see in January and February. The March numbers will tell us much more about what's going on.