Alan Pontius of Marcus& Millichap

Time flies. Remember the pessimistic pundits who projected that the office market wouldn’t start showing signs of life until 2005? Well, ’05′s right around the corner and we’ve touched bottom. That, at any rate is Alan Pontius’ take on the beleaguered market. Pontius, director of Marcus & Millichap’s national office and industrial properties group, isn’t setting off fireworks yet, but the buzz, he says, is encouraging–especially for markets that have been particularly hard hit–such as Silicon Valley. In a recent, exclusive, interview, Pontius shared his market enthusiasm.

GlobeSt.com: So what’s the good news?

Pontius: The good news is a strong sense that the office market has hit bottom, that we’ve stabilized and are starting to show some level of rebound. It’s been a long time coming. I guess there’s still a caution flag up because the pace of rebound is not exciting, but clearly we’re going in a renewed direction and it’s absolutely the time to start looking. From talking to a number of clients around the country, I know there’s interest in looking and, coincidentally, some of that interest is in markets that are most challenged.