LONG BEACH, CA-A leveling or regression in the stock market won't have a significant impact on property values or transaction volume in Southern California, according to W. Henry Walker of Farmers & Merchants Bank.

Walker, the president of the 21-branch F&M Bank, cautioned that the current red-hot market is “a story of low financing rates,” which he said are pushing up property values, a situation “we never want to see.” The result is that the rising values “make some product that should be viable, viable.”

Land development remains “a high-risk play,” Walker says, adding that the office market also will remain risky until “we get a little more traction in the employment market.”