svn stat is VERY slow

I've started evaluating Subversion recently in preparation for
migrating from CVS. I've noticed that running 'svn status' is very
slow. It is even slower than
running 'svn update' which actually has to talk to the server across
the network.

I have a work area with 16597 files in it.

svn update runs in about 17 seconds (in best case mode where my work
area is already up to date)

svn status takes 3 minutes and 15 seconds to tell me that I have no
local modifications. Even repeated runs (to allow for disk caching)
don't speed it up noticeably.

This is Using version 1.1.2 on OS X 10.3.7.

This seems very slow for an entirely local operation. Especially since
it seems like update has to do even more work, but can do it faster.