Boston.com has a good list of the top Boston business stories in 2012.

Though it’s unclear if they’re ranking them in terms of importance (and we assume they’re not, since “Safety practices at Walmart contractors” can’t possibly be No. 1, nor Amazon’s decision to collect state sales taxes, as important as that may be), two housing-related developments rightly made the list: The local spike in home sales and the boom in apartment-building construction in 2012.

Since the housing market’s collapse was ultimately the cause of the recent financial crisis and subsequent deep recession, any positive or negative developments in housing were bound to be big news in 2012.

Of course, the entire list is rendered silly and moot if it turns out the Mayans were right about the end of the world on Dec. 21. That would clearly be the No. 1 story of 2012, in our humble opinion.

File under: Biggest Stories

P.S. – One other minor point: The growth of the Seaport District should have been included on the list. Sure, the district’s s been growing over the past decade. But this is really the year when everyone woke up and basically realized that an entirely new neighborhood is being developed in Boston. There’s an historic business and residential migration going on in the city. That’s big news — this year, last year, next year, and for the foreseeable future.