This can be a glass half-full or half-empty story, but it depends how you look at it. The Boston Business Journal has an item on a study by Core Logic that reports that 16 percent of Boston homeowners have mortgage values that exceed their house value — another 3.5% or so are close to even.

That may sound like bad news, but it is better than the national average of negative or near-negative values for a whopping 27.9  percent of homeowners.

File under: Glass half-full, hold the ice.

The Boston Business Journal reports on the most recent data compiled by CoreLogic on the local residential real estate market. Year over year for December 2010, CoreLogic reports that in the Boston-Quincy metro area, values were up 6.16 percent. For the 2010 up to Nov. 30, values over all in this area were up 4.65 percent. The BBJ also notes most of these gains were in “healthy sales” — not distressed property or short sale scenarios. This fits with a lot of anecdotal evidence that there is a lot of stubborn resiliency to sale prices in our market. One explanation could be that for “healthy sales” we’re still talking about the higher end of the market, where there’s been more activity than in the mid and lower priced sales.

Do you agree with me?  Let’s get a conversation going…

In December 2010, economist Karl Case had a lecture regarding the economy and the housing market, hosted by LINK.  See the full presentation here!

Again, there’s definitely some light at the end of this long tunnel. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston’s Beige Book report sums up the regional economy as “generally positive, albeit moderate.” Among the sectors reporting steady though moderate growth: manufacturing, retail and business services. Of course, residential real estate remains “in the doldrums” but commercial real estate is showing signs of stability as 2010 drew to a close.

The Beige Book report points out that though the number of single-family homes and condos fell below 2009 levels, median prices continue to march up (except in New Hampshire). We all know real estate sales improvement only comes after general economy improvement, so all this is hopeful.

The number of single-family homes put under agreement in December was up 5.3 percent compared to the same time last year (2,743 homes in 2009 to 2,888 homes in 2010).  On a month-to-month basis, single-family homes put under agreement were down 15.2 percent from 3,404 homes in November. Pending home salesThe number of condos put under agreement in December was down 16 percent compared to December 2009 (1,249 units in 2009 to 1,046 units in 2010).  On a month-to-month basis, condos put under agreement were down 16.4 percent from 1,251 units in November.