We guess it’s now absolutely safe to say the housing crisis is officially behind us, based on the latest data showing there was an 82 percent decline in foreclosure filings last month. The Warren Group says it’s the real thing, not some freak statistical anomaly. File under: Wow

Scott give a mini-review of Lisa Prevost’s new book ‘Snob Zones,’ which looks at how difficult it is to build moderately priced homes in today’s suburbs in Massachusetts and across New England. It’s a long overdue book, in our humble opinion. This state needs more housing. Just look at the inventory shortages and sky-high prices [...]

From the Herald: Ex-Gov. William F. Weld’s former Cambridge home has changed hands for $2 million below the original asking price. Susan Roosevelt Weld — who got sole custody of the historic house in 2005 under an agreement four years earlier, when she and Weld divorced — sold it to Vartan Keshishian and Seda Ebrahimi-Keshishian [...]

Amazing. Home prices in Brookline, Cambridge and even Arlington are now back to their old pre-recession bubble prices. Actually, that’s not true. Their current home prices now exceed pre-recession levels. Obviously those communities are a little bit different and have long had zany prices. There’s also inflation. But still … Update: Read Nemo’s first comment [...]

Blame it on low inventory. For the second month in a row, single-family home sales in Massachusetts fell in March, by 3.6 percent, while median prices rose by 8 percent to $285,000, according to the Warren Group. The same pattern held for condos: Sales down by 2 percent, while prices rose by a more modest [...]

From the Massachusetts Association of Realtors: April 18, 2013 – The Massachusetts Association of REALTORS® (MAR) reported today that both the REALTOR® Market Confidence Index (RMCI) and the REALTOR® Price Confidence Index (RPCI) hit all time highs in March. With the number of homes for sale declining, REALTOR®-members who responded to the survey said they [...]

For the past few years, about the only new housing construction you saw out there was for apartment buildings, particularly in Boston. But now it appears some suburban developers are starting to dip their toes in the condo-building waters, at least in Danvers. File under: More, please

The Massachusetts Association of Realtors reports that pending home sales (or homes under agreement) were up by 4.6 percent in March compared to the same month last year. Pending sales have now increased in 22 of the past 23 months in the Bay State.

While Boston undergoes a residential building boom, the slackers out in the suburbs are actually falling behind even their 2008 building levels, in terms of both actual building permits and in total construction dollars, the BBJ reports. Hey, the region needs more housing, folks. Hello? Anyone there? Hello? File under: Build it, and they will [...]

Foreclosure petitions in the state plunged by 38 percent, to 856 filings, in February, in yet another sign of the steadily improving housing market, the Warren Group reports.