That brief gust you may have felt around Jan. 1 wasn’t the last gasp of Hurricane Sandy. It was a sigh of relief being expelled from the lungs of agents and brokers across the commonwealth as the real estate market closed the door on 2012 – after nearly five solid years of held breaths, crossed fingers and dancing around on pins and needles.

Though it took some time to be certain – and though the recovery will need a lot longer to take hold in some places than others – last year seems to have finally put to rest the worst real estate crisis in more than a generation. A guarded optimism has returned to the market, and many agents experienced their best year in half a decade, or at least since the brief surge sparked by the first time homebuyer’s tax credit in 2010.

A sense of guarded optimism dominated Realtors’ responses to Banker & Tradesman’s annual reader survey, conducted with Sudbury-based Bannon & Co. Real estate agents who responded to the survey felt somewhat more positive about the local and national economies headed into next year, with 64.2 percent of respondents believing the Massachusetts economy will improve next year (up from 59.4 percent last year); a solid majority also thought the national picture was looking up, with 57.2 percent foreseeing improvement in the U.S. economy in 2013, a huge leap from the 41.6 percent who felt that way last year.

“Across the state, pending sales are up and buyers are buying. The interest rates are low, there are economic fundamentals out there that tell buyers now is a good time to buy,” said Kimberly Allard-Moccia, broker/owner of  CENTURY 21 Professionals in Braintree, and 2013 president of the Massachusetts Association of Realtors.

The resurgence of the residential market seems to be the clear cause of agent’s sunshiney outlook, with more than 77 percent of respondents expecting further growth in single family sales next year, including a full third who describe sales increases as “very likely.” That’s up from 68.8 percent who felt that way last year.  

Every area of the state saw at least some improvement – even the real estate market in Western Massachusetts. While a full 100 percent of agent respondents rated the region as “somewhat sick” or “on its death bed” in 2011, 22.2 percent of respondents rate it as neutral in this year’s tabulation.

Other areas fared even better. The Metro-West market, which only 11.1 percent of respondents called healthy last year, found 60 percent of respondents rating it as back in the pink this year, including 15 percent who rated it “very healthy.”

Boston’s Boom

The region has benefitted from some big news on the jobs front, which helped solidify commercial rents and preserve the area’s job base, said Paul Matthews, executive director of the Metro-West 495 Partnership, a economic development think tank which covers the region.

“The obvious win that we had for the region over the last year, which helped shift the perception, was the landing of TJX to take over the campus formerly held by Fidelity in Marlborough,” said Matthews. “That single-handedly is a very large expansion in the region and a huge win. And the expansion of Quest on an adjacent property lends a further foundation.”

“The economy – we’re seeing signs it’s picking up. We’re seeing a lot of smaller companies slowly expanding and positively affecting the occupancy rates in the region, so I think that’s positive as well,” he added.

But befitting its name as the Hub, by far the greatest beneficiary of the recovery was the Greater Boston market, which 87.5 percent of respondents regarded as healthy, including 20.8 percent who rated it “very healthy.”

“I think that there’s a tremendous amount of momentum entering 2013, based on an extremely strong 2012,” said Kevin Ahern, principal of Boston brokerage Otis and Ahern. “The activity on the high-end was the second highest, behind 2008, which was skewed by [the debut of] Mandarin and Battery Wharf. We had a record number of million dollar sales.”

But despite the positive growth and the return of normal buyers and sellers to the market, distressed sales were still on broker’s minds – and making a difference to their bottom lines. The vast majority of respondents, 74 percent, had a least one short sale closing this year, including more than 40 percent who had several. Well over half of respondents, 57.2 percent, think the number of short sales is likely to grow in 2013, and 60.1 percent think it’s likely we’ll see more REO sales.

Linda Kody, principal of Kody & Co. in North Andover and something of a distressed sales specialist, said her own brokerage had calmed down from all-hands-on-deck, pull your hair out to moderately busy at the beginning of the year, with the annual holiday slowdown in foreclosures giving her time to catch her breath this year.

“It’s been good. Everybody wanted to see what happened with the fiscal cliff,” she said, since the terms of the deal has enormous power to influence the short sale market. In particular, the extension of a law which prevents homeowners who benefit from a short sale from taking a huge tax hit was a huge relief to lenders and homeowners alike.

“For the next year, I’m going to sit back and take a wait-and-see attitude. There’s plenty of people who want to buy homes, but I think we’re still going to be seeing a lot of short sales, where the values just aren’t up to the 2005, 2006 prices. And there will be some foreclosures,” yet to come, she said.

Even if 2013 sees a continued high rate of distressed sales, however, at least the market seems to have gotten a slightly better handle on how to deal with them: 32 percent of respondents reported their short sales were taking less than three months in 2012, compared with 21.4 percent last year. And only 4 percent reported shorts taking more than nine months, compared with 17.9 percent last year. In 2011, 46.4 percent of respondents reported their short sales were taking four to six months. That dropped slightly, to 44 percent in 2012.

Overall, despite all the turmoil of 2012, “even in the month of November, despite the election and the uncertainly around the fiscal cliff, people continued to make this decision to buy homes,” said Allard-Moccia. “I think it’s a good sign of what’s to come.”

Email: csullivan@thewarrengroup.com

For the complete results of the 2012 B&T reader survey, click here.