Good news and bad news in Mass.

There is good news and bad news on the real estate front in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Association of Realtors reports that both single-family and condominium sales experienced the third biggest March to April percentage increase in the past ten years.

However, April home sales were down 15.8 percent compared to last year and the number of condos sold was down 26.6 percent. The median sales prices for homes were down 8.7 percent with median sales prices for condos flat.

Thomas Flatley, real estate icon, dies at 76

Thomas J. Flatley, a frugal immigrant who arrived from Ireland with $32 in his pocket and built a commercial real estate empire in Greater Boston and beyond that was estimated at $1.3 billion, died early yesterday morning.

Mr. Flatley, who was 76 and lived in Milton, had been suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, his family confirmed.

Speaking with the Irish brogue of his youth, Mr. Flatley made deals throughout the region as he built office and apartment complexes, industrial parks, hotels, shopping centers, and healthcare facilities. His primary turf, though, was Boston's southern suburbs. Near the South Shore Plaza in Braintree he built the Sheraton Tara Hotel, one of several he developed with a motif that evoked the castles of his Irish homeland.

Pattern points to housing bust’s end

Forget soaring foreclosures and the free-fall in home prices. The battered real estate market may have finally hit bottom, a nationally known Boston real estate expert is declaring.

Bucking widespread gloom about the state of real estate, Wellesley College housing market guru Karl Case sees strong signs of a possible rebound.

And he even thinks it might be time for a little bargain hunting as well.

Boston Office Market Trends Toward Condos

BOSTON-Approaching 30 years in the business, NAI Hunneman Commercial Co. principal Jeffrey Becker has seen plenty of real estate formulas come and go, but the veteran broker considers a recent trend in office condominiums as an idea with lasting power. Becker is helping three property owners market condos in commercial buildings throughout the city, including a 30-unit asset at 185 Devonshire St. in the Financial District and a seven-unit building at the redeveloped Charlestown Navy Yard.

"It’s an opportunity to lock in your occupancy costs and enjoy the tax benefits that come from ownership," Becker tells GlobeSt.com, in explaining why he believes locals are finally embracing a structure that has been largely missing from the commercial real estate landscape in Greater Boston. Becker offers a number of reasons why the format finally seems to be catching on, the most obvious being a record run-up of office rents during the past 18 months fueled by tight supply and new landlords who paid big prices for buildings and now need to pass on those costs.

Condo sales in Boston drop off

Sales of condos in the 12 core markets of Boston, from the North End to the Back Bay, the South End to South Boston, plunged 22.3 percent in the first quarter of this year, while median prices declined nearly 1 percent, to $475,000, according to the Listing Information Network Inc., a real estate firm.

"It's a huge decline" in sales, said Debra Taylor Blair, president of Listing Information Network. "Downtown is slowing down," she said.