The unexpected decline in jobless claims should prove to be one great big holiday gift for Hub developers and office tower owners.

It raises the prospect that unemployment may actually come down faster – while helping bring back demand for office space and eventually new towers and buildings as well.

Massachusetts is already a leader here, with the state’s jobless rate of 8.8 percent significantly below the average.

It’s a trend, that, if it continues, could at least see the battered office market finally hit bottom sooner rather than later in the coming year.

Just a few months ago, Moody’sEconomy.com was projecting the loss of another 30,000 financial sector jobs in the Boston market – enough to put million of additional square feet on the market.

Even so, there’s typically a lag time of several months or more between a fall in unemployment and pick up in the office market, Bill McCall, dean of the Boston office market, explained to me in an interview last summer.

“Once hiring starts again, they are not picking up the phone and saying ‘hey Bill, find me some new space, it’s time to grow.’” McCall said of the impact of the downtown office glut.

That said, the outlook for 2010 sure beats what we were facing at the start of 2009.

Hub tower developer John Hynes has probably shouldered more than this share of the blame for the Filene’s fiasco.

Hynes hustled to get all the balls lined up to launch one of the more complex and historically sensitive projects Boston has seen in recent years, only to watch lenders vanish after the economy tanked in the fall of 2008.

Instead of a beautifully renovated Filene’s building and a shiny new tower next door, we have been left with a huge hole in the heart of already struggling Downtown Crossing.

But while Hynes, president of Gale International, has been scrambling to try and get the project back on track, his partner in the Filene’s project has some explaining to do.

The New York Post reports that Vornado is sitting on a $1.8 billion cash stockpile, surely enough to get the $700 million Filene’s project moving again.

Instead, according to the Post, the money is sitting in an account that earns just .25 percent.

That makes more understandable the Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s recent verbal lashing of the would-be Filene’s project developers, including an admonishment to “get moving.’’

The mayor noted in his speech before the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce that the site might also make for a good school or health care facility.

Given City Hall’s power to take “blighted” property by eminent domain, these are pretty interesting comments indeed.

Not a good time, then, to be sitting aimless on a huge cash stockpile while the heart of Boston’s main shopping district sits eviscerated.

A huge number of Boston area office towers and buildings are in some form of distress, with a number facing foreclosure, according to various surveys.

But watch out for the new owners.

Having scooped up office properties at rock bottom prices, a new breed of landlord is emerging who is ready to cut well-below-market rent deals to fill space in a tough market, a story in The Wall Street Journal notes.

The story points to a real estate investor who snapped up a New Jersey office building, for $44 a square foot, or about a fifth of what it sold for a few years ago.

Real estate investor KABR then turned around and leased the building – for $20 a square foot – to Samsung, undercutting other competing properties with much higher rental rates.

Don’t think it can happen around here? Think again.

The home buyer tax credit has certainly reenergized the real estate market.

But the multibillion-dollar housing market subsidy appears to be nothing short of a lifeline right now for battered home builders, with new construction and sales appearing almost totally fueled now by tax credit buyers.

How else to explain the dramatic dip in new home sales in November, which took place as buyers bailed in advance of a looming, end-of-the month expiration of the tax credit?

Of course Congress went on to extend and even expand the home buyer tax credit through April, but the uncertainty was enough to cause new homes sales to plunge more than 11 percent.

Well the link between the tax credit and new home sales is just as strong here in Eastern Massachusetts.

There has been a modest uptick in new home construction and sales in the outer suburbs, I report in my column this week for B&T, with developers and brokers reporting the majority and in some cases almost all their business coming from first-time buyers armed with the $8,500 tax credit. The home buyer tax credit has certainly reenergized the real estate market.

Just take a new townhome development in Tyngsboro, where 29 of 30 recent sales were to first-time buyers taking advantage of the tax credit, Dennis Page, a Realtor with Re/Max Prestige, tells me.

It’s going to be tough for the real estate market when the home buyer tax credit is phased out after April.

But it could be positively brutal for home builders.

Maybe I am perverse to be worrying about the prospect of another housing price bubble right now.

After all, we are just starting to come out of one of the worst recessions and housing market downturns in decades.

Yet there’s one troubling trend that could set the stage for a return to runaway prices in the Boston areas, certainly not now or next year, but maybe not all that far down the line, either.

That trend is the plunge in new housing construction. While there recently have been some bright signs of a modest turnaround here – stay tuned readers – 2009 saw the number of new homes built in the Boston area plunge to its lowest tally in decades.

Just 3,500 homes got built this year, an anemic number that represents just the latest in a decades-long decline in new residential construction, Barry Bluestone, the Northeastern University economist tells me.

Back in the 1980s, tens of thousands of new homes got built some years.

But it has been downhill ever since as cities and towns have tightened up zoning rules and buildable lots have become harder to find.

The best recent year, 2005 at the height of the last boom, saw a bit more than 15,000 homes built.

Of course, it’s no coincidence that prices spiraled out of control in the Boston area during the bubble years, followed by a long but relatively shallow decline amid the downturn.

When it comes to producing new housing, the Boston area has been running on empty for quite a few years from now.

And as the market heats up, this is one trend that is surely bound to come back to haunt us.

Investors may still be playing it cool when it comes to buying office towers.

But they are starting to warm up once again to the idea of buying strip malls, power centers and other retail real estate, according to a new survey by Jones Lang LaSalle.

Apparently prices have hit bottom, drawing out deep-pocketed investors who had squirreled away money for just such a day, the report finds.

OK Black Friday and holiday sales – at least better than abysmal – are not hurting either.

Jones Lang’s retail sales team, headed by veteran Boston sales executive Jim Koury, have racked up $50 million in sales alone in the past three months.

These include a $22.5 million deal for a Lowe’s anchored power center under development in Lowell.

Looking ahead to 2010, Jones Lang is predicting a modest increase in retail sales.

It’s pretty clear, though, that there is no place to go but up, with retail real estate deals totaling just $5.6 billion over the first nine months of 2009.

That was down from $56.3 billion in 2007.

OK, don’t get your hopes up too much.

The folks at the State House may be looking to give a break to the Bay State’s battered development industry, but we are definitely not talking about a tax break.

If anything, tax rates are headed up across the state for commercial properties as cities and towns, Boston included, scramble to close budget gaps.

Rather, a proposal by NAIOP Massachusetts to have all major development permits extended for another two years appears to be making steady progress on Beacon Hill.

The bill has been reported out of committee and could come up for a vote early next year after lawmakers get back to work, David Begelfer, the chief executive of the developers’ trade group, tells me.

The idea is to prevent local and state permits for approved development projects from expiring as plans sit idle amid the economic downturn.

That could force some developers, when the economy finally starts picking up, to go through the whole, laborious local and state permitting process all over again.

Sounds like a slam dunk, but I am sure there is someone out there in our wonderful blue state Legislature who thinks this is all some sort of evil money grab by greedy developers.

Anyway, let’s just hope for a rare display of common sense on this one over at the State House

I got into a bit of hot water with a B&T column I wrote earlier this year in the run-up to the mayoral election.

The gist of it was that with Mayor Thomas Menino up for reelection, City Hall was not going to let any major contentious development projects move forward until after Election Day.

Let’s just say that did not earn me any fans over on the fifth floor, where the mayor holds court.

Of course, just weeks after the mayor’s big reelection for a staggering fifth term – where does this guy get his energy – the state convention authority rolls out plans to nearly double the size of the new Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.

Now there’s talk the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority may also revisit plans to double the size of the parking garage it controls underneath Boston Common as well.

Despite its name, the state convention authority is more closely aligned with City Hall than you think. James Rooney, the MCCA’s chief executive, is a former mayoral chief of staff.

Of course, neither project is the least bit controversial.

Just kidding

But if this is what we are already seeing in the first month of Menino’s fifth term, it does make you wonder what’s next.

The mayor likes to roll out big development ideas – thousand foot tower, moving City Hall to South Boston’s waterfront - so I fully expect this is just the opening act.

The now decades long debate over casino gambling in Massachusetts has had more than its share of twist and turns.

But just as it looked like a consensus was emerging between the state’s two top legislative leaders and Gov. Deval Patrick over a blueprint for gambling expansion, along comes the original investor in the Foxwoods deal to shake things up.

The Mashpee Wampanoag tribe is close to a deal with Kien Huat, head of the Genting, an Asian gaming powerhouse and the founding investor behind Foxwoods. Huat and Genting are prepared to fund, out of pocket if necessary, a $300 million to $400 million resort casino in the rural Southeastern Massachusetts town of Middleborough, Cedric Cromwell, the tribe’s chairman contends.

The pending deal immediately transforms the tribe, which has been pushing to build a casino resort in Middleborough but had a devastating falling out with a previous group of investors, back into a major player in the state’s casino debate.

Beacon Hill power players had all but written off the tribe as a factor after its outgoing investment team, which includes international casino tycoon Sol Kerzner, stopped paying the bills last spring.

“Now that they have a partner with deep pockets, it lends more credibility,’’ State Sen. Michael Morrissey, tells me.

The big question now is exactly how does the tribe fit into the Bay State’s emerging casino plans?

There already is a rough blueprint for two casinos, one in Boston and one in Western Massachusetts, as well as for slot machines at two small racetracks not far from Middleborough, where the tribe wants to build its gambling resort.

However, Indian casinos typically demand some degree of exclusivity in return for a “compact’’ with a state government under which they agree to share some of their profits.

It’s hard to see there’s enough room for a huge tribal casino and two racinos all in Southeastern Massachusetts. There may not be enough room, for that matter, for two, full-scale casinos in Eastern Massachusetts.

Stay tuned.

Boston’s commercial tax rate is poised to jump again.

And that could mean higher tax bills for some downtown office tower owners, even as they struggle through one of the worst recessions in years.

Boston’s commercial tax rate, now pegged at $27.11 per thousand of assessed value, is likely to increase by another $2, or somewhat less than 10 percent, according to Sam Tyler, president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, which tracks city finances.

City Hall is now in the final stages of hammering out new commercial and residential tax rates, with an announcement expected as soon as the week of Dec. 7.

Still, given the depressed conditions in the office market, not every tower is likely to see a big increase.

Some major towers in downtown Boston will see their assessed value drop 7 to 8 percent this year, notes Steve Wintermeier, a Back Bay financial planner.

Wintermeier said he was able to check out some of the new values online before they were mysteriously pulled down by city officials.

That matches up with Tyler’s estimates as well.

Anyway, the upshot is that while the tax rate is headed up, lower assessments could limit some, though probably not all, of the pain.

“The values are going down but the rates are going up,’’ Tyler explained.

City Hall right now is mum on the new rates, saying no announcement will be made until state revenue officials approve the new rates, possibly by next week.

Well, you know if it’s good news, it would not be a secret right now.