Spring is around the corner. And with it are some hopeful signs the worst of the real estate downturn may be finally over for Hub neighborhoods that have borne the brunt of the bad times.

Sure, condo prices and sales finally slowed in downtown Boston, but Dorchester, Roxbury, East Boston, Mattapan and Hyde Park saw thousands of homeowners fall behind on their mortgages over the past few years, many losing it all.

But here’s one key sign: The number of foreclosed homes sitting empty and inviting trouble in these neighborhoods has fallen dramatically, reports Evelyn Friedman, head of the Department of Neighborhood Development.

After rising as high as 1,200 at one point, the number of foreclosure specials is now down to 778 – and dropping fast,

City Hall is moving to buy up these homes and resell them to individual home buyers, community nonprofits and contractors. City officials now have either bought or have under agreement 120 foreclosed homes, with more on the way.

There are also other signs that the real estate market in neighborhoods like Dorchester may be finally moving out of crisis mode.

The number of sales and open houses in Dorchester is on the rise after years of decline, the Dorchester Reporter notes.

I’ll take open houses over foreclosures any day.

Simply put, not well right now when compared to many other cities across the country.

The Hub is emerging as a leader of sorts in the nation’s office market. But let’s just say the categories it is a standout are not so hot, according to data culled from the just released, Jones Lang LaSalle North American Occupiers Report.

Boston had the biggest drop in leasing activity in the fourth quarter, with a 30 percent plunge, Jones Lang finds.

By contrast, Washington saw just a small drop in activity while New York saw a modest bounce back.

The Boston market is a negative standout by a couple other measures as well.

At nearly 20 percent, the office vacancy rate in the Boston metro market at the end of 2009 was one of the highest of a group of major cities looked at by Jones Lang, with New York and Washington significantly lower.

And with a 25 or more percent drop in rents over 2009, Boston was second only to New York, which saw even steeper reductions by its tower owners.

Still, sometimes you have to look on the bright side. For companies who have to lease space, it is definitely a buyer’s market right now.

One of the nation’s top real estate moguls, Zuckerman’s recent decision to spend tens of millions on new presses for the Daily News down in New York has always mystified me.

Don’t get me wrong – I love newspapers, but maybe now isn’t the time for massive capital investments in print.

Now Zuckerman’s decision makes a bit more sense in light of what appear to be some potential political aspirations.

After our nation’s capital recently ground to halt amid a snowstorm, sparking outrage, the Politico suggested Zuckerman challenge Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty in September’s Democratic primary.

But it looks like Zuckerman may have other ideas as he mulls a run against Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York.)

I guess after buying a good chunk of New York’s skyline and Washington’s office market, not to mention downtown Boston, Zuckerman is looking at his next challenge.

Hopefully he’ll keep Boston Properties out the fray. After all, I would hate to see our hometown real estate giant become Washington Properties, or worse, New York Properties.

We all know that Liberty Mutual will get a pretty nice city tax break in exchange for expanding its long-time Boston headquarters.

But here’s the other piece to that deal, and it makes it even sweeter – the tax increment financing agreement also entitles the insurer to millions more in state tax benefits.

How much? According to one estimate, Liberty will get another $20 million from the state, most likely in the form of tax credits.

Still, there a pretty good argument to be made that this will be money well spent, especially amid the high jobless rates of the Great Recession.

The virtues of the giant insurer’s expansion are pretty well known, but I will recap in case you missed it the flurry of stories earlier this month.

While the total cost may amount to roughly $36 million in city and state tax incentives, Liberty will build a 300 foot tower that will generate 600 new permanent jobs. Not to mention wages for hundreds of construction workers, who are now grappling with a jobless rate that may be approaching 50 percent.

Oh yes, and the expansion will also bring in another $50 million in city taxes over the next twenty years as well.

And guess what? Liberty, which has 600 offices worldwide, does not have to expand here. The company, before it opted to build out its Boston headquarters, had been looking at other sites, including some out of state.

Sometimes you have to spend money to make money.

Looks like I’m in good company in going to bat for our state’s promising but embattled film and TV industry.

My B&T column Monday argued state officials are on the wrong track as they seek to slash in half a film industry tax credit that has brought a bevy of Hollywood productions into the state and pumped hundreds of millions into the local economy.

Somehow it’s OK to spend taxpayer stimulus dollars to fill potholes, but not OK to provide an incentive to spur job growth in the private sector.

Go figure.

Anyway, along comes the University of Massachusetts at Boston with a new report that argues the tax credit has made our state’s small film industry one of the fastest growing in the country. And at a significantly lower cost than other states also vying for entertainment industry jobs, which often dole out even more generous tax benefits.

Highlights include:

• At a time when the Massachusetts economy has been shedding jobs, the state’s budding film industry has boosted its annual payroll by more than 30 percent. The number of movie and TV industry jobs soared to more than 6,000 in 2008, up from 4,530 in 2005.
• Anchored by public broadcasting powerhouse WGBH, Massachusetts has emerged as a hub for firms specializing in nonfiction television production and related post-production work.
• The state’s growing film industry and related fields it supports is providing opportunities for college graduates who want to stay in the state even as overall employment declines.
• A mix of big-budget productions and smaller films spent more than $17 million on food, $27.2 million on set construction and nearly $30 million on hotels and housing between 2006 and 2008.

As I noted recently in my Commercial Interests column for B&T, the FBI is looking seriously at building its long-planned regional headquarters over in South Boston.

After several years checking out sites in Southie and in some of the suburbs and cities that ring the Hub, the FBI is focusing on a site controlled by the Pappas development family.

But, as always, there is competition, with a long-time Chelsea development family aggressively bidding to build the high-tech fortress the bureau seems to want.

But it’s more than a battle of two developers for a likely $200 million project.

Two of our top urban political power brokers are also apparently going at it as well.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino has been lobbying hard to keep the FBI, long quartered near Government Center, in Boston.

But Congressman Michael Capuano is apparently going to bat for the competing proposal in Chelsea, which falls in his district.

Good luck to those Chelsea developers.

There were signs right up until the end of 2009 that commercial real estate prices might finally be stabilizing after a decline that has rivaled the residential market bloodbath.

But the road to recovery looks like it will be a long and winding one, with more signs of trouble emerging.

An index put out by the MIT Center for Real Estate finds major institutional investors took a nearly 5 percent hit on prices of office buildings and other properties sold in the fourth quarter.

That brings commercial prices to a new low after signs in the third quarter that office tower values might finally be on the mend, according to MIT’s real estate experts.

Emblematic of the sector’s continued woes was the recent sale by the Mortgage Bankers Association of its Washington headquarters for just over $41 million.

The only problem, of course, is the trade group shelled out nearly $80 million for the 10-story building near the White House just back in 2007.

A classic short sale, it’s not clear whether the mortgage bankers will pay back all of the $30 million is still owes on the property, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Everyone may simply have their eye on the wrong ball.

Clearly, the passing of Sen. Edward Kennedy has had a huge impact on the nation’s health care debate, though not exactly in the way the late senator would have envisioned.

But what executives around town are really talking about is what is going to happen to all the National Institutes of Health research funding that has made the Bay State a life sciences powerhouse.

Our bevy of research institutions and hospitals pull down billions each year in NIH grants – an amazing 13 percent of all that is awarded.

That, in turn, not only keeps our cutting edge researchers employed. It has also fueled a never ending building boom in the Longwood Medical Area and over in Cambridge as well.

That’s a lot of construction and real estate jobs.

But it was Kennedy, as chairman of the Senate’s powerful health committee, who helped bring home all that bacon.

Can newly elected Republican Sen. Scott Brown or Sen. John Kerry, now the states senior stateman and of course, a Democrat, fill the void Kennedy’s death has created?

Well, let’s use common sense here. Brown may be an adept campaigner, but he does not strike me as a technocrat who likes to get dirty with all the details. Kerry, for his part, has developed an expertise in foreign affairs.

Great if Afghanistan is your big concern, less so if you are worried about bread and butter issues like keeping our local life sciences industry humming.

Anyway, a lot of jobs depend on what happens on here.

“He was certainly very effective in making sure that we were able to attract a substantial amount of funds,’’ notes Bob Richards, president of Richards Barry Joyce and Partners, of Kennedy. “That absolutely has an impact on construction companies, architects, engineers and developers

A tidal wave of subprime home and condo mortgages gone bad came close to toppling some of our biggest banks in the days and weeks after September 2008.

Now commercial real estate is increasingly looming large as the economy’s new problem child.

And the nation’s smaller banks, which Massachusetts has its share and then some, stands squarely in the path of a potential avalanche of commercial real estate loan defaults, a new reports finds.

An array of smaller banks could be hit with losses on commercial real estate loans totaling more than $150 billion, Moody’s Investors Service reports.

These banks, in turn, now hold more than 50 percent of all the commercial real estate loans across the country.

It wasn’t too long ago that our smaller, community based banks were crowing about winning back a share of the commercial real estate market after years of losing out to an array of Wall Street players, many now defunct.

I guess they crowed too soon.

Compounding the pain, Standard & Poor’s warns the worst is not over for the commercial real estate market, with falling rents and a rising tide of empty space pushing more tower owners into default.

Ouch!