It is a pretty glum Thanksgiving for the battered home sales market. Probably the cheeriest item is the temporary drop in foreclosures as banks frantically check their records amid the embarrassing robo-signing scandal.

Not much to uncork the champagne over if you are trying to sell homes to surly buyers expecting dramatic markdowns.

But commercial real estate brokers, while hardly feasting at a time when the economy still appears fairly famished, have a couple things to be relatively encouraged with as 2010 rolls to a close.

The amount of empty office space is slowly falling in Greater Boston, while rents, after years of decline, have stabilized.

But the best news is the rebound in commercial property sales, with investors betting on a better future as they put down big dollars for icons like the Hancock tower.

There were 153 deals totaling $3.7 billion across the country in September, Moody’s reports.

Overall, commercial real estate prices across the country rose 4.3 percent, Moody’s reports, with sales of retail properties leading the way. It is the largest increase in the history of Moody’s commercial price index.

While prices for office towers actually fell, sales activity is clearly up in the sector. Look no farther than Boston Properties recent deals for the Hancock tower and Bay Colony on Rt. 128.

Still, there is a long road back – commercial prices still off 43 percent from their peak in 2007.

Vornado chief Steve Roth is just the latest superstar tower builder to discover what a funny, upside-down world developing a major project in Boston can be.

The Boston Redevelopment Authority earlier this week pulled the permits for long-stalled plans by Roth’s Vornado and local partner John Hynes to build a tower in Downtown Crossing next to what was to have been a renovated Filene’s building.

The near collapse of the global financial markets in the fall of 2008 forced work to stop amid demolition, leaving a hole in the middle of Boston’s traditional downtown shopping district.

However, while Mayor Thomas M. Menino and his BRA are busy vilifying Vornado and Roth, he is being feted elsewhere.

Roth was named by GlobeSt.com as the “Top Industry Newsmaker’’of the past ten years.

“Audacious would be an understatement,’’ gushed one Roth groupie who voted for the Big Apple tycoon in a poll conducted by the commercial real estate news service. “Still making mega deals after all these years,’’ another is quoted as saying.

Well yes, but just not here in Boston.

Funny thing that Roth couldn’t find success here in Boston. After all, he managed to develop 4 million square feet worth of new office towers in Manhattan, though it did take him nearly 30 years to compile that illustrious record.

What a slacker.

Still, new towers do take time, with global recessions not typically fruitful for ambitious new projects. (It’s that mysterious connection between high unemployment and dropping demand for new office space, but I won’t bore you with the details.) Of course, that appears to be news here in Boston, with the mayor waiting impatiently for the shiny new tower he was promised.

Well, it’s going to be a long wait, with no first-class developer likely to dip his hand into what has become a snake pit of a project.

For his part, Roth need not feel all that bad, for he is in good company. In fact, he is just the latest in a long-line of big shot developers to come to Boston, only to find there is only room enough in town for one big cheese.

And he does business not out of the Hancock tower or some other glitzy high-rise, but from an office on the fifth floor at City Hall.

A former Wall Street investment banker who has spent the last few years turning around troubled casino, Scott Butera is taking over as Foxwoods’ new chief executive.

God knows the financially struggling tribal casino could use Butera’s help as it battles to break free of a crushing, $2 billion debt load.

Anyway, fielding questions from reporters at a Thursday press conference at the Connecticut casino, Butera said argued that casino legalization in Massachusetts is all but a matter of time, despite recent stumbles.

In fact, Butera is already gearing up for the challenge, calling upon Foxwoods to transform itself into a destination that will continue to draw Bay State gamblers, even after new casinos open up in Massachusetts.

“We can’t just be a gaming establishment,’’ Butera said. “We have to be a destination.’’

But Butera’s assessment is at odds with the suddenly cool approach Gov. Deval Patrick and House Speaker Robert DeLeo are taking on the issue.

Patrick, who has said he is prepared to sign a casino bill but won’t agree to racetrack slots, says it’s now up to the Legislature.

DeLeo said he has more important things to focus on when the new legislative session kicks off early next year.

Of course that’s is what they always say. I’m with Butera on this one. Expect another late spring/early summer gambling push.

“Selfish.” That’s what Mayor Thomas M. Menino is calling office tower owners who are balking at forking over big money to tidy up troubled Downtown Crossing.

Yet just maybe out-of-town tower owners like Tishman and Equity Office actually have a better sense of where the true boundaries of Downtown Crossing actually are than Boston Tom, the Hub’s mayor-for-life.

I certainly have a hard time understanding how Downtown Crossing, as traditionally defined as the strip of stores along Washington Street, has suddenly leaped over to all the tall towers along Federal Street.

Just check out this map, drawn up by city officials, of the new business improvement district.

It was formed to essentially levy an additional tax to pay for everything from street cleaning to marketing for the battered shopping district, on life support since the Filene’s tower fiasco left a giant hole in the ground.

Interestingly, the city’s map of this new Downtown Crossing business district is not long and narrow as one might expect given all the stores and shops along Washington Street, the main boulevard, but sports a huge pot belly - one that just happens encompass a big chunk of the neighboring Financial District.

I checked the city’s map with a map of Downtown Crossing and its attractions on the website of the Downtown Crossing Partnership, which has played a key role in organizing the new business district. Now granted the map is for “shoppers’’ – but it shows the towers along Federal Street, looking over Post Office Square, as part of the Financial District.

It’s pretty clearly the map was drawn the way it is to include Federal Street. In Boston, that’s where the big money is, not Washington Street.

Gerrymandering anyone?

With downtown Boston and the suburbs still awash with empty office space, that certainly would be nice.

But for now, Cambridge is emerging as the big bright spot of an otherwise still dismal market, with hungry tech giants and biotech behemoths are gobbling up office and lab space left and right.

Some highlights of a recent Cambridge market report by CresaPartners:

· Microsoft, Google, EMC, Akamai and VMWare all continue to expand, with Microsoft recently inking a 105,000 square foot lease while the Cambridge Innovation Center took down roughly another 100,000 square feet.

· Rents are increasing on both the office and lab site. Class A office rents now average $42 a square foot, up a $1 from earlier in the year. Lab rents are now at $65 a square foot, up from $60 in the first quarter.

That’s the latest finding by the number crunching real estate wonks over at MIT.

A commercial property index put out by the MIT Center for Real Estate reports prices plunged 7 percent drop during the third quarter. That came after a surge in values during the second quarter.

The result: Despite a bounce back in sales, overall commercial property prices are still off by more than 36 percent from their 2007 peak.

Of course, that’s not the case if you own a trophy tower, with the Hancock just fetching $930 million after a bidding war reminiscent of the bubble years.

“The mixed signal continues to reflect the split nature of the U.S. commercial property market these days, with high demand for ‘trophy’ properties providing investment managers with sufficient profit to allow them to cull some weaker properties from their portfolios,’’ noted the MIT center’s research director, David Geltner.

Say it isn’t so. The future of two of my favorite haunts – The New England Mobile Book Fair and Edaville Railroad – are both up in the air.

OK, I am not some toy train nut. But like a lot of parents, I have fond memories taking my three little ones to ride the miniature railroad and gaze at the Christmas lights at the long-time Lakeville attraction.

A developer is looking at the property for single-family homes – we definitely need more housing, but I am rooting for the Edaville operators to find a way to keep the trains rolling.

Then there is the New England Mobile Book Fair in Newton – the latest in a long line of local bookstores to face uncertain times.

The owners have hired a broker with a track record for successfully pulling off these sales, so we will have to wait and see.

Guess it’s time for another trip to Edaville, followed by a stop at the New England Book Fair.