While real estate sales and property values are plummeting in other parts of the country, activity in St. Ignace and the Straits area is about equal to last year, and, in a few places, slightly ahead.

Agents in the area say that real estate, like politics, is local, and that national figures depicting "gloom and doom," while accurate, are misleading in that they do not reflect what is happening in their areas.

Figures from the Eastern Upper Peninsula Board of Realtors, covering about 85 salespeople in Mackinac, Luce, and Chippewa counties, show year-to-date totals of 299 property sales this year, only five less than 304 sales last year. And they also show a rise in the average selling price so far this year, to $169,437 from $139,852, and faster sales, from 320 days on the market in 2007 to 274 this year.

Cheryl Schlehuber, owner of Mackinac Properties in St. Ignace, said she has sold 21 properties this year, about even with last year, but she's concerned about looming new credit standards.

"What I see coming down the tube is that you're going to have to have pretty decent credit to buy a house," she said.

Wealthy markets are lucrative even in tough times, especially now with investors shifting from stocks to real estate. Bill Borst of Mackinac Island Realty said he had one sale of $1.4 million this year, another at about $1 million, plus two others around $800,000.

"For people who have money, this economy doesn't hurt them that much," he said. "Some pay cash."

But there are mortgages to be had, even for vacation homes and similar properties, in this economy.

"There are people that qualify," said Bruce Gustafson, an agent in Naubinway.

For many, these are not happy times. George Yshinski of St. Ignace, whose wife, Barbara, also sells houses for Coldwell Banker Schmidt, has been selling real estate since 1969.

He characterizes the current market as an "all time low."

"We've had some dips, some downturns, but this is about as bad as it's gotten," he said. In this, he even includes the bloody days of the early 1980s, when mortgage interest rates hit 15% and the U.S. was in recession.

Still, the moribund market is laden with deals, and not just in houses. John Griffin of Coldwell Banker Schmidt in the Les Cheneaux area reports that 200 feet of Lake Huron waterfront sells now for $99,000, compared to $160,000 in 1999.

Foreclosure sales, which account for 10% to 25% of sales in the Straits area, yield doorbusting deals, too. Mr. Griffin said he sold a three bedroom, two bath 1,700-squarefoot dwelling earlier this month for $90,000, a house built in 2000 and foreclosed upon.

While it has been a buyer's market since 2000, Mr. Griffin said he had an award-winning year in sales last year, and that by this October he is running ahead of that total.

Likewise, Fred Smith of Smith and Company, operating in Pickford, DeTour Village, and Goetzville, said his sales are "stable," if not necessarily terrific.

"Our values haven't increased dramatically or decreased dramatically," he said. "If we were in an area with massive foreclosures or massive fraud by lenders, we'd be in their boat, but we haven't had that."

Ivan Wilde of Coldwell Banker Schmidt in St. Ignace said sales are slow, but not as bad as they are downstate. His sales price average is $150,000.

"We're doing as well as we were last year," he said, "and this office alone has already done several million dollars in business this year. We'd like to be busier, but I'm not going to scoff at what we've already accomplished this year."

Bill Wodek folded his Mackinaw City Real Estate One office this year after opening that shop in 2005 and admits "that wasn't the best year to go into business."

Mr. Yshinski notes that small two- and three-room hunting cottages are rarely on the market. When they sell, they go for $70,000 to $100,000.

"People want to hang onto those," he said.

He looks forward to spring, but he concedes that he doesn't know when the market will return to its ebullience of the late 1990s, when dual income blue collar auto workers were buying vacation homes on Brevort Lake and other areas and agents were little more than order takers.

"All they had to do was show up," Mr. Griffin recalled, speaking of the sales agents. "The phone rang off the hook. You had multiple buyers looking at everything."

Those days, he said, are probably lost forever.