After several years of declining real estate values and falling sales numbers, at last there are hopeful signs for the Island housing market. Revenue numbers for the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank are substantially up.

Land bank executive director James Lengyel said this week he expected a 30 per cent increase in takings for the fiscal year, ending this month. The volume of sales, however, remains relatively flat.

Land bank numbers provide a good indicator of the health of the overall real estate market, because they are derived from a two per cent fee imposed on almost all sales on the Island.

Mr. Lengyel said revenues for this year were expected to be about $7.5 million, compared with $5.76 million in 2009. “Transaction numbers, though, will be about 1,320, compared with 1,277 in 2009, which is just three per cent up,” he said. “The only conclusion one can draw from those numbers is that the market is reviving, but it is a matter of increased prices rather than increased activity.”

Given the way the U.S. economic recovery has been progressing — the financial sector is again highly profitable while wages for most other people remain flat and unemployment stays high — might this not simply indicate that high-end property sales are again driving high prices up? Not according to Mr. Lengyel’s analysis. Yes, the upper end of the market was making gains, but so were the middle and bottom.

“We break the market into lower, middle and upper sectors, and comparing them to last year, the numbers are steady in all sectors. So it looks like the price increase is across the board,” he said. Things are still a long way off their peak, however. The land bank recorded its highest transaction number in 1999, when there were 2,090 sales. “Since then, it’s been steadily dropping,” Mr. Lengyel said. “Over the past four years it’s been settled in the 1,200 to 1,400 range.”

And as the market has fallen over recent years, so has the activity of the land bank, whose mission is to purchase and conserve Island land for public use. A depressed market affects its operations in two ways: first because it has less to spend, and second because there are many fewer desirable pieces of land available. Already, the consequences of the rebound are apparent. Last Friday, the Gazette reported the conservation agency had completed the purchase of 27 acres along State Road in West Tisbury from Ann Nelson, near the Polly Hill Arboretum and abutting another 87 acres of previously conserved land.

“That was possible because we had this 30 per cent increase in revenues,” said Mr. Lengyel. “For the previous couple of years we had just to husband our money.” That purchase, he said, spoke to a “happy confluence of events” — refilled coffers and a return of sellers to the market. Still, the yo-yoing nature of the real estate market, nationally as well as on the Island, bodes some caution. National sales figures have recently slumped sharply again, following the end of a federal government tax credit scheme. And the Vineyard has shown its own pattern of up-and-down results when rebounding from recession.

“When we think about revenue projections for the future planning, we look back at how the Vineyard market, at least as it is expressed through the land bank, has previously recovered from a recession,” Mr. Lengyel said. “After the 1990 recession, there was a very clear pattern, which I would call a step pattern. Revenues would rise significantly in one year, then the next year it would be essentially flat. Then there would be another significant increase, then another flat year. That was the pattern for six years: rise, flat, rise, flat, rise, flat.

“That suggests we might now go into a flat year. If that pattern repeats itself, there will be a plateau now, for a time,” he said.

And that makes sense. When prices rise, more people are inclined to put homes on the market. Then the law of supply and demand works to the benefit of buyers. For that reason, Mr. Lengyel said, there are no immediate plans by the land bank to make further purchases, unless a real bargain unexpectedly presents itself.