After sliding steadily into the abyss over the past three years, the local real estate market appears to be on the rise.

That’s despite the latest statistics provided by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service, which offer mixed results for the local market over the course of the summer.

According to the NWMLS, which tracks only those homes and condominiums listed and sold by its member agents, 15 fewer homes and condos were sold in the third quarter of this year – 35 in all – compared with the the same three-month period – July, August and September – of 2009. Local realtors don’t hesitate to point out that NWMLS stats, which don’t account for properties either listed or sold outside the traditional market, such as “land only” sales, often do not show the whole picture.

In fact, in this case it’s not even half.

According to the San Juan County Treasurer, the number of real estate transactions that took place in the third-quarter of this year totaled 94, which includes 60 sales in the home and condo category and another 34 in the “land only” arena. That’s compared to the 73 homes and condos sold in the third-quarter of 2009, and the 27 land-only transactions.

While the NWMLS may have a blind spot when it comes to an area that realtors know as the “shadow market,” typified by transactions that occur most often between relatives, business partners or family trusts, its statistics underscore a fact that local realtors continue to grapple with, and that would-be home sellers appear more willing now to accept – prices have fallen.

Which, according to John Dunning of Windermere Real Estate’s Orcas Island office, may be partly responsible for a recent and a much-anticipated uptick in activity on the Emerald Isle.

“To sell today, a property has to be priced realistically with the market,” Dunning said. “I think for a lot of people it’s sunk in that we’re not at the level where we were two or three years ago. Prices have been dialed back some, but it’s not like their terrible prices by any means. The market has to balance and I think it’s balanced right now.”

Whether balanced or not, Dunning noted the market on Orcas may be at a turning point as 13 potential transactions went into escrow – a binding agreement between a buyer and a seller – in the month of September. He said there’s also been an increase in the number of people viewing property with a “sincere interest in buying” over the past two months.

“We’re thrilled,” Dunning said. “It’s really the first real genuine sign of a rebound that we’ve seen.”

Steve Buck of San Juan Island-based Coldwell Banker believes that pricing is one of three key components that can be used in assessing the health and the vitality of any real estate market. The other two, he said, are number of transactions and the overall volume of dollars those transactions generate.

Buck said that the number of transactions handled by Coldwell’s agents began picking up in March and has been holding steady since. He said the office has lately been sending 14 to 18 would-be sales into escrow each month on average, a far cry from its 4 to 12 monthly average when the market was at its worst.

“I think we may have turned the corner on dollar volume,” Buck said. “We’re still way off in dollar volume from where we were in 2005, but by the end of the year I think we will have beat last year’s mark.”

With a large inventory to chose from (NWMLS had 499 properties listed for sale in September) and interest rates at record lows, Gary Franklin of San Juan Island Windermere agrees realistic pricing may be the key for turning a listing into a sale. He added some sellers have lately been willing to take their homes off the market and that the result may be a dwindling supply of homes for sale and a greater stability in the price a seller can expect.

Of 39 homes that sold on San Juan Island since the beginning of the year, he noted that the average sale price, regardless of listed price, was 91.6 percent of the property’s assessed valuation.

“I don’t see prices coming down a whole lot more, maybe 10 percent,” Franklin said. “I think prices have stabilized.”