Was 2011 the year the real estate market touched bottom and started back up? Maybe.

Statistics published by the Realtors Association of Maui and released Monday suggest it might have been.

After four years of decline and a flood of foreclosures and short sales, the average price of a single-family house on Maui went up 5 percent to $787,552 during 2011. The number of sales rose 10 percent from 817 in 2010 to 898 last year.

Terry Tolman, chief staff executive of the association, said strong sales interest is being confirmed by actual reported sales, “with multiple offers competing for well-priced properties.”

But he added that you never really know whether you’ve reached a peak or a valley until later.

There are still plenty of lender-owned repossessed properties and desperate underwater owners trying to escape via short sales out there.

Broker Billy Jalbert at The Maui Real Estate Team writes a blog about conditions, and he noted this week that half of all single-family sales in December and two-fifths of condo sales were either short sales or bank-owned properties.

“It is safe to say buyers are still looking to the bank-owned and short-sale market for opportunities,” he wrote.

For years now, Tolman has been cautioning that until the overhang of distressed properties is worked through, the market cannot return to normal, whatever that is.

Still, prices are low now, even if they go lower still, and mortgage rates are very low (if you can get a loan). So he believes now is a chance for “Maui’s worker bees” who want to own their own homes to buy at comparatively low prices and absolutely low interest rates.

But in doing that, the buyer should be prepared to buy and hold – “at least five years” – and not try to get rich quick, he said.

As long as prices loll around at current levels, at least coming up with the down payment is a fixed target. In 2004 and 2005, when average prices were rocketing ahead by 25 percent a year, the amount of the down payment was rising faster than most people could save.

(People who took advantage of low- or no-down opportunities then learned to regret it in 2008.)

For someone looking to get in on the ground floor, Jalbert has the listing for the least expensive three-bedroom, fee-simple house on Maui, one without any “baggage” of short sales, repossession or other problems. Just a 1940s-vintage house in Paukukalo on a 6,700-square-foot lot, in good shape for its age.

“We’ve gotten a lot of calls since we reduced the price” to $250,000, Jalbert said Monday.

Jalbert hesitates to say that the overall market has neared its price bottom. “It’s hard to say,” in part because Maui neighborhoods are so different, he said.

That shows up in the area breakdown of the Multiple Listing Service numbers. For neighborhoods with enough 2011 sales to see a trend, the differences can be dramatic.

In Spreckelsville, Paia and Kuau, (about two dozen sales of single-family homes) average prices zoomed 92 percent from $595,000 to $1.1 million. In Kihei (154 sales), prices declined 2 percent to $597,000.

Somewhere in between were Pukalani (five-dozen, single-family home sales), up 8 percent to $515,000; and Lahaina (about 40 sales), up 17 percent to $967,000.

Median prices are thought to give a clearer picture, because they are not affected when prices at the very top end are rising faster than the overall market, which was the case in 2011. Kapalua average prices were up 25 percent to $4.3 million; and Wailea-Makena averages were up 20 percent to $4.5 million.

But Kapalua medians were down 2 percent to $2.9 million; and Wailea-Makena medians were up 32 percent to $2.3 million.

In Kihei, for example, medians were down more than averages, by 8 percent to $404,000. In Central Maui, medians were down 13 percent to $375,000, while averages were down 9 percent to $400,000.

Jalbert said he is dubious about “guys who call trends 18 months in advance,” but he said it’s a positive sign for sales volume to be up.

In his blog, he wrote: “The lower ends of the market for homes and condos have relatively limited inventory. As you start to go up in price, you see a greater range of inventory.”

Tolman has an explanation for that: “The majority of condos on Maui are second homes or investments and experienced a steeper price drop as Mainland owners ‘let go’ of them in order to keep their ‘primary’ residences on the Mainland.”

Still, he noted, not all condominiums are for the well-to-do. For aspiring homeowners who find $250,000 too high, a lower-priced condo can be the ticket in, he said.

If Maui real estate prices start going up again (which has been the long-term trend, no matter what the past five years have shown), then the appreciation could generate the down payment that is often the obstacle to buying a single-family house for working people.

Setting aside the luxury condo action at Honua Kai, Wailea, Kapalua or Lanai, the picture in 2011 was neither up nor down.

In Kihei, where 40 percent of all condo sales were made, the average price moved down 6 percent to $301,000, and the median was down a like amount to $240,000.

There are a number of condos less than $200,000 hidden in those averages; and in Central Maui the average condo price last year was $199,448 – again, down 6 percent.

Both Tolman and Jalbert cautioned that unpredictable shocks could turn the prices south again, whether related to problems in the Middle East, Europe or in America’s own economy.

For the moment, though, not only Maui’s real property economy but the general outlook seems to be rosier than it has been for a while.

The National Association of Home Builders First American Improving Markets Index measures not just prices but also single-family building permits and employment.

In January, the index showed that 76 metropolitan statistical areas were showing measurable improvements, compared to 41 in December.

Maui is too small to be a metropolitan area, but Honolulu is one, and it is among the 76 looking better.

NAHB chief economist David Crowe said: “While relatively small metropolitan areas continue to dominate the list of improving housing markets, it’s important to note that several major metros in diverse parts of the country have now joined the field as well – including such metros as Dallas, Denver, Honolulu, Indianapolis, Nashville and Philadelphia. This is an encouraging sign that gradually strengthening economic conditions are starting to take hold across a broader swath of America.”

The overall turnover of residential real estate (as reported through MLS, which does not catch all transactions) totaled $1.2 billion in 2011, compared with $1.3 billion in 2010.

However, the decline was more apparent than real, because the big Honua Kai development closed $448 million in sales in 2009-10, driving the averages well above the background activity of general Maui real estate.

* Harry Eagar can be reached at heagar@mauinews.com.