If you awoke yesterday morning and did what most real estate enthusiasts do every Monday morning—you perused the Internet and other sources for housing news and you channel surfed television news for reporting on the issue—you’d have been filled with a bit of hope for the market.

The consensus, if such a term can be used about the market nowadays without sacrificing too much veracity, seems to be that the worldwide view on housing is becoming increasingly more positive.

A story off the Business Wire—an information source that, I have to admit, offers a healthy dose of a public relations integrated into its reporting—bears the headline: “Ultra High-End Home Sales Heat up for Prudential California Realty,” stating that agents at Prudential California Realty are representing a growing number of home buyers and sellers in the $10 million plus range—from La Jolla to Pacific Palisades.

There was even some good (the word “goodish” would probably be a bit more accurate in this case) news in foreclosure-plagued Arizona. With the headline “Phoenix Home Sales Get Short-Sale Boost,” the Wall Street Journal reported the first gain in median home-resale prices in two years, thanks to desperate owners opting for short sales to avoid foreclosure.

Monday’s good news was spread as far as China, where it seems, things could be looking up in the housing sector. A Reuters story headlined “China Vanke says to revise up 2009 housing starts,” reported that the country’s biggest listed property developer will revise up its 2009 target for housing starts, citing a sales boost from Beijing’s recent economic stimulus measures.

Some more good news was issued today by the National Association of Realtors with the release of its pending home sales index report. Last month’s pending home sales report, a leading indicator for the housing sector, showed an “uptrend,” marking four consecutive months of uptrending, for which the report credited favorable housing affordability and a first-time buyer tax credit boosting. That was the first time since 2004 the index had risen four straight months. Today’s NAR report shows the fifth consecutive month with a rise in the index, a first such occurrence in six years. NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun commented that ““Historically low mortgage interest rates, affordable home prices and large selection are encouraging buyers who’ve been on the sidelines.”

Still, for all of the good news, there was also the bad and ugly. And some of it was very bad and very ugly.

A Bloomberg story, with the headline “Banks Urged to Consider Higher Home-Equity Reserves,” reported that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in response to a slump in property prices from their peak in 2006 advised banks to boost reserves for potential losses on home-equity loans.

Even uglier: Late last week the Los Angeles Times, with the headline, “California’s default rate soars to 9.5%,” reported that roughly one in 10 Californians with a home loan is now in default. Citing an array of housing experts, the story reported that the “staggering number of home mortgage defaults probably will lead to large numbers of foreclosures through at least this year.”

My housing news search also yielded some interesting local news/goings on:

Stratis Financial mortgage broker Dennis Smith, who is active in the markets in Long Beach and surrounding areas, in his regular blog offers his take on “Villains And Victims,” which, while some may find it slightly partisan, is a very insightful and well-written look at the blame game along with Smith’s defense of the mortgage industry as a whole.

Local industry insider Christine Springer also blogged about a similar subject. Under the headline “The MERS Database: Another Piece of the Mortgage Mess,” Spring offers her view of the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems database, and how she believes it lacks transparency and can mislead homeowners.

And in Signal Hill, where the home building boom radically transformed the landscape from something that looked like a town on the outskirts of Bakersfield to a place where a home with a view was worth a million bucks over a span of about five years, you will note by a glance at MLS listings that there are, as of today, only two pending sales for homes over $1 million for the entire year. (I’ll be taking a look at that in Friday’s Realty Bites).

Here’s a look at $1 million home sales in Signal Hill broken down by year since the start of the millennium:
2008 — 3 sold
2007 — 6 sold
2006 — 13 sold
2005 — 16 sold
2004 — 1 sold
2003 — 0 sold
2002 —0 sold
2001 — 0 sold
2000 — 0 sold