Just pick up any paper: The real estate tidings are invariably the same.

* The housing market is slowing.

* Home prices are easing.

* Planned new housing construction is being cut back.

* It looks like the bubble is about to burst.

As far as New York City goes, though, that’s not what you’ll hear from Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel, a leading real estate appraiser and one of the Big Apple’s most widely quoted real estate figures.

In fact, he tells me the city’s housing market – following a dismal third-quarter showing – is perking up nicely.

Although there are some dissenters, he’s not a fella to be taken lightly, given that his well-publicized quarterly surveys on apartment sales in New York are viewed as a key barometer in determining the health, or lack thereof, of the city’s housing market.

In early October, Mr. Miller, 45, turned into a combination of Godzilla, King Kong, and Hurricane Katrina all wrapped up in one as he wreaked havoc on the housing market. That stemmed from the disclosure that his third-quarter survey showed the average purchase price of a city apartment had fallen 12.7%.

After that report, sales slowed to a crawl, many pending transactions ran into trouble as some buyers withdrew their bids and demanded a lower price, and sellers were forced to reassess their asking prices, brokers say.

Making matters worse, many in the press pushed the angle that the longdiscussed housing bubble could finally be ready to burst.

Nothing could be further from the truth, Mr. Miller says. “The bubble talk was greatly exaggerated,” he said. Actually, he believes the thirdquarter figure was misinterpreted because of a significant sales shift to the lower end (studio and one-bedroom apartments) from the upper end (apartments costing more than $10 million). In effect, he points out, the market simply shifted, moving from a frenzied pace to more normalized single-digit appreciation.

Further, he went on, the average per-square-foot selling price for an apartment in the third quarter ran $9.84, an all-time high that represented a 22.5% gain from a year ago and a 1.4% increase over the second quarter.

Mr. Miller’s initial view of fourthquarter apartment action is that sales are relatively strong. Especially noteworthy in early fourth-quarter activity are lots of transactions in the entrylevel segment (studios and one-bedroom apartments), with unusual price spikes much higher than a year ago.

In contrast, he finds, there’s no great stimulus in the mid-market (two- and three-bedroom), but a pickup at the higher end.

Based on his initial fourth-quarter findings, Mr. Miller reckons there’s a distinct possibility the average apartment price for the quarter will show a gain in the single-digit range.

“It’s still a seller’s market,” he says. “We’re nowhere near a buyer’s market yet.” Overall, he regards the housing market as “alive and well,” though he does note that the seller’s position is a bit weaker than it was six months ago. If there’s any downturn, he believes it will be nothing more than a slow leak.

By the same token, he says, you’ve got to be concerned about inflation, mortgage rates, the federal deficit, the state of the national recovery, and available inventories. The market is just not as out of balance as it was six months ago, he points out, observing supply has been rising as new construction and development have gained momentum.

If you’re in the market for a Big Apple apartment, here’s the financial criteria you might want to think about. According to Mr. Miller’s latest numbers, average apartment prices run as follows:

* Studio: $428,831.

* One bedroom: $687,744.

* Two bedrooms: $1,486,962.

* Three bedrooms: $3,233,727.

* Four bedrooms: $6,823,346.

Mr. Miller added a final thought: “The bubble label is misleading; don’t believe it.”

On the other hand, I got a decidedly negative picture from one of the city’s leading real estate brokers – Elayne Reimer of Coldwell Banker. In fact, it’s the first bearish assessment of the housing market she’s given me in about 2 1/2 years. “The market seems much slower and is not picking up as I expected,” Ms. Reimer says, observing that sales have definitely slowed down, it’s taking much longer to sell, and many sellers are lowering their prices.

Here’s a shocker. Ms. Reimer also tells me that some newly constructed buildings are offering brokers bonuses of as much as $25,000 to sell an apartment, a far cry from the past, she notes, when new apartments sold before the shovel hit the ground.

“Whether this snowball can be stopped concerns me,” she says. “I only wish I had better news.”

dandordan@aol.com