If you follow home prices on Zillow, then you know we have come back a bit from the precipice in Lynn.

Prices are up a bit over last year and this past month registered a bigger gain in average price than during the past three years.

But this rests against a new reality that finds most Lynn residential real estate priced well below the spectacular highs of 2007.

Prices aren’t 50% below as they are in many other more depressed parts of the nation.

But prices here are anywhere from 25% to 35% off – a veritable fortune to those whose homes represent their greatest single investment.

Many homes remain underwater here in Lynn – that is – the value of the home isn’t up to the amount owed for the mortgage.

And many more Lynn homeowners are today struggling to meet their mortgage obligations in a vastly diminished national economy.

Since the nation nearly collapsed in 2007, everything about the economy has been turned upside down.

Bank loans are near to impossible to get unless you have perfect credit. Mortgage refinancing is the same. Car loans, every form of loans require perfect credit or near to it or you are left out.

Banking has changed. Job security has disappeared. New jobs aren’t being created as fast as we need them and on and on.

The great presidential battle is pitting President Barack Obama versus former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

Romney paints himself s a businessman and he’s going to run the nation like a business.

This means cities like Lynn will be in big trouble if Romney wins.

With President Obama comes the implied understanding about life that cities like Lynn need all the aid they can get as so many of its residents are poor.

Obama cares about that. Romney doesn’t.

That’s part of the difference between the two men.