  We have studied the X-ray nuclear activity of 187 nearby (distance < 15 Mpc)
galaxies observed with Chandra/ACIS. We found that 86 of them have a point-like
X-ray core, consistent with an accreting black hole (BH). We argue that the
majority of them are nuclear BHs, rather than X-ray binaries. The fraction of
galaxies with an X-ray detected nuclear BH is higher (~60 per cent) for
ellipticals and early-type spirals (E to Sb), and lower (~30 per cent) for
late-type spirals (Sc to Sm). There is no preferential association of X-ray
cores with a large-scale bar; in fact, strongly barred galaxies appear to have
slightly lower detection fraction and luminosity for their nuclear X-ray
sources, compared with non-barred or weakly barred galaxies of similar Hubble
types. The cumulative luminosity distribution of the nuclear sources in the
0.3-8 keV band is a power-law with slope ~-0.5, from ~2 x 10^{38} erg/s to
~10^{42} erg/s. The Eddington ratio is lower for ellipticals (L_{X}/L_{Edd} ~
10^{-8}) and higher for late-type spirals (up to L_{X}/L_{Edd} ~ 10^{-4}), but
in all cases, the accretion rate is low enough to be in the
radiatively-inefficient regime. The intrinsic NH is generally low, especially
for the less luminous sources: there appear to be no Type-2 nuclear BHs at
luminosities <~ 10^{39} erg/s. The lack of a dusty torus or of other sources of
intrinsic absorption (e.g., an optically-thick disk wind) may be directly
related to the lack of a standard accretion disk around those faint nuclear
BHs. The fraction of obscured sources increases with the nuclear BH luminosity:
2/3 of the sources with L_{X} > 10^{40} erg/s have a fitted NH > 10^{22}
cm^{-2}. This is contrary to the declining trend of the obscured fraction with
increasing luminosities, observed in more luminous AGN and quasars.
