Upstate housing doing well nationally

Upstate counties issued fewer residential building permits in 2007, with builders generally slowing the torrid pace of construction they set the previous two years.

A Knoxville, Tenn.-based company that tracks residential building trends said there were 34,780 permits issued in the Upstate last year, compared with 40,877 in 2006.

Dale Akins, president of The Market Edge, called the numbers "relatively good" compared with the rest of the country. Parts of California, Florida, and Kentucky are down as much as 50 percent in residential building activity, he said.

The 2007 numbers show that the Upstate market is moving back "to a normal production level that actually meets demand," Akins said.

Greenville, for example, had an 18.6 percent drop in building permits last year. But that follows a spike of more than 20 percent in 2005 and a 3.8 percent increase in 2006.

"If this was 2005, and we were looking at 2003 and 2004 totals only, it would be the best year ever for housing starts in Greenville County," Akins said. "We should be off 12 to 15 percent in all of these markets and it's carrying these trends accordingly.

"Across the board in all of our markets, with the secondary mortgage market being as weak as it is and there appears to be less buyers out there, you want to see these numbers come down. What would worry me is if we have a lot of production and there's no demand. That means we're accumulating inventory."

Michael Dey, executive vice president of the Home Builders Association of Greenville, said homebuilding has reflected the housing market in general, with 2005 and 2006 "just extraordinary years."

"We were anticipating the market and new construction to back off to a more typical level," he said. "I think (The Market Edge) report is probably pretty much on par with more of what was happening in 2002, 2003 2004, which were historic highs, but they weren't quite as high as what we saw the last couple of years."

Home sales in the Greenville market -- both new and existing -- were off slightly last year, according to Multiple Listing Service numbers. Sales totaled 10,058 in 2007, compared with 10,388 in 2006, a 3.3 percent drop.

Vicki Galloway Duke, 2008 president of the Greater Greenville Association of Realtors, said, "We're down a little bit, but certainly not by national standards.

"The Greenville market, because we've got so much new industry coming in to town and businesses opening up, we feel like we've been pretty steady. We're very enthused about 2008 and just seeing the activity in this first part of the month has been really encouraging."