Sonoma County's battered construction industry is off to its best start in three years, but building permits remain near historic lows.
Builders pulled permits to construct 318 housing units in Sonoma County during the first six months of 2011, up 25 percent from a year ago, according to data published Monday by the Construction Industry Research Board, an industry-funded research center in Burbank.
Commercial and industrial construction is also picking up momentum. Builders initiated $146 million in non-residential projects during the first six months, also up 25 percent from a year ago.
"I hear anecdotally that there's signs of new life being breathed into the construction industry and these numbers seem to bear that out," said Keith Woods, chief executive officer at North Coast Builders Exchange, a Santa Rosa trade group.
Even so, he said, public works construction has declined this year, and builders are "not out of the woods yet."
Builders pulled permits for 274 single-family homes and 44 multi-family units during the first half, returning to levels last seen in Sonoma County in 2008.
In contrast, housing starts fell slightly in Mendocino, Lake and Marin counties during the first six months. The numbers were up slightly in Napa County.
Statewide, housing starts rose 5.7 percent during the first half to 22,888 units. The increase was driven entirely by construction of multi-family housing. In contrast, construction of single-family homes dropped 17 percent statewide from a year ago.
The Bay Area and Southern California were two regions where the number of permits increased. The Central Coast and Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys continued to report a drop in new housing units.
One company building in Sonoma County is Westwood-based KB Homes, which last weekend had about 100 people turn out to its grand opening at its Quarry Heights development in Petaluma. The company also has new developments underway in Walnut Creek, Dublin, Martinez, Hayward and Morgan Hill.
"We're expanding our footprint in markets around the Bay Area," said spokesman Craig LeMessurier.
Prices for its Stone Ridge at Quarry Heights townhomes start in the high $300,000s, LeMessurier said. The company's Sterling Hills at Quarry Heights houses begin in the mid-$400,000s.
The research board is predicting that the state's builders will construct 51,000 new houses, condos and apartments this year, up almost 14 percent from 2010. Even so, the forecast for 2011 would join those of 2008 through 2010 as the slowest years in more than four decades.
As recently as 2006, state builders pulled permits for 164,000 new homes.
In Sonoma County, builders have put up nearly 2,000 housing units a year, on average, over the last two decades. But when home prices began to tumble four years ago, so did the numbers of new permits. In 2009, builders pulled only 430 permits. Last year the number rose slightly to 464 new homes.
In the first six months of this year, Mendocino County reported 48 new home permits, compared to 64 for a year earlier. Lake County reported 12 permits, compared to 26 a year earlier.
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