Sean C. Morgan
Residential construction is picking up in Sweet Home as four subdivisions have begun or resumed construction in the past year.
The subdivision on the old Langmack Airport, between Airport Road and Long Street east of 43rd Avenue, has its first two homes under construction.
When those first two homes are sold, said Building Official Mike Remesnick, the builder plans to begin work on four more. The subdivision has 34 lots on the west end of the old airport. The east end has not been platted yet.
Mimosa Circle has had eight houses built in the last year or so, with another planned for this year, Remesnick said. That subdivision, located off 49th Avenue, is almost full.
Six lots remain, he said. Two of those are in preparation for building.
A 27-lot subdivision, 37th Circle, off Green River Road, has eight under way, with four pre-sold, Remesnick said. Three homes had been completed previously in the subdivision.
Remesnick said the builder expects to finish the subdivision by the end of next summer.
Canyon Creek, south of the intersection of 10th and Alder, has had several lots sold, and people have been talking about building, Remesnick said. But there hasn’t been any movement in that subdivision during the past year.
Duck Hollow, a subdivision in the 4000 block of Long Avenue started in 1996, has about a dozen lots left out of 72 and has had no activity in the past year.
The 1996 34-lot subdivision around Live Oak and 46th has eight lots left out of 34, and two are in the planning phase.
Since the recent recession, “we had one really low year,” Remesnick said. That was about two years ago, but “we’re starting to see some pickup. The (Willamette) Valley is just hopping. Everybody can’t keep up.”
County figures indicate that building permits are a fraction of what they were in 2007, before the recession hit Linn County hard. Residential and building permits are creeping upward county-wide, according to the state Employment Department, which monitors such trends.
“Trends in the number of building permits have flattened out over the past several months,” said William Summers, a workforce analyst with the department. “The first six months of the year have the largest cities (in Linn, Benton and Lincoln counties) at less than 50 percent of the 2007 rate.”
Housing values are up $20,000 in the past year, Remsnick said, based on what he’s reading and hears from real estate agents and others in the housing industry.
The same goes for Sweet Home, he said. The houses on 37th Circle had been for sale at $149,000, but that price has gone up to $159,000.
“It’s just the economy’s coming back,” Remesnick said. People have been living together, with multiple families under a single roof for so long, as they start getting places of their own, “by 2018 we’ll have such a big shortage, we won’t be able to keep up.”
He added that Sweet Home, as of Friday, has a lot of houses for sale, but just four are new.