Editor's Note: This story was updated to correct a quote from Howard Penton of Penton Construction.

While the local market for home building is healthier in some ways this year, ongoing challenges include a shortage of first-time buyers and labor, building industry professionals said Wednesday.

“Speaking for my company, our sales are up about up five percent from last year,” and prices are increasing a little bit, said Shawn Horton, owner of Trusst Builder Group and a real estate broker. “That’s a healthy number.”

Horton was one of five panelists who presented a local perspective during a Builder Breakfast Roundtable hosted by the sales and marketing council of the Wilmington-Cape Fear Home Builders Association. 

Horton added that, from his perspective, sales could be stabilizing after a bigger spike in 2013. “The year we were back was last year when our sales were up about 42 percent from 2012,” said Horton, who said much of his business comes from the active adult-empty nester market, those retiring to Wilmington from northern states.

The worse the winters get in the northern United States, the better the market for those builders catering to those escaping from it, a panelist said.

“The retiree market is just going gangbusters,” said Robin Hackney, one of the founders of Horizon Homes, a custom home building firm. “They want out of the taxes; they want out of the weather; and they are coming in droves.”

But the home-building industry as a whole needs more first-time homebuyers, said panelist Randy Johnson of Builders FirstSource. While in the past Americans have seen owning a home as a goal, “I’m not sure that the new generation coming up is really focused in on that.”

He said he thinks WCHBA and the Wilmington Regional Association of Realtors need to encourage first-time buyers. “We need people buying houses. We also need jobs…we need some industry here, manufacturing of some sort.”

Panelist John Lancaster, of Venture Homes of Coastal Carolina, agreed that jobs are an important factor.

“I think the biggest problem is kids coming out of college today – they can’t find jobs,” Lancaster said. “They can’t find jobs that pay enough to enable them to go out and buy a home.”

Federal regulations such as those enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency have pushed industry overseas, Johnson said, using nails as an example. “They make it in China and ship it over here for less than we can [manufacture nails] here,” Johnson said. “And we have as a country pushed away industry altogether and said basically 'we don’t want you here,' and it’s going to take a push of people like us to say, ‘What do we need to do to get industry back to the United States?’ because that’s what we’ve got to have. We’ve got to get people working.”  

Other kinds of societal shifts are contributing to what seems to be a trend of younger adults choosing to rent rather than buy, another panelist said.

“People are getting married later if they get married. People are getting divorced earlier,” and people are waiting to have children longer, leading to more single-person households, said Howard Penton of Penton Construction.

Labor costs are rising and finding the labor, skilled and unskilled, to build new homes has become a difficulty despite some recovery in the residential industry, panelists said.

“Right now, it’s almost impossible to get siding people, to get framers,” Lancaster said. “They’ll tell you they can’t find labor to hire right now.”

He said he thinks some contractors might be hesitant to hire a lot of workers right now because of the potential for uncertainty in the market, an assertion Hackney agreed with.

“Everybody got hurt in the downturn right on down to the electrician and the plumber, and [contractors are] just too scared to hire any more people,” she said.

Penton said, “If you didn’t have an existing relationship with your subcontractors and you were not able to feed them at least something during the slow times, I would hate to have to start again right now and go out looking for some new framers because they don’t know how you act as a builder, they don’t know your pay policies, your withholding policies, how tough you are, will you pay on time, are you stable.”

The cost of building materials is also increasing.

“Prices will continue to go up on non-commodity items and then petroleum items will continue to rise. There’s been a number of price increases throughout the year,” Johnson said. He used several examples, including a 10 percent increase in the prices of interior doors.  “I suspect you’re going to see nothing but rising costs going forward.”

Rising costs mean rising demand, Johnson said. “Those are good problems to be facing,” he said.