Greater Wilmington’s housing market is showing signs of recovery, albeit slow and steady Donna Girardot, executive officer of the Wilmington-Cape Fear Home Builders Association, said Friday.

“I’m cautiously optimistic, but all signs are pointing to a slow but steady recovery,” Girardot said. “Conditions in the housing market look much better now than at the beginning of 2012.”

Girardot was the guest speaker during the Cape Fear Commercial Real Estate Women January Luncheon event Friday at the Pine Valley Country Club.

The business organization serves as a networking and professional group for women affiliated with the commercial and residential real estate industries in the Lower Cape Fear regions. Members include commercial brokers, Realtors, mortgage officers, architects, engineers and banking executives.

Girardot said the region’s housing market continues to move from a buyer’s market to a “neutral market.”

“The market has found its floor, is finally stabilizing and I would expect to see a gradual incline in the coming months,” she told the group. “As I said, certainly nothing spectacular but slow and steady growth.”

But despite the region’s slow resurging real estate market, Girardot said the market still showed signs of notable improvement.

New Hanover County issued 629 permits for new single-family construction in 2012 – exceeding 2011’s total of 421 permits for new single-family construction.

According a December report on construction permits by the New Hanover County Development Services Department, 75 new single-family permits were issued last month.

It was the most new single-family housing permits for December issued by the county’s development services department for new home construction since December 2006 when 80 permits were vetted. In December 2007, as the region’s housing sector began cooling, New Hanover County issued 17 permits for new single-family construction.

Girardot added that the $300,000-$500,000, as well as the $1 million market, were  showing signs of life as well. And once overheated markets, such as the Wrightsville Beach and Pleasure Island zip codes, are seeing sales activity increase.

“I’ve been in talks with a large national builder who builds in the $600,000-$1 million price point who said he was sold on the potential of the Wilmington market and was planning to enter the market,” she said.

As Girardot closed her speech, she told the group that while there was notable improvement, challenges remained.

New Hanover County continues to run out of buildable lots, finding financing to build new homes on raw land remains a major issue and because of the recession, a trade shortage of plumbers, carpenters, electricians and dry wall installers is halting rapid development in the area, she said.

“Our builders have learned to be creative when it comes to finding sources of funding in order to keep a spec or two on the ground in order to have a house to show potential buyers,” Girardot said. “They are also having to become quite competitive in finding and  securing reasonably priced, buildable lots with infrastructure in place.”