Two subdivisions approved unanimously last week by New Hanover County officials are further evidence of an increase this year in developer activity as more builders need lots, a senior planner said Thursday.
Site plans for Tralee Place, a 30-lot subdivision near the 6500 block of Lipscomb Drive in southern New Hanover County, and Cottage Grove, a 24-lot subdivision near the 200 block of Middle Sound Loop Road, were approved Aug. 27 by the county’s Technical Review Committee.
The request for Tralee Place approval came from Lipscomb Road Development Inc., and the Cottage Grove request came from Logan Developers Inc.
The projects can be counted as examples of what seems to be a trend. Sam Burgess, senior planner for the New Hanover County planning and inspections department, has compiled statistics showing a significant increase this year in residential activity in unincorporated areas of the county compared to the same period last year. He said from Jan. 1 to June 30, the county approved 76 plans involving 2,558 lots while for the same period in 2013, the county approved 68 plans for a total of 953 lots.
“Now that that recorded lot inventory has come down, your demand has actually increased, which has resulted in these new site plans coming in for review in order to create new lots for builders to purchase,” Burgess said.
Construction activity has followed the rise in plan submissions.
“Permit trends are tracking upwards. We’re definitely starting to see more and more starts,” said Cameron Moore, CEO of Business Alliance for a Sound Economy. “That’s a good indicator from an economy standpoint.”
Burgess said he will be compiling the same statistics for the period of July 1 through Dec. 31, at some point sharing those with county officials as positive signs for the local economy.
As land becomes scarce, real estate professionals expect to see an uptick in development of smaller subdivisions, such as Tralee Place and Cottage Grove.
In New Hanover County, “you’ll never see big subdivisions again, but you will see some that are 15-, 20-, 25-home subdivisions,” Jeff Sweyer, owner of Century 21 Sweyer and Associates, said at a broker discussion hosted by the Wilmington-Cape Fear Home Builders Association’s sales and marketing council at the beginning of August.
