Home construction came to a virtual halt in Fox Valley this summer

A home currently under construction in The Reserve of St. Charles subdivision is being built by John Hall Homes. (Sandy Bressner – sbressner@kcchronicle.com)

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As recently as three years ago, John Hall Jr. didn’t think he’d be this happy to sell six homes.

But after the last two years, Hall, vice president of John Hall Homes in St. Charles, has rarely been more relieved.

“This will be the first year in two years that we’re going to be turning a profit,” Hall said. “So this, for us, is very good news.”

Across the region, many other builders are looking for similar signs of relief.

For years, builders had more work than they could handle. But the industry-wide slowdown that began in 2008 continued into 2009, stymieing new home construction in the Tri-Cities and nearby communities.

Data obtained from local municipal building departments shows that for the period of April through August, just four permits were issued for the construction of new homes in the Tri-Cities, Elburn and Sugar Grove, combined.

Two of those four permits were issued in the city of Geneva, said Geneva Building Commissioner Chuck Lencioni.

“It has been very slow around here for most of this year,” Lencioni said.

Elburn recorded one permit, pulled in April. And St. Charles issued one permit, to Hall for the construction of a home on Fox Grove Drive.

Neither Batavia nor Sugar Grove permitted a single home from April to August, city officials said.

For the year, Batavia has recorded just two permits for new single-family home construction, records show.

Even amid the malaise of 2008, business was far more brisk.

Overall in 2008, Batavia issued 12 permits for new home construction. St. Charles issued 20 new home permits.

Geneva issued three permits for the period of April to August 2008, Lencioni said.

Elburn alone had permitted five new homes during the summer of 2008, said Jim Stran, Elburn’s village building commissioner.

And the 2008 numbers were themselves a far cry from the activity observed in the area as recently as 2007, when 25 new homes were built in Batavia, 30 in St. Charles, 48 in Sugar Grove and 49 in Elburn.

Stran attributed the halt of new construction entirely to the continued sluggishness of the national and local economies.

“It is really, really rough out there,” Stran said.

But Hall, Stran and Lencioni all said they expect much better things in coming months.

Stran said home builders and developers seem to have found buyers for their existing inventory of new homes in Elburn’s newer subdivisions.

Lencioni said his office has experienced an increasing number of inquiries from interested builders and homeowners interested in adding large additions to their houses.

“The developers are talking a lot about starting things back up,” Lencioni said.

And Hall said in the last few months, he has pre-sold six homes in the area.

“We had been going on just two sales in the year before that, so this is much, much better,” Hall said.

He said much of the renewed activity is linked to lower prices and incentives like the $8,000 first-time homebuyer tax credit, which is drawing many buyers into the market.

Hall said he and other builders are lobbying heavily to persuade Congress to extend the tax credit beyond its scheduled expiration in November, and then to expand it to include other types of homebuyers.

He said a move like that would provide a boost to builders like himself, and help to restart the housing market.

“I don’t think we’ll ever get back to where we were,” Hall said.

“But give us two to three years of steady growth and let’s see what will happen.”