According to the county Building Inspections office, in 2006, 229 new single family modular or stick built homes were constructed in Roxboro and the county. In 2007, the figure dropped to 175. So far this year, 36 new homes have been started.

Harold Kelly, who heads up the Environmental Health Division of the Person County Health Department, said his office had issued 83 permits thus far in fiscal year 2007-08, which runs from July 1 to June 30. That number is down “considerably,” he said, from fiscal 2006-07.

That year, Kelly said, his department issued 248 on-site permits for water wells and/or septic systems. If the numbers continue as they have thus far this year, Kelly projects 192 permits to be issued in 07-08.

On average, he said, he issues about 16 permits a month. That figure is down about 23 percent so far this year, according to Kelly.

The Triangle Business Journal reported last month that big developers in Raleigh and Durham are reporting better sales than the rest of the nation. Although the Triangle is not “the go-go market of the past few years,” according to the TBJ, “industry insiders say the situation is nowhere near as dire as in other parts of the nation and that the Triangle remains a relatively strong market.”

The TBJ quoted a real estate analyst as saying that the Triangle area has a five-month oversupply of homes, whereas the rest of the United States is experiencing a 10-month lag.

The Greensboro News and Record reported in January that the housing market in the Triad area “has slowed but it’s slowed from a very high level.”

The article goes on to report that housing prices in the Greensboro area rose slightly, about 2.5 percent, last year when, nationally, prices were down by 3.3 percent.

Kelly said the Environmental Health Division here had issued “a lot of” on-site permits in 2007 “where there’s not a building on the lots. The permits were issued,” he said, “but the houses were not built.”

But, Kelly added, “People are still, once in a while, doing subdivisions.”

The number of permits going through his office could change quickly, Kelly said, if a couple of new subdivisions were to pop up.