Building permits for new homes in Warren County have slowed comparably for the first half of the year, but not as severely as surrounding counties.

For the first six months, 316 single family permits were issued by the county, compared to 939 in 2007 and 591 in 2008. Permit numbers for Franklin were not available.

Dan Dressman, executive director of the Home Builders Association of Greater Cincinnati, said Warren County has fared better in the slowing economy. Statistics comparing May 2008 to this year showed that here new home building is down 9.5 percent. Hamilton County is off a whopping 36.9 percent and Butler County is down 19.6 percent.

Hamilton Twp. remains the fastest growing community in the county. If the township stays on pace for the next five months, it will only be 27 new single homes down from 2007. To keep up with the growth, the township instituted impact fees in 2007 — the issue is being litigated in court — but people keep building there. Trustee Becky Ehling said it’s understandable.

“It’s a nice place to live,” she said. “People want to live in this area and even though we have imposed the impact fees, everybody said it was going to staunch growth and people are realizing with the impact fees we’re trying to have a better place.”

In Mason, chief building official Greg Nichols said the housing market has declined over the past five or six years because there haven’t been any major annexations and the price for land and new construction has skyrocketed. The last major new home development was approved in 2007 and it called for 425 luxury homes to be built along Mason-Morrow-Milgrove Road.

The two builders, Rhein Interests and Dixon Builders, planned two new subdivisions, but today cornfields still are standing there.

None of the major builders in the area have been forced out of business, partly because they have reinvented their business plans said Dressman.

“I think the majority are still hanging on and most of them have really learned how to diversify their business model so they are not relying, particularly if they were custom builders, just on new construction,” he said. “They are doing more remodeling, they are doing small commercial build-outs.”

Dressman said the builders are using this downturn to unload the inventory of lots and houses that have been fallow for a couple years. However, in Lebanon, the city issued more residential building permits to date than they did all last year, according to Assistant City Manager Scott Brunka.

“We had an inventory of undeveloped lots within existing subdivisions,” Brunka said. “I guess I’m assuming the price point for building a new house on those existing lots triggered some activity in the market.”

The drop in building permits hasn’t just affected the building industry, according to Warren County budget director Tiffany Zindel. She said building fees are down about 6 percent, which translates to about $130,000.

Dressman said he hopes the industry is nearing the bottom of the freefall.

“I don’t think anybody knows. The federal government is throwing spaghetti at the wall right now and seeing how much of sticks,” he said. This is kind of uncharted waters for our industry.”