By NEAL WAGNER / City Editor

Pelham fared better in the new home building market in 2011 than it did in 2010, but the numbers are still a far cry from several years ago, said Pelham Revenue Director Mike Morgan.

With a few days left in 2011, Morgan said the city had issued 64 new home building permits for the year. The total was up slightly from 2010, which saw 55 new home permits.

Morgan said the numbers are trending in the right direction, but are nowhere near where they were in 2007.

“Before the recession, we were doing between 500-700 a year,” Morgan said. “And it was like that for 10 or 15 years.

“It’s picked up a little bit, but we’ve still got a ways to go to get back to where we were,” Morgan added. “It’s all because of the economy.”

The majority of the city’s housing growth over the past few years has come in the Ballantrae neighborhood, which is near the city’s eastern limits.

Ballantrae’s master plan calls for 8,000 new homes, and the new homes built in the past few years have been “chipping away at that number,” Morgan said, noting most developers over the past few years have not built homes before securing buyers.

About five years ago, the city was also issuing about 40 new commercial building permits per year, Morgan said. This year, Pelham issued one.

Despite the dramatic slump in building, Morgan said the city is in solid financial shape.

“We are staying in the black. We are not in the red or anywhere close. We are doing well for this economy,” Morgan said. “We’ve cut back and been good stewards of the taxpayers’ money.

“We’ve seen an upward trend in growth and taxes, but we are definitely not back where we were in 2007,” Morgan said.