County’s building-permit rate slows down

According to Culpeper County government records, building permits are being issued, though at a substantially slower rate than in years past.

In fiscal year 2006-07, the building office issued 379 residential building permits and 130 for commercial projects. In FY 07-08, those figures dropped, respectively, to 167 and 102.

For FY 08-09, ending June 30, 54 residential building permits were issued in the town and county and another 52 for commercial projects.

The biggest new construction projects taking place in Culpeper, according to the building department, are: Martin’s Grocery (next to Target), local developer Greg Yates’ 56-unit Mulberry Condos at the end of West Sunset Lane, and Waters Place (the rehab of a 1920s downtown warehouse into a 22-condo complex).

A recent town government list of residential developments still under construction reported several hundred houses remain on the books in 10 subdivisions, though it will likely be awhile before those materialize.

Town housing project
As for the town of Culpeper’s venture into housing recovery — Town Council recently approved applying for $1.9 million in federal funds to purchase, rehab and resell eight foreclosed homes — reaction is mixed.

Trey Austin, associate broker with Austin Realty in Warrenton, serves on the project’s management team. He disputed claims that the program would compete with the private sector.

“Absolutely not,” he said, adding that homes the town is eyeing have been sitting vacant for a while and are a blight. “This program is a tool that could work if it is determined it is needed.”

Loan officer Dustyn Deal, who works with Mason Dixon in Culpeper, was not as sold.

“I think the town is trying to save face for letting all these track builders come in, build all these houses and now everybody’s gone,” he said. “It seems like a day late and a dollar short to me.”

Carol Coleman, a senior loan officer at Mason Dixon whose husband Chip serves on Town Council, sees where the program might work.

She doubted, however, the requirement that at least two of the eight homes be sold to families in a lower-income bracket — for example, a family of four with an annual income of $34,950.

“If they have good credit, they qualify for about a $112,000 mortgage,” Carol Coleman said.

“There are some things out there, but not in Lakeview, Meadows or Highpoint,” she said of the targeted neighborhoods.