The whine of electric saws and the rhythmic pounding of hammers that had become familiar sounds in Villa Rica the past 10 years continue to be missing from the city’s background noise, and the uncomfortable trend doesn’t appear to be turning around anytime soon.

Only two building permits were issued in Villa Rica in June, one for a sun room addition and the other for a pavilion as part of the amenities package at Brandywine subdivision. During this calendar year, there have been a total of 12 new permits issued — mainly bank renewals of foreclosed properties in Carroll County.

“We used to get a lot more than that in a month,” Building Inspector James Moran said. “Here we are seven months in now; it’s pretty bad. I’d be happy with two or three a month right now.”

There had been zero new permits issued through June on the Douglas County side of the city.

Moran said even the trend earlier this year of residential homeowners getting permits for remodeling jobs to add value to their homes has dried up. Most of the inspections he’s had have been for interior build outs for commercial properties, but even those are dwindling.

In making revenue projections for the fiscal year — April 1-March 31 — city officials estimated that there would be about 25 new building permits issued this year, but they optimistically crossed their fingers hoping for more. Recent revenue numbers show that general fund revenues are coming in nearly 10 percent below budget thus far, about $110,000, mainly due to delinquent property taxes. Building permit fees and related construction fees have totaled only $5,628 through the first three months of the fiscal year.

“We had a couple months there where we had little spurts, but it hasn’t been encouraging,” City Manager Larry Wood said.

Community Development Director Taurus Freeman explained that when the fiscal year projections are made developers are contacted and encouraged to share their plans for the upcoming year. Since those projections are spread out over a year’s time, city officials are optimistic construction will begin to pick up as the fiscal year moves forward.

“When we did our forecast for our budget, we did contact a lot of developers and asked them how many homes they envisioned would be built for our fiscal year,” Freeman said. “A lot of them responded zero, however we did have a few who responded that they are still building in Villa Rica and they have continued to gather building permits, though probably not with as fast a rate as we would like. We understand they will spread it out over the course of the year. Commercial-wise, we have just recently slowed up, but things are definitely looking up for the future.”

Many point to the high number of foreclosed properties on the market as the culprit behind the lack of new construction. Once that inventory of existing structures is depleted, it is expected that new construction will begin again in earnest.

“Once our foreclosures in the city have dwindled down to a reasonable size, hopefully new home construction will have picked up, but it’s just a marketing trend right now,” Freeman said. “The United States was in one similar to this that occurred in the 1980s and speaking with a lot of developers they say this is a trend that happens every 15-20 years, so this isn’t something that isn’t all that uncommon.”