After experiencing an agonizing downturn in the housing market over the past few years, Cobb County Georgia is showing signs of a comeback.  This is great news for vitality of the local economy.

Although residential home building is still far below the success it enjoyed just a few years ago, the month to month figures are slowly showing some improvement.

Housing permits issued in Cobb County in July are down 15 percent from those issued in July of 2008, but July’s 40 permits show a 38 percent increase from June’s dismal 29 permits issued.

The gap between 2008 and 2009’s figures also seem to be narrowing, as July 2009’s 40 permits issued and July 2008’s 47 permits issued show a much greater improvement than June’s figures of 29 permits in 2009 and 66 in 2008.

The 2009 year to date figures still show that the housing market has a long way to go, though, as 2009’s year to date figures are down 60 percent from 2008’s figures and 93 percent from those of 2004.

In a city and county breakdown, unincorporated Cobb county issued 35 single-family building permits in the month of July, while Smyrna issued four, Powder Springs issued one and the cities of Acworth, Kennesaw and Marietta failed to issue any permits. The year to date total for 2009 comes to 217 permits, which falls short of 2008’s 539 and extremely below 2004’s 3,050 permits.

Most of the permits issued in 2009 are from unincorporated Cobb county, resulting in a total of 149 permits thus far. Acworth has issued 33 permits, while Smyrna has issued 27, Powder Springs has issued seven and Marietta has issued one. The cities of Kennesaw and Austell still have not issued any new housing permits this year.

 Yes the recovery will be slow for Cobb County as well as for the rest of the nation, but any glimmer of good news is more than welcome.  Let’s hope it becomes a trend!