Year in Preview: Hoover could gain 400 homes in 2016

Hoover residents can expect to see more neighbors in 2016 as the city continues to see steady residential growth, the city’s planning consultant said.

Estimates by Hoover planning consultant Bob House and developers indicate that Hoover could see about 400 more houses built in the new year, adding close to 1,000 new residents.

That’s a little more than in recent years but less than the peak years when Hoover was seeing 800 to 900 single-family housing starts a year, House said.

Between 2010 and 2014, Hoover gained an estimated 3,329 residents, or about 830 people per year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

House plans to soon release updated projections for housings starts and population, but his projections from January 2015 showed that most of the growth is expected to come from the western side of town.

House predicted then that Hoover would gain about 100 houses in Ross Bridge in 2016, plus 50 in Lake Cyrus, 50 in Trace Crossings, 35 in The Preserve, 30 in Magnolia Grove off Preserve Parkway, 28 in McGill Crossings off Ross Bridge Parkway, 28 in the Kirkman Preserve off Caldwell Mill Road and others scattered in various places.

Some of those likely won’t materialize due to changes in developers’ plans, but a few homes are now expected in places they weren’t before.

For example, the 500-home Lake Wilborn development, which is the eighth sector of Trace Crossings, had been expected to start by now, but the development got delayed. House had predicted 10 houses in Lake Wilborn in 2015 and 30 in 2016, but no homes are being built yet.

U.S. Steel and Signature Homes got changes in their zoning plan approved in 2012 and 2013 but never came forward with preliminary development plans. Signature Homes President Jonathan Belcher now says they are ready to start that project back up. He expects to have preliminary plans for the first sector coming to the Hoover Planning and Zoning Commission in January or February, he said.

But there probably won’t be any new homes completed in Lake Wilborn until 2017, Belcher said.

Signature Homes is the company doing most of the home building in Hoover. Belcher said there are a lot of uncertainties in the market, but he expects his company will build about 250 houses in Hoover in 2016. That’s roughly equivalent to 2015, he said.

Ross Bridge likely will see 160-180 new homes in 2016, including more than 150 from Signature Homes, Belcher said.

Signature Homes also in the spring plans to start on the 47-lot second phase of Magnolia Grove next to The Grove shopping center, Belcher said.

On the eastern side of Hoover, Signature plans in 2016 to finish the last 40 of 163 houses in the Kirkman Preserve subdivision, Belcher said. His company also plans to start developing home sites in the recently annexed 97-lot Brock Point subdivision off Shelby County 41 next to Greystone, and a handful of homes could be occupied by the end of the year, he said.

“I think housing is still in high demand in the city of Hoover,” Belcher said. “You can see the passion for the school system. Typically, that’s the main factor to purchase a home, and Hoover’s got a great school system.”

Home construction actually hasn’t been able to keep up with the demand in Hoover because development has been much more limited in recent years than it was in the early 2000s, Belcher said.

He wishes there was more development, but he also knows a lot of people don’t want to see that, he said.