APPLETON — At the height of the local building boom, Kirk Vanden Heuvel, owner of Absolute Plastering, had a crew of 10 working six long days each week.

Click here to sign up for news, weather and sports text alerts.

Five years later, he has five employees on the payroll averaging a bit less than 40 hours of work per week.

Still, Vanden Heuvel, 45, of Appleton, who started the firm in 1999, considers himself "pretty lucky," considering the contemporary state of the homebuilding industry here and just about everywhere else.

Single-family home construction permit activity in the Fox Cities area through June fell 31 percent compared to the first half of last year, the Valley Home Builders Association reports.

"There are a lot of people (in the building trades) who are struggling, and the competition for jobs is very cut-throat," Vanden Heuvel said.

The numbers show the fall from the peak of the building craze is continuing here, and the same is elsewhere. Single-family home construction during the comparable period fell 37 percent in Wisconsin and 39 percent in the United States, according to Census data compiled by the National Association of Home Builders.

"I think the Fox Valley has kind of hit its bottom," he said. "I know a lot of people who expect things to start turning next year. First, we're going to have to run through all the existing homes already on the market."

The glut of housing includes some still left over from the home-building binge that petered out a few years ago, and a growing wave of foreclosures. RealtyTrac reports 1,406 properties in the region comprised of Outagamie, Winnebago, Waupaca and Calumet counties were the subjects of new foreclosure filings through the first half of this year. That's up 41 percent from the same period last year.

And as the surplus of existing homes rises, the need to build large numbers of new ones falls.

"I would say it's easier for most people to buy a house than it is to build one right now," Vanden Heuvel said.

The slowdown in building has thinned the ranks of building contractors, and forced many that remain to scale back. The Wisconsin Builders Association's membership now stands at "around 7,000," down from its peak of about 8,200 in 2007, said Annie Rubens, its communications director.

The Valley Home Builders Association counts about 800 company members, down from more than 1,000 in 2007, said its president Scott Murphy, the owner of Silvercrest Homes of Kaukauna.

"(What) you're seeing is some of the bigger builders cutting their staffs, trying to tighten up the reins a little bit," Murphy said. "That's just the state of the economy right now."

Homebuilding will return in earnest when the economy returns to life, but it may be a slow process on both accounts, he said.

"The biggest thing we're fighting right now is the lack of a consumer confidence in the marketplace," Murphy said. And the banks have really tightened up the strings. Obviously, the more the banks are willing to loan out, the more building that can happen."

"The cost of building homes has dipped a touch, and a lot of that's a reflection of the labor market right now," he said.

Murphy said the association's recent Parade of Homes has spurred strong traffic in featured subdivisions and calls for information, but would-be buyers remain cautious. The timing isn't right just yet, Murphy said.

"I know a lot of builders out there with a lot of customers who want to build a house, but they are waiting for their existing homes to sell," he said.

Ed Lowe: 920-993-1000, ext. 293, or elowe@postcrescent.com