There's good news and cautious news when it comes to the housing forecast for the Cape Fear region in years to come.

"The Wilmington area is seeing exponential increases in building permits, sales of new and existing homes are breaking records, and scores of new projects are popping up in the Wilmington region, all good things, all positive signs," said Cameron Moore, executive officer of the Wilmington-Cape Fear Home Builders Association, before introducing a regional expert at the 2017 Housing Forecast presentation Thursday.

WCFHBA in partnership with Cape Fear Realtors hosted the event Thursday morning at The Terraces on Sir Tyler. Moore made his remarks before introducting Jay Colvin, regional director for the Carolinas for Metrostudy, a Hanley Wood company that maintains a comprehensive database of housing market information. 

Colvin provided some insights into the current housing market and gave some predictions about positives and negatives to watch out for during 2017 and beyond.

On a positive note, consumer confidence is higher in the region, in an area where typically consumers have felt good about their present situations but more negative about what's to come.

"Now we're feeling actually more positive about our future expectations than the national level," Colvin said.

Job growth remains a siginifcant factor. While the Wilmington area added jobs last year and didn't lose significant amounts in important categories, leisure and hospitality showed the biggest gains.

"Those folks don't tend to be big homebuyers. A small percentage of those buy homes," he said.

The educational and health services and professional business services categories, however, gained jobs by 4 percent over the past year, and employees in those areas do tend to be homebuyers, Colvin said.

But those in the real estate industry will need to keep an eye on pricing and income levels as major influences on the area's most marketable housing products. Colvin said the middle to median income group in the area will continue to grow as more people retire and younger residents start careers, and that will likely have a bigger impact on the real estate market moving forward.

Some existing homeowners who might traditionally have opted to buy bigger or new homes are choosing instead to wait or to remodel their houses, especially those bought at the height of the market that are still at least $20,000 underwater, Colvin said.

"Remodeling acitvity is going through the roof nationally," he said. Colvin said he and other Metrostudy experts see the remodeling market continuing to be strong for at least the next three to five years.

Other challenges for the local housing market include lot shortages, land development costs and the potential for a growing shortage of skilled labor.

He said Metrostudy does not expect the housing market or finance sector to drive the next economic downturn. Nationally, around 2019 and 2020 is the current estimate year for gains in housing starts to slow or moderate, Colvin said.

Metrostudy also expects interest rates to be in the 4.75 to 4.9 percent range by the end of the year, he said.