City and county officials estimate 3,315 houses will be built in Shelby County this year. That figure compares to 2,307 in 2005 and 2,174 in 2004.

Across the Birmingham-Hoover metro area, "the growth is not going to be as strong as we've seen in the last two to three years," said Buck Barnhill, chief executive of Southern Exposure Information, which tracks housing starts. "Instead of being fantastic, it's going to be marvelous. It's the difference between 24-karat gold and 18-karat gold."

He predicts the area's homebuilding will remain steady for the next five years.

"There are an awful lot of new subdivisions, especially in Shelby County," Barnhill said.

Four of Shelby's largest cities - Alabaster, Pelham, Helena and Calera - will be home to 1,425 of the new houses this year.

But the growth that has long been common to Pelham and Helena is beginning to spill over to smaller cities such as Montevallo and towns such as Harpersville, a trend Barnhill predicts will continue in the coming years.

Eventually, the hottest growth spots will fill up and cool down, Barnhill said.

But not for a while. Pelham and Helena both have massive housing developments, Ballantrae and the three Hillsboros, that won't be finished for years. Those developments together could account for almost 8,000 houses in the next two decades.

Meanwhile, Harpersville Mayor Theoangelo Perkins said there could be as many as 90 new houses in his town this year. Among other developments, a subdivision with 65 houses has been approved by the town's zoning board.

"A lot of the growth in Shelby County was slow getting out here," Perkins said of the town along U.S. 280. "It's kind of taking off now."

Ray Hamilton, development services manager for Shelby County, said the unincorporated parts of the county, combined with some of its smaller cities and towns - Chelsea, Columbiana, Indian Springs Village, Westover, Wilsonville and Wilton - could have as many as 1,500 new houses in 2006.

Sewer line:
Hamilton said a 15-mile sewer line serving Westover, Harpersville and Vincent might encourage development along the county's eastern section of U.S. 280, which has been slow to see the kind of residential growth that much of the county has experienced.

Montevallo could have 300 houses built in 2006, according to Catherine Legg, the city's zoning official. After years of relatively slow growth, the city appears to be on the verge of a boom.

Growth, however, has not yet slowed in Shelby County's larger cities.

Alabaster City Councilman Tommy Ryals said the city expects about 300 new homes next year, a number the city has tried to hit annually in recent years. He said there's a lot of building around Shelby County 17, off Smokey Road, and more houses are expected in Grandeview Estates off Butler Road.

In Calera, City Zoning Official Mike Kent expects more than 500 new houses in 2006.

South Calera has not developed as quickly as the north side, Kent said, but that will start to change this spring or summer, when the Shiloh Creek subdivision on U.S. 31 is finished.

"Developers are still hunting land. There's not a week that goes by that Chris (Pappas, city engineer) and I don't meet with a developer looking for land to build on," Kent said. News staff writers Malcomb Daniels, Keysha Drexel and Marienne Thomas-Ogle contributed to this report. jgray@bhamnews.com