Two decades ago, Perrysburg was feeling a housing boom.

Housing starts were through the roof as home buyers rushed to the northern Wood County suburb to enjoy its historic small-town feel and excellent school system. In 1996, the city had 181 housing starts.

The construction slowed in the 2001 recession, then started to recover when it hit the brakes in 2008 with the Great Recession. Tighter bank lending killed new subdivisions and spec housing ended.

But home building in Perrysburg is in a resurgence.

The city has home builder plats awaiting final approval, with just shy of 1,000 lots, said Brody Walters, Perrysburg’s zoning and planning administrator. In those, he said, the size of the plats has increased, and now there are typically 20 lots per plat, about twice the number sought just a few years ago.

It’s not a return of the heady 1990s when housing starts routinely exceeded 100 a year. But the numbers are trending upward, average home prices are rising, and surging demand is leading to a rapid addition of new plats in older subdivisions, including the upscale Sanctuary off Roachton Road.

Hawthorne, along Roachton Road just west of Fort Meigs Road, is one of a handful of new subdivisions and is exploding with housing starts.

The development opened in June and has 35 homes built or under construction, including 10 in a new 30-lot plat. It has 25 houses in its 30-lot first plat.

“It’s really exceeded our expectation, said Aaron Sloan, co-owner of Saba Home Builders Inc. of Sylvania Township, which helped develop Hawthorne with developer Mark Rich of Genoa.

“It’s starting up again,” said now-retired home builder Bill Dold, a prime force behind Perrysburg’s housing growth of the 1990s and 2000. His Dold Development Co. once built 120 homes in a year.

Ralph Slaske, owner of Perrysburg’s Slaske Building Co., started home building in 2005 and never saw the boom years. But this year, he said, looks to be his busiest.

“There’s a lot of activity right now. It’s very promising going into the winter,” Mr. Slaske said.

Things are going so well that he is in discussions with lenders about financing for a new subdivision. “I’m looking to get a development going because there’s lots of opportunity out there,” he said.

During 2008 and 2009, the number of new homes built fell into the low 40s a year. Pent-up demand led to a brief surge to 62 starts in 2010, but that quickly subsided. In 2012, it slumped to 46 starts with an average new-home price of $205,000.

In 2013, new homes jumped to 54, with an average price of $282,000. Last year, there were 59 housing starts, with an average price of $265,000. So far this year, there have been 46 housing starts, with an average price of $334,000.

Mr. Walters, Perrysburg’s planning chief, is excited about the number and size of the plats in the works.

“We’re seeing them come in more regularly than previous years,” he said. “Some subdivisions that sat for a number of years, now they’re getting their final plats.”

Mr. Sloan of Saba Home, which is building Hawthorne houses, said that during the slowdown a few years ago his firm finished Brookhaven, a subdivision off Five Point Road that opened in 2006.

“Hawthorne really has exceeded the sales rate from Brookhaven, so we’re real pleased with it,” he said.

The success of Hawthorne has given Mr. Rich and Saba Home Builders the confidence to go forward with Canterbury, a 450-lot subdivision near Hawthorne.

“Perrysburg has been good for us the past decade, and it’s just gotten stronger,” Mr. Sloan said.

The Reserve, a 15-lot subdivision by Schoen Builders of Perrysburg, is about to open. McCarthy Builders of Sylvania Township is close to launching a 13-plat complementary subdivision to the popular Riverbend subdivision off Roachton Road in Middleton Township.

Fueling the surge in home prices is renewed interest in The Sanctuary, an older multi-plat development in Perrysburg filled with larger, high-priced homes.

Chris Finkbeiner, a Danberry Co. real estate agent and the sales specialist for The Sanctuary, said this year the secluded development will sell the largest number of lots since it opened in the mid-1990s. The development will sell more than 20 lots this year at about $90,000 per lot.

“We have nine houses going up in one plat, and we’ve got another four going up in the front part,” Mr. Finkbeiner said. “Between Hawthorne, The Sanctuary, and Riverbend in Middleton Township, it is amazing right now,” he said.

The housing boom in Perrysburg has caught the eye of commercial developers.

Devonshire REIT of Whitehouse is trying to refresh its Perrysburg commercial properties — strip centers and other buildings — to add tenants that will serve the needs of an influx of homeowners.

“There’s a need for more retail in this area,” said Doug Dymarkowski, a Devonshire executive. “We have made the conscious decision to develop new retail on property we own in the Waterville area. In Perrysburg, we are trying to get more tenants for the land we own.”

Those in real estate and home building in Perrysburg see several factors favoring Perrysburg and the surrounding area as the prime draw for home buyers, such as the good school system, roads, and infrastructure.

“You can get downtown [Toledo] in just 20 minutes,” Mr. Finkbeiner said. “But it also has [Owens-Illinois], First Solar, and Dana nearby, and that's probably driving a lot of this because we get a lot of executives moving here.”

The opening of the expanded U.S. 24, the so-called Fort-to-Port highway, has made it easier to get to and from Napoleon and Defiance, allowing commuting to jobs in those places quicker.

Josh Doyle, a custom builder who works in The Sanctuary, said home building is up not only in Perrysburg but throughout northern Wood County and southern Lucas County, most likely because inventory for existing homes in those areas is down.

“Values are such that you can buy a new home for roughly the same price as you can buy an older home,” he said. “That’s why we’re creating more product right now.”

However, Jon Modene, a real estate broker at Re/​Max Masters in Perrysburg, said most first-time buyers are excluded from the home starts.

“Now, the average start price is close to $400,000, which is unheard of in this market,” he said. “Before you could do a cheap ranch home for $75 a square foot. You can’t build anything under $130 per square foot now.”

More building regulations and tighter lending usually drives up development costs and lot prices. Mr. Modene said he thinks a shortage of subcontractors to build new homes likely is the bigger reason for costlier homes.

Mr. Doyle agrees, “Material prices and subcontractors costs have all gone up so much, there’s just no way to compete in that market anymore.”

Contact Jon Chavez at: jchavez@theblade.com or 419-724-6128.

First Published October 25, 2015, 4:00 a.m.