Did you hear a boom?

If so, it may have come from the local housing market.

According to a handful of local developers, the Bay Area has been virtually under siege for the last two years by local, state and national developers who’ve been gobbling up as much local real estate as they can get their mitts on.

“This last year has been the ‘year of the frenzy,’” said Wayne Schrunk, the owner of Wayne Schrunk Construction in North Bend. He’s been in the local construction business since 1966, and said he hasn’t seen a land grab like this in decades.

His competitors agree.

“I’ve turned down more work in the last two years than I have done in the last 10 years,” said Gary Hargens of Hargens Construction Company of Coos Bay.

While Joel Sweet of S & K Property Development has heard the naysayers talk of the blight and pessimism enveloping the South Coast he doesn’t subscribe to the theory.

“A lot of people don’t realize what is going on around here,” he said. “There’s an influx of people with money who want a good life.”

Sweet said he and his business partner, Danny Kyelberg, as well as their competitors, can barely keep up with the demand for building upscale homes, from $300,000 and up — especially houses with a view of the Pacific Ocean.

Sweet and Kyelberg, relative newcomers to the housing development business, sold their first home to a California couple who saw the home on the Internet and who put in an offer before it was done.

“It sold as soon as the cabinets were put in,” Sweet said.

Two years later, the duo branched out, buying 10 acres of land just south of the North Bend Airport where they’re putting in about 30 new homes. The high-end homes, on 10,000-square-foot lots will sell for more than $400,000. Another development features homes ranging in size from 1,850 to 2,600 square feet that sold for between $300,000 and $500,000.

More than 200 homes in all, including those of Schrunk, Sweet and Kyelberg have been built, or will be built soon, just south of the North Bend Airport.

The buzz about the Bay Area is so real, Sweet said, he doesn’t even need to advertise.

“I don’t even know how these people know about this place,” Sweet said. “They’re coming from everywhere. It seems to be a destination point.”

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For Ron Opitz, the executive director of the South Coast Development Council, whose mission is, in part, to bolster the image of the area to lure industry here, that success is music to his ears.

It’s one of the reasons he can feel confident using words like “recovery” when he talks about the local economy. But with the land grab came skyrocketing property costs, which correlates directly to high-priced homes. As a result, Opitz is challenging builders to consider building row homes, lofts, condominiums, town homes or duplexes so that “ownership is achievable” for people where the average salary hovers around $30,000.

“It’s only through ownership, not renting, when residents build up equity,” Opitz said. “We are obligated to present opportunities to do that.”

Furthermore, beginning in 2002, more people are moving into the county than leaving — the first time that’s happened in nearly 20 years (see graphic).

But builders are saying that isn’t possible.

The problem for developers is that the initial price of the lot dictates the cost of construction — and thus the price of the home. They need to recoup what they put into their investments. While Sweet knows there’s a demand for first-time new home buyers, there’s no way he can afford to sell homes for $225,000, he mentioned.

“The cost of the building and the price of amenities that people want are driving price,” Sweet said. “Some people think it is totally outrageous, and others think it is the best deal they have ever seen.”

Coos County Commissioner Nikki Whitty, who represents the county on the SCDC board of directors also is pushing for the creation of more affordable homes for young married couples and workers.

“What kind of a salary do you have to have in order to be able to afford a $250,000 home?” Whitty asked frustratingly. “Our young workers can’t afford to buy a home.”

For Opitz, the prospect of the local economy re-igniting with one of several tentative major deals taking hold lends even more credence to the need for more affordable homes. Cheaper homes could simultaneously draw in more businesses and house the estimated hundreds of specialized workers necessary to complete a project like Jordan Cove, a liquefied natural gas facility on the North Spit that could take two years to build. The projects have the potential to add to a new economy where suddenly there is an influx of 200 to more than 1,000 workers.

“What if this were to happen?” Opitz said. “We need to be ready for this.”

Opitz wants the builders to begin thinking about the area’s new economy, sustained not by fishing and lumber, but a more diverse economy kept churning by retail, tourism, agriculture, manufacturing and industry.

But Hargens, who’s been building homes in the area for 30 years, and who’s also convinced that a major industry will start up here soon, said he won’t be the one initiating the building of row homes.

“I can’t afford to do that,” he said, knowing full well the demand is there.

“There are a whole lot of things coming to the area that will require ... lower- to middle-income homes,” he predicted. “If we don’t have that available, or see that be created, we will lose some opportunity here.”

If he had the money and the work force, Hargens said he could contemplate embarking on what Opitz and Whitty want. But since neither of those criteria is met, he predicts SCDC’s challenge will be met by an outside developer.

“There will be a developer that will come in here and they will build 200 or 300 row homes for low- to middle-income wage earners,” Hargens said.

Whitty said both bankers and developers are likely reluctant to stick their necks out too far because they remember when the bottom fell out of the real estate market in the 1980s.

“People are leery,” she said. “They remember those days.”

Still, she said, she’s part of a state work group pushing for coming up with creative ways for more affordable housing.

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For now, the developers are basking in their success and toiling in their work more than ever before.

Along with some local customers, Sweet’s homebuyers hail from Washington, Mesa, Ariz.; Marin County in California; and Colorado. Schrunk said more than 60 percent of those moving into Sunset Crest Estates, his development of about 100 homes near the airport, are retirees from out of state.

Many of them are equity-rich, people who have taken advantage of the land, which was once cheap. Schrunk and Sweet said just two years ago, lots were selling for $15,000 to $20,000. Those same lots, if they can be found, now are selling for $90,000 — a pittance for what a Californian can sell their property for.

Sweet, for one, a lifelong resident of the area wonders what took everyone so long to fall in love with the area.

“The Baby Boomers are retiring and what do they want to do? Fish, crab and clam,” Sweet said. “They can do all that right here. If they stick around in Southern California or San Francisco, they will have to spend at least 40 minutes on the freeway. Here, you can be fishing on the Elk River in 40 minutes.”