Rising sales, falling foreclosures and more new homes under construction are making local realtors more optimistic than they’ve been in years as they enter the busy spring buying season.

“I’ve felt better about starting a year in the past five years than I do right now,” said Rick Heben, associate partner of Coldwell Banker Heritage Realtors in the Dayton region. “I think the biggest thing is we got off to such a good first quarter. If we do real good the second quarter, that momentum’s going to take us the rest of the year.”

“It will be an important year because it will be a start to more normal conditions,” said Shaun Bond, director of the University of Cincinnati Real Estate Center.

Real estate, rental and leasing activity is 10.6 percent of Ohio’s economy, the state’s largest private sector service industry, bigger than health care and social assistance, according to a Ohio Department of Development report on Gross Domestic Product. The housing industry generated services valued at about $50.7 billion in 2010, the most recent information available. The state report says the size of this industry indicates the role homeownership plays in the economy.

An improving housing market can fuel the rest of the local economy boosting sales of appliances and other goods and services, Bond said. Spring is a crucial time for home sales. Last year, sales during the prime moving months of March to June comprised about 35 percent of all sales, according to Dayton Area Board of Realtors statistics.

Americans may be more eager to buy a home in 2012 because they expect rent and home prices to increase and believe their personal finances will improve, according to the Fannie Mae National Housing Survey released April 9. The survey said 73 percent of people living in the U.S. believe now is a good time to buy a home.

Butler County homeowners Jeff and Jordan Lyon welcomed their sixth child in March. Needing more space and wanting to take advantage of good prices and interest rates before they were gone, the couple agreed April 7 to buy a new home in Trenton for about $130,000.

“It’s definitely a good time,” Jordan Lyon said. The new house is 12 years old, has three bedrooms and a finished basement. It’s not much more expensive than their current $100,000 house, which is 30 years old.

She said the couple will list their current house for about $89,000, about $10,000 less than the purchase price in 2003.

Dayton-area home sales were up in seven of the past eight months through February when compared to the same month a year before, according to Dayton Area Board of Realtors.

The Cincinnati region’s homes sales increased for the eighth consecutive month in February, according to Cincinnati Area Board of Realtors.

“It is getting better and what I really like about it is it’s happening naturally,” said Joe King, president and chief operating officer of Coldwell Banker West Shell Cincinnati. “There’s no incentives driving this.”

For all of 2011, 10,463 homes were sold in the Dayton metro area, down about 20 percent from 13,105 homes sold in 2007.

The biggest change in any segment of the Dayton housing market between 2007 to 2011 was the 33 percent drop in building permits, according to statistics from the Home Builders Association of Dayton.

Building permits issued in 2011 increased to 1,660 from 2010, but were still less than the 2,484 permits issued in all of 2007.

“Our climb is going to be extremely gradual,” said Walt Hibner, executive director of the Dayton builders association. But the home building levels before the housing bubble burst was not sustainable to Dayton’s population, he said.

Prices continue to be weak, down 4.4 percent for the first two months of the year in Dayton over January and February 2011. Average sales prices were down 14 percent last year from 2007.

Foreclosures, lingering job uncertainty and tight credit are casting shadows over the housing industry as well, Bond said.

“Certainly one of the big issues that is still going is the high volume of foreclosure,” Bond said. “There’s still a number of buyers who have trouble getting the credit they need because it’s a very tight credit market right now, so that’s restricting the potential pool of buyers.”

Cindy Flaherty, director of homeownership of Ohio Housing Finance Agency, said the biggest barriers to getting a home loan are the down payment and credit.

The agency offers mortgages through participating lenders with favorable interest rates and down payment assistance.

“People who’ve had recent problems financially are going to struggle to find a way to become a homeowner again. The best thing for them to do is to work to get their financial house in order,” she said.