Manteca’s anemic new home housing market is showing signs of returning to its “normal” vitality.

•Raymus Homes: The Next Generation has submitted initial infrastructure improvement plans for the 540-home Oleander Estates planned west of the intersection of Union Road and Woodward Avenue. Ground could break later this year.

• Del Webb at Woodbridge is getting ready to open up hundreds of new lots for home sales.

• Oakwood Shores – which sat idle for over three years after juts 11 homes being completed in the 480-lot lakefront community has 12 contracts pending as a new developer – Lafferty Homes – gears up for a grand opening.

• Manteca’s inventory of finished lots 30 months ago was down to a 954. Today that number is down to 330. At the current pace there will be just a couple dozen of those lots left by this time in 2014.

“Housing is going to stabilize this year,” predicted Toni Raymus. “We should see a little bit of appreciation.”

At the same time banks are easing up a bit making it possible to finance major investment in upfront infrastructure needed to get subdivisions started.

Mayor Willie Weatherford said indicators that the city is seeing also point to housing starting to improve this year.

Manteca for the past three years has averaged 300 new housing units built and sold annually. That’s half of the 600 homes that Raymus and other builders say should be normal for Manteca.

For much of the previous two decades, the Raymus family built and sold 120 homes in Manteca in a typical year using the same subcontractors they had for years. But the Great Recession brought their building in Manteca to almost a halt save the 11-home custom Ken Hills Estates on Woodward Avenue just west of Main Street.

The housing drop-off forced Raymus to let go many long-time employees as there simply was no work.

“Almost all of the work being conducted now (at Ken Hill Estates) is being done by the owners of the subcontracting firms,” Raymus said.

The slowdown also means Raymus and her brother Bob take turns on weekends staffing a home they have for sale at Ken Hill Estates. They have just the one left.

Working also in favor of Manteca’s new housing market are continuing strong job gains in the Silicon Valley, San Francisco’s high tech cradle and even East Bay spots. Job growth in those areas since the early 1970s has been a precursor to increased housing sales on this side of the Altamont Pass.

New home construction overall was the biggest single source of jobs in Manteca from the mid 1980s up until 2005. That includes not just construction jobs but those in affiliated fields of mortgage banking, inspection, and building suppliers. The ripple effect spills over into the cash registers of businesses and services that buyers of new homes – who typically come from outside of the community – patronize.

The foreclosure settlement that various states reached with five banks is expected to have a positive effect by shaking loose remaining homes in foreclosure that were held up due to the negotiations to avoid litigation after the robo-signing fiasco.

Manteca has been absorbing an average of 1,160 existing homes closing escrow in each of the past three years despite the recession. Real estate agents expect the demand to pick up due to the improving economy to allow a fairly rapid absorption of the remaining foreclosure inventory whether it is part of “the shadow inventory” or  winding through the process needed to put homes back on the market.