North Texas may be heading for a housing shortage. That's the word from Bob Morris, executive vice president of the Home Builders Association of Greater Dallas.

Morris said the situation may be created due to declining inventory levels and the fact that many custom and small homebuilders are being chased out of a market that provides little to no financing or credit.

“We will have a shortage in North Texas because there is not any real inventory to speak of,” Morris said. He added that production builders -- companies that can finance their own loans -- are probably jumping back in from the sidelines to build homes throughout North Texas in anticipation of a recovered economy and pent up demand.

“If you go back two years or more, every month we’ve closed more units than we’ve built,” Morris said.

Morris was commenting on a report released Wednesday by Metrostudy, which found that housing starts have improved in Texas and throughout the nation.

Metrostudy projected starts for 2009 and 2010, in advance of national housing start figures that are soon to be released by the U.S. Department of Commerce. The research firm found that starts rose through most of this year and could continue to increase in 2010.

“Most of the (2009) gains were driven by improved demand,” said Brad Hunter, Metrostudy’s chief economist and national director of consulting. “Some of the improvement was a pulling forward of demand from 2010 resulting from the tax credits, but the forecast for 2010 is for additional increases in construction activity.”

Starts increased sharply in the summer and early fall 2009, Hunter said, partly due to the $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers and also because speculative inventories are down sharply for many builders, as affordable prices led to increased demand.

The predicted housing shortage comes as the North Texas area population continues to grow. In its most recent April 2009 report, the North Central Texas Council of Governments said the area added 92,480 people over 2008, bringing the area’s population to 6.637 million total. Most of the growth occurred in the cities of Fort Worth, Dallas, McKinney, Frisco and Plano.