Is the endangered species of the Greater Boston real estate market, new home construction, poised for a modest comeback?

Some brave builders are starting to put up single-family homes again in the outer suburbs, as well as less expensive townhomes, as the real estate market shows signs of life.

An array of small-town builders and big developers are taking advantage of lower land costs and an uptick in demand among buyers thanks to billions in homebuyer tax credits flowing out of Washington.

All told, hundreds of new homes are taking shape in the bedroom communities along the Interstate 495 beltway, according to Thomas Skahen, a co-founder and partner at Littleton-based PrimeTime Communities, a marketing and housing research firm.

In fact, he’s planning on putting out a report on new single-family home construction in January – a topic I frankly did a double take over when Skahen mentioned it to me last week.

At the least, the uptick in home construction, which has just started to take off in some outer suburbs over the last month or two, may signal new housing construction has finally hit bottom after years of declines.

Still, there also another important change taking hold – the homes are smaller, more moderately priced and lacking many of the bells and whistles of the McMansions that sprang up during the bubble years, according to Skahen and others.

“On every single development we are on, we are squeezing floor plans down to make them smaller and have a lower price point,” Skahen said. “They are shopping on price whereas before they were shopping on size.”

Surely, any home building revival, however modest, is welcome. Whether boom times or bust, the Boston area suffers from a perennial lack of new construction, a long-term trend that has made it one of the most expensive housing markets in the country.

At The Epicenter

The epicenter of this most recent mini-surge appears to be in beltway towns like Groton, Westford and Tyngsborough. An array of local builders is pushing forward with a mix of smaller single-family homes and clusters of townhomes.

Groton has seen construction kick off on 11 new homes in just the last six weeks, a welcome “spike” in construction and the most activity seen since the start of the real estate market downturn, according to Michelle Collette, the town’s land use director and town planner.

Construction began last spring on a new, 23-home subdivision in Westford dubbed Hawk Ridge, with 17 of the homes sold this year according to Dennis Page of Re/Max Prestige in Tyngsborough.

Page has sold another 30 townhomes at a new development in Tyngsborough called the Village at Merrimac Landing, 29 of them to first-time buyers armed with federal tax credits.

Of course, there are many other examples like these clustered along the I-495 beltway, where land is a little cheaper and the tech industry has weathered the downturn better than most.

PrimeTime’s Skahen, who is now writing up his own survey of the budding new home market, is tracking and working with as many as 25 new subdivisions and townhome projects in the area.

“Last year it was more frozen,” he said of new home construction.

Whether there will be a sizeable jump in housing starts as we head into 2010 remains to be seen, but there really is no place to go but up.

Just 3,500 new homes were built in the Greater Boston area over the past year, a fraction of the 15,100 housing starts seen during the boom’s peak back in 2005, notes Barry Bluestone, a Northeastern University economist and housing expert.

He sees the potential for a modest rebound in 2010, back to roughly 6,000 units, though a larger increase would likely have to await a major turnaround in the economy.

Regardless of where the numbers land, a shift towards, smaller, more modestly sized homes is clearly taking hold. The McMansions may make a comeback if and when the economy starts roaring again, but tougher times combined with some longer-term trends favor small over big right now.

The days of stretching to buy big homes with subprime loans are gone. Frugality is in, extravagance out.

Back To Basics

But there are also some demographic shifts as well.

The wealthy Baby Boomers that bought these outsized suburban homes are now shifting into their retirement years and downsizing, Bluestone said. The younger buyers moving into the housing market are often putting off child rearing and likely to be looking for more modestly-scaled homes.

And Skahen, as he works with home builders on their marketing plans, is seeing this shift take place, subdivision by subdivision.

Builders who were putting up 2,800-to 3,000-square-foot Colonials during the peak of the real estate boom are now redrafting plans for homes with significantly smaller layouts in the 2,000-square-foot range.

The aim is to get prices down to the $400,000 to $600,000 sweet spot of the current market for newly built, single-family homes, said RE/MAX’s Page.

Other developers are rolling out smaller townhomes, some without basements and garages, to bring the price down to the $200,000 range, Skahen notes.

If nothing else, it’s a welcome break from the grotesque excesses of the bubble years, in which buyers went for the biggest and gaudiest homes their interest-only mortgages could buy.

“Everyone was trying to outsize each other,” Page said. “Now they are trying to find something in a good area that is quality and is affordable. It’s back to basics.”