MARIETTA — Cobb County saw more housing permits issued in November than the previous month, and the year-to-date numbers are up from 2010, but nearly 20 fewer permits were issued than last November, and one economist said not to expect those numbers to change any time soon.

Across Cobb, 37 single-family home permits were issued, six more than October’s year-low of 31. March has seen the highest number so far this year with 96.

In November, unincorporated Cobb issued the most permits with 20, followed by Marietta with nine, Smyrna with four, Kennesaw with three and Acworth with one. Neither Austell nor Powder Springs, both in south Cobb, issued any permits in November.

Since January, there have been 700 permits issued across the county, 99 more than the 601 permits issued by this time last year. But last November, 55 permits were issued across the county, 18 more than last month.

Dr. Albert Niemi Jr., dean of the Edwin L. Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and former the dean of the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business, said Tuesday that housing starts are critical to improvement in the economy. Housing starts are one of the three key components for economic recovery, along with job creation and consumer spending, he said.

Niemi spoke before 500 attendees at Tuesday morning’s Economic Forecast 2012 breakfast, hosted by Bank of North Georgia at the Cobb Galleria Centre.

Many builders have said they are slow to build new homes in this economy because they are competing against foreclosure prices and dropped prices in resale homes, which makes it virtually impossible to make a profit off a new home, even if it is sold. And while Niemi said Dallas, where he lives, has seen the bottom in their home prices and the state’s economy is doing well, he believes Atlanta still has not yet seen the worst.

“We hit bottom probably 12 to 18 months ago, but Atlanta’s home prices haven’t hit bottom yet, in my opinion,” Niemi said. “Home prices, if they’re fairly priced, should be at 100 (in the Case-Shiller index). In 2006, it was at 200. At the end of the third quarter, at the end of September, it was down to 119 (for the nation). That means home prices are still 19 percent above the historic norm. So we haven’t hit the bottom yet.”

The Case-Shiller index measures the resale prices of single-family homes to gauge the housing market.

Niemi said California-based RealtyTrac, which he said is the nation’s leading expert in predicting the future of home prices, has estimated that home prices will hit the bottom in late 2012 or early 2013.

Niemi said that in the 1980s, the nation was building an average of 1.5 million new homes each year. In the 1990s, that number dropped slightly to 1.4 million, and from 2000 to 2007 it rose to an average of 1.8 million.

But in 2010, the nation saw more than 1.2 million fewer homes being built that year, and Niemi said 2011 will close slightly higher at 590,000 and predicted 2012 will see about 60,000 more new homes being built than this year with 650,000.

“The last time we were building 600,000 new homes a year was during the Great Depression and the 1930s,” Niemi said. “In the 1920s, we were building about 800,000 a year. So unless you’re really old, you have not seen a housing industry like we’re living through today, and it’s a huge depressant on our economy.”

Still, some home builders such as Galleria-based Acadia Homes & Neighborhoods saw good pre-sales in October and November, and Gregg Goldenberg, president and CEO of Acadia, said that could mean higher numbers for December. Goldenberg said builders usually do not pull permits for new building until a few months after a pre-sale is made.

“Inventories of new homes are down, and inventories listed on the market are way down, so those fundamentals of lower inventories could bode well for us,” he said last month. “But we’re all still scared of all of that shadow inventory that the banks are holding onto.”

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