Tony Perry made millions building and selling homes during metro Atlanta's housing boom. Now he scraps for remodeling work, has a part-time marketing job and worries about losing his own home.

"It's not fun going from millionaire to 'nothing-aire,' " Perry said. "I can't say it's an experience I would recommend."

Frank Niemeir/fniemeir@ajc.com (ENLARGE)

Builder Tony Perry at what was the Villages at Towne Lake in Woodstock. The housing crash caught up with him in spring 2007, when he found his company with about 200 lots that he could not sell.

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Perry's Oakwood Homes filed for bankruptcy protection in December, unable to repay 15 lenders that had loaned his company $37 million. Having personally guaranteed loans, Perry expects his family will go into bankruptcy as well.

"I don't see any way to avoid it now," said Perry, 55.

Perry represents a hidden slice of Atlanta's home-building industry that has been ravaged by the downturn of the past year. While the troubles of large companies such as Beazer Homes play out in headlines, small or midsize builders such as Perry have quietly endured a wrenching shakeout.

The boom years from 1990 to 2005 spawned thousands of such builders and associated subcontractors. Many worked out of their pickups or formed small companies with a handful or a couple of dozen employees.

Panning for gold

Every year from 1991 through 2003, metro Atlanta had more single-family building permits than any metro region in the country, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

People with home-building knowledge and an entrepreneurial streak piled in.

"There's an industry that's going great guns [and] it looks like it's going to go on that way for the future, so why don't we go pan for gold like everybody else?" said Ed Phillips, executive vice president of the Home Builders Association of Georgia, explaining the rationale that lured so many into the industry.

They turned home building into one the region's top employers. The Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association says nearly one out of every six metro Atlanta jobs is connected to the housing industry.

But as the market has crashed — according to U.S. Census Bureau data, single-home building permits through May are down 55 percent from 2007 and 71 percent from 2006 — the bill has come due for Perry and many others.

With scant demand for new homes, developers are scrambling to stay afloat or are leaving the business, voluntarily or otherwise. No one knows precisely how many of these smaller builders have failed, but membership in both state and metro area home-builders associations is down substantially, the groups say.

As builders scramble, so do the framers, carpenters and painters they employed.

"It's amazing how the ripple effect goes through the industry," Perry said. "When one builder loses his job, a lot of people just lost their work."

Marcileno Aviles is one of them. He is a self-employed contractor in Cobb County who does everything from painting and wallpapering to installing doors and putting in crown molding. Work is so slow that Aviles, 52, has burned through about $13,000 in savings paying the mortgage and bills.

"I don't know when I'm going to recover from this," he said.

Andreas Parra owns two companies in Woodstock, one that hangs drywall and the other that cleans up debris from construction sites. They derive about 90 percent of their business from new home construction, he said, and business is down 70 percent from last year. He has had to let go 30 of the roughly 45 workers he employed at the beginning of the year. He is thinking about getting out of the business until the market recovers.

Jim Caswell, president of Caswell Realty-Berkeley Homes in Suwanee, said many smaller builders are moving into remodeling. But with home values flat and gas and food prices rising, it's not as though people are plowing money into major improvements these days, either.

"I see a downturn, which isn't very good for small-business people," said Richard Eddings, a remodeling contractor in Norcross. "It doesn't take much to kill us."

But for a long time, the boom seemed permanent.

Perry, an Alabama native, came to Atlanta in 1988 to work in marketing for a home-building company. When it went under, he and a colleague went to work for themselves. Perry built homes and developed subdivisions mostly in Cherokee County, and by 1999 he was the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association's "Builder of the Year" — one of many professional awards. His company grew to about 35 employees.

His success and standing in the community led the producers of the reality show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" to tap Oakwood Homes to lead the renovation of a home for the show.

Oakwood Homes, the successor to an earlier venture called McKenzie-Perry Homes, typically built between 100 and 200 homes a year, or about $30 million worth of volume. The company took out construction loans, and monthly interest payments alone were about $300,000.

"You've got a lot of risk for the money, but it didn't seem very risky because the market was so up," Perry said.

Faucet turns off

The stalling market caught up with him in spring 2007, when he found his company with about 200 lots in Cherokee and Paulding counties — some with homes, some still vacant — that he could not sell.

"Basically, the faucet just turned off," he said. "We went from slow business to no business. Virtually no business, one or two sales when you need 30."

Perry tried to shed overhead costs. He let go of employees he had worked with for years. To make payments, he borrowed against company and personal assets.

"My wife says that I stayed in denial right to the end," he said.

Finally, there was nothing left to do, Perry said, but to "just fall over. You go to the bank and say you can't make payments, and they sue you."

Perry says that except for the love of his family and friends, every aspect of his life has changed. His family moved out of the home he had built in one of his subdivisions into a much smaller home. His wife, who had been working with him, has taken a job as a real estate broker. When he met with a colleague the other day, Perry allowed him to buy lunch, a small favor that Perry had grown accustomed to giving.

"It means [cutting back on] everything, whether it's cars, gas, food, lights, clothing, travel," he said.

Pending lawsuits

He also lives with the pain of the damage that his failed business has caused.

"It's a time where you can't do anything but disappoint people, which is not fun," he said. "I'm sorry for the harm I caused people."

The roller-coaster ride isn't over. There are the pending lawsuits. Owing $100,000 more than the smaller home is worth, Perry's family may lose that house, too.

He speaks with many friends in the business who are enduring the same turbulence. Perry has talked a few times to home-builder groups to share his story and offer advice.

"I'm sure it's not done claiming the last of its victims," Perry said of the shakeout.

Some of Perry's colleagues have gone into sales or other careers. Others are on the sidelines, waiting to get back into the home-building game. Perry admits he harbors the same hope.

"I believe people loved what they lived in when they got one of our homes," he said.

Perry says the experience is humbling. But he faces his troubles with a positive attitude, especially for someone in midlife starting over at zero.

"It's capitalism," he said. "You don't like to be at the short end of the stick. The best you can do is have a good attitude and get back out there."

— News researchers Sharon Gaus and Joni Zeccola contributed to this article.