The funeral industry is relatively stable, and unlike other retail businesses, does not change with the latest fashion cycles or Wall Street’s ups and downs. But in recent years, fewer people are having full-price conventional funerals, industry experts say, and there is an increasing trend toward cremations.

Locally, the average traditional funeral can cost as much as $12,000, according to estimates from funeral directors. Cremations, meanwhile, run between $1,100 and $5,000. In New York State, more than 23% of the people who died in 2005 were cremated, as were nearly 32% of Americans who died that year — up more than 10% from 1996. By 2025, cremations are expected to rise to more than 57% of nationwide deaths, according to the Cremation Association of North America.

While cost is statistically the most popular reason people give for choosing cremation, it is only partly responsible for the trend. Cemetery plots are in short supply, and land conservation is also a motivation. This is especially true in New York City, where real estate is always expensive and scarce.

At St. Michael’s Cemetery in Queens, for example, the cost of a traditional burial plot doubled over the last decade, rising to $4,550, plus the cost of a headstone. With such high prices and the gradual acceptance of cremations by the church, St. Michael’s has seen a surge in demand for cheaper cremation ceremonies. It built its own crematory in 2005 and last year conducted 760 cremations; it is on pace to do 1,200 this year. In fact, the majority of St. Michael’s business is now cremations, helping it triple the number of funerals it has conducted since 2005.

“As early as 1997, we recognized that the trend was toward cremation and we wanted to offer that as an alternative,” the general manager at St. Michael’s, Dennis Werner, said. “We look at it as an extremely significant part of the industry and wanted to be a part of it.”

Brooklyn’s huge Green-Wood Cemetery expects to be out of plot space within two years. To compensate for this lack of space, the 478-acre cemetery last year completed construction on a new building that can inter 9,000.

“Obviously, you don’t need as much space to bury a cremated body as you do a casketed body, the president of Green-Wood Cemetery, Richard Moylan, said. “So we could do more without impacting on our historic landscape as well as put more into a smaller space.”

In addition to providing more crematory services, funeral directors are looking at unique ways to bring down the costs of funerals. It costs a Bronx funeral director, Bobby Ruggiero, $2,800 a day — including salaries, health care, union benefits, and taxes — to keep open his 132-year-old, fourth-generation funeral home, F. Ruggiero & Sons.

Also, Mr. Ruggiero is in the process of testing an electronic “death registration system” for quickly coordinating and certifying the death records needed for burial.

The system will ostensibly modernize the city’s arcane process of collecting postmortem paperwork, and Mr. Ruggiero estimates that it could help funeral homes like his save an average of $150 a funeral.

Mr. Ruggiero also focuses on more personalized funerals, for which families can design and shape the service. He has created an “arrangement office” where customers can ask about merchandise, trying to change what is often seen as a hard-sell atmosphere to a more comfortable one. “I don’t want to be a salesman; I’d rather be a professional,” he said.

Mr. Ruggiero has spent 35 years in the funeral industry, and says he foresees no drop in demand. As much as he’s had to work to tailor his classic parlor into a modern firm, people will continually need reliable death care.

“The demands now are as intense as they’ve ever been,” he said. “I’m still on call. Even on vacation, I speak to families. It’s just the nature of the beast, and things are never going to change.”