This weekend is the second of three weekends for the spring Kansas City Parade of Homes Tour. The Home Builders Association of Kansas City has been putting on the event since 1942 and this year there are more than 400 entries on tour. Homes can be viewed free of charge across the Kansas City metro area, including Kansas City, Johnson County, Overland Park, Leawood, Lenexa, Shawnee, Lee’s Summit, Liberty and all areas in between.
128 Kansas City area home builders have entered 403 homes on the spring homes tour in prices ranging from $210,000 all the way up to $3 million. New home community agents across the metro are holding nearly all the homes on tour open from 11am until 6pm daily. Contact individual communities to verify hours.
Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market
The fall version of the 2013 Kansas City Parade of Homes tour is under way and runs Saturday 9/30/13 through Sunday 10/13/13. The fall homes tour features 269 model homes and spec homes for viewing, with homes across the entire metro area including Kansas City, Overland Park, Olathe, Leawood, Lenexa, Shawnee, Lee’s Summit, Liberty and the surrounding areas. I’ve already visited some great finished products on the homes tour and if you haven’t made it out to a home tour in a while, this year’s is sure to be a good one and boosted by new home construction sales that are the strongest we’ve seen in years.
Many of the metro areas top home builders have entered homes on the tour and most of the top new home communities have multiple entries for viewing. The 269 homes on tour are the largest number in five years and most of the model homes are open daily from 11am to 6pm daily (verify with each home community before visiting). Here’s a link to view the Parade of Homes book online and you can find more details about the fall homes tour on the Home Builders Association of Greater Kansas City site. For those interested in selecting certain homes and lining out a map route for viewing homes, here’s an online home search tool where you select homes by city, subdivision or price range!
Hands On The Heartland Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market
Kansas City home builders, tired of being ignored by Congress, last week jumped on the YouTube social media platform to get their message out. The home builders plea was for Congress to throw a lifeline to the housing industry that so many developers, general contractors, sub-contractors, real estate agents, decorators, local city budget’s, and others farther down the line, count on. It’s been clear to me for a long time that until Congress does something to fix the housing problem, there isn’t going to be a sustained economic recovery in this country. I come from a home building family and this issue touches me moreso than the typical Kansas City real estate agent. I’ve watched too many reputable home builders and developers go under due to no sales in recent months. One developer I talked to went 7 months without a sale and he said he can only last another couple of months before he’s out of business. You’ll see many similar messages on this video…
If you read my blog often you know I’m a numbers guy and I look to statistics to see how our local real estate communities are doing. It’s discouraging to see that the “best selling” new home communities are only selling a couple of homes per month. I think about all of the people who’s lives revolve around the building industry and who are falling further into turmoil. Looking at the statistics, in July 2005 there were 837 new homes Sold (closed) in the Kansas City metro. In July 2007 there were 561 new homes sold. In July of this year (2009) the number had fallen all the way 269 new homes sold (closed) in the Kansas City metro area. The numbers are even worse than they appear because many of this July’s new home sales were homes that were started 1-2 years ago and being sold at a loss by the builder – or bank that now owns the home. In the video, it states that new home starts have fallen from around 12,000 to the 2,000 range in just three years!
If Kansas City home builders are running at about 1/6th of the volume they were just a few years ago, that makes for a lot of home builder superintendents losing their jobs, a lot of lighting and appliance companies not supplying fixtures, a lot of framers with worthless nail guns, a lot of manufacturers with nothing to produce… God bless my friends in Kansas City who own car dealerships – and I hope the Cash For Clunkers stimulus they’ve received has made a difference – but housing is an even more important catalyst to our economy than the automobile industry. It’s time for Congress to act.
