Why is your home in a parade of homes?

Protect the floors and count the silverware.

If parking is tight, Put up some boulders or spikes to protect your lawn and landscape.

Can you get out of it? The kids that roam through out will drive you nuts.

I thought I recall you having a couple young ones. If you thought you needed to keep after them, just you wait for everyone else's kids! lol

Isn't being a Parade of Homes done before the people move in?

My concern would be who's decorating the home and what happens with holes in the walls, scratched floors, dinged walls, fingerprints on walls etc.

Usually if you're a Parade of Homes, I believe you get some compensation or additional perks for having allowed your house to be shown?

Our home was finished last year. Our builder asked if we wanted to be in next year's show. I think rules are different in different areas.

I think the answer will be no, but I didn't shut the door completely.

We'll probably do the green home tour or the local architect's tour - but NEVER a Parade. Different folks. I think that the prior attendees are there for specific reasons and understand the homes are personal / lived in, and the latter are many more in number and perhaps less cautious in their manners, as most Parade homes are unoccupied and for sale. Unless you are getting some serious coin - I'd forgo the Parade.

Cpartist, I would say yes, but at the Dayton Homearama this year a couple houses had the buyers furniture in the house already and were not using staged furniture. One of the owners did the decorating herself. Funny because that was the only house I commented on to one of the people working to find out where the furniture was from.

I would be more hesitant to participate in a free vs paid for Parade or Homearama. I would think the paid event fee usually covers damage in the house that need repaired. A free event would be left up to the builder.

Booties?

One neighborhood association here has a house tour every fall, which people in the neighborhood volunteer for. Sometimes they have just finished a renovation, sometimes they are getting ready to go on the market, sometimes they just have interesting houses, sometimes they have really boring houses but like to show them off anyway. The tickets are expensive enough to discourage people from bringing children, something like $25 a person and not many houses on tour.

Since it's volunteer, it is really a mixed bag. Often parts of the house are off limits. There are docents on every floor of the house and sometimes several per floor depending upon the size of the house.

Their general policy is that they do not like the homeowners to be in their own houses, although sometimes the owners insist.

More people have been requesting that the visitors remove their shoes upon entering the house. This has proved to be incredibly awkward in some houses because there are a bunch of people trying to put or take off shoes and a lot of people are fairly elderly on these tours. I've seen people pass on houses because of this request, and they aren't too happy about it since there are not a lot of houses to see. And a couple of times I've been in houses that the floors are not in all that great of condition and none too clean so you wonder why your shoes have to come off.

So some people have been offering disposable booties which I think accommodates both the homeowner and the touring guest.

Is it for a charity you feel strongly about or will you be compensated by the builder/designer (such as getting to keep furniture and custom finishes)? Things will go missing and get broken. Floors will get more wear than your family will put on them in months if not years. I would not do it.

A house tour is different than a parade of homes. A parade of homes is for builders to show their houses for sale, or to show they could build you a house.

A homes tour is usually to benefit some charity and for people as mentioned above to see different houses in the neighborhood. For example, we went to one 2 years ago in the neighborhood we are building in.

In my area, the Parade of Homes is a new home built to highlight all the new "bells and whistles" a homeowner could possibly expect in a new build/renovation. Companies typically give steep discounts to the builder for materials (i.e., countertops, blinds/drapery, sound systems, etc.) for the marketing/advertisement opportunity. Besides the hundreds of people entering the home during the tour, builder parties inside before its sold, etc., I would also be afraid that all of these "bells and whistles" would inflate the cost of my parade of home, over the general average cost of the neighborhood, making it more difficult to sell in the future.

I've seen things like iPads mounted in walls to control lighting. Well what happens when the iPad dies and Apple no longer makes one the same size? There's a lot of expensive planned obsolescence in cutting edge home technology. I wouldn't want it.

Stan Z, remember intercom systems? :)

Oh yes, my dad put an intercom system into the 1969 house he built for our family (living room, family room, kitchen, and 3 bedrooms). It was a high end system that included FM radio in addition to AM. It was rarely used other than as a toy for the kids. Radio sound quality was poor and we didn't leave the speakers powered on so the intercom feature was useless. That house also had a built in desk with an avocado formica top and goldenrod dishwasher/fridge!

Stanz...my intercom system also had a cassette player. What a waste of money.

My home was in our local parade of homes 1 week ago. Reason my wife and I chose to have our home in the parade was because of significant discounts that we got on our appliance package, granite and cabinets, and vacuum system.

I have been going to the parade of homes in our area for many years and it is usually well run. Visitors always have to take off their shoes and then wear booties. Usually most people are respectful of the home and I've not heard of any one that has had their home damaged from the visitors. Probably the worse thing is that if there is lack of parking, people may end up parking on the edge of the neighbor's lawn, damaging the lawn.