Fall Parade of Homes features 125 area houses

This year’s Fall Parade of Homes will feature fewer homes than its organizer, the Wichita Area Builders Association, had planned.

“We had more entries than 125, but several of them sold, so there probably would have been closer to 130,” Wess Galyon, WABA president and CEO, said Friday.

The parade, which kicks off Saturday, includes 125 new homes in the area from 50 builders. They are priced between $140,000 and more than $1.1 million.

The event, which is free to the public, will run over the next three weekends, ending Sunday, Oct. 19.

Galyon said that 60 to 70 percent of the homes in the fall parade weren’t featured in the Spring Parade of Homes.

“There’s some new stuff to look at, a good distribution throughout the area at a good price point,” he said.

The homes are located in Wichita and 14 cities around it.

After what Galyon said was a lull in August, builders are telling him activity is picking up. The parade, he said, “will expand that.”

“We feel pretty confident we’ll be able to at least repeat the number of new home sales and starts that we had in 2013.”

Galyon noted that the Wichita State University Center for Real Estate housing forecast for the area — released earlier this week — projected 940 housing starts for 2014.

“I said going into the year we’re going to be in the 1,000 range,” he said. “I think well be close to that if not exceed that.”

“We’re feeling pretty good about that.”

Steve Robl, owner of Robl Construction, said he’s had homes in the parade for 35 of the 37 years he’s been building them.

“For the fall of the year, we kind of have a slow spell in August — when kids are going back to school — and September,” he said. “This ignites the fall sale period, kind of gets projects underway for the winter. The weather is typically good, people like to get out, and we do sell a lot of houses during the period.”

He said he has seven houses in the fall parade, located primarily in northeast and northwest Wichita.

Richelle Knotts, supervising broker for Weigand New Homes, said the fall and spring parades are helpful to her agents who sell new homes.

“It’s very important to us,” she said. “It’s a chance to get the general public through the homes. We increase our traffic by 100 percent , so it just gives us a lot of exposure.”

She said the parade spurs new sales.

“Once (people) go through the models, they become discontented (with their existing homes),” Knotts said. “It creates that sense of moving forward and purchasing a new home.”

For more information about the event, go to www.wabahome.com

This story was originally published October 3, 2014 at 11:01 AM with the headline "Fall Parade of Homes features 125 area houses."