04/04/2026
The Northshore Parade of Homes is almost here! I know because it negatively impacts all home building in the area for about month because most Parade homes are behind schedule and so everyone ends up frantically pressuring their subcontractors to pull off of other jobs to finish them. The issue with that is those subcontractors/workers have already been forced to cut what they make on the Parade homes. The builders want a deal. So not only are the workers making less, they have to pull off of jobs that they are making money on, or at least they would be if they didn’t have to pull off to go finish Parade homes. So it’s not a surprise why they all get behind schedule. The Homebuilders Association runs the Parade of Homes, they sell sponsorships and advertising and they charge builders to enter their homes. The HBAs make out the best. The builders, for some reason, feel pressure from the HBA to enter the Parade and once they are in it, they have to go all out on the finishes, then they have to pay to stage the house, then they have to pay for people to be there, all of which cuts into their bottom line. If you know most builders, they aren’t keen on that. Builders are always broke and yet always on vacation. So instead, they get their trade and suppliers to cut them deals to make up for the extra cost. Well, their suppliers already got shook down by the Homebuilders Association to sponsor the Parade, so they aren’t too keen on helping much. So that just leaves the labor: landscapers, roofers, framers, concrete finishers, sheetrock finishers, trim carpenters, MEPs, etc. Those are the people who make up for the fact that the house has full inset cabinets or the dining room fixture was $3,000 and yet, in the end, the house is not going to sell for much more per square foot than the houses around them that don’t have those level of finishes. So it works out for the Homebuilders Associations, which are 501c, they make a bunch of money to go into their trust and while the money can not directly go into their Political Action Committees, it is obviously beneficial to them; it works out for the builder who gets exposure and makes money off the house when it sells; the building suppliers try to get out even Steven, and the people who can least afford it, the workers, they bear the burden. Not only by builders asking them to take less for their labor, but by the additional work always put on them at the end that they do not get fairly compensated for. But the irony of it all is a lot of the local Homebuilders Associations that sponsor the Parade, their political action committees then give money to candidates who have supported the deportation (or at least the policies) of a lot of the workers. The HBAs support candidates deporting the people who make their signature event cost feasible. But I have to be fair, the workers do get something. They are offered the opportunity to leave their business cards on the kitchen island during the Parade. The idea is that it will get them additional work, which they will need to make up for the fact that they took a bath doing Parade houses. I think this answers whether we will have a home in the Parade this year.
