BUILDING: Annual Parade of Homes canceled due to shortage
Sun |
Elena Castaneda — May 12th, 1998
* The Home Builders had 20 to 25 homes lined up for the show, but many of them were sold before the deadline to commit.
By Elena Castaneda
Sun Staff
Single-family building permits in the county are at their lowest level in years and are one reason Kitsap County won't have a Parade of Homes this year.
Permits issued by the county for 1998 will be at their lowest level in years if the current trend continues through the last eight months of the year, according to the most recent data available from the county department of community development.
Kitsap County issued 198 permits for single-family homes during the first four months of this year, compared with 286 issued during the first four months of 1997.
Permits issued during the first four months of 1997 made up 41 percent of the total 702 permits issued that year; 1998 could see as few as 483 single-family permits issued if this year follows last year's trend.
The county data comes on top of a recent report that single-family building permits in the county and local cities hit its lowest point last year since 1988, according to Richards & Associates, a Bremerton real estate appraisal company.
Total single-family permits issued by the county and its four cities in 1997 numbered 1,030, compared with a peak of 1,914 permits issued in 1990 and a low of 930 permits issued in 1988.
The low number of new single-family homes being built in the area is one reason the Home Builders Association of Kitsap County is not sponsoring the Parade of Homes this year, said Art Castle, executive director of the association.
The annual tour of homes typically falls on the weekend after Memorial Day weekend and is a way to market local builders' homes. In fact, Castle says the parade is the "most effective marketing tool for new homes in Kitsap County."
The Home Builders had 20 to 25 homes lined up for the show, he added. But a number of them sold a week and a half before the deadline to commit to the event, leaving only nine or 10 houses for the parade.
Castle said one builder complained the event had been canceled, but a couple of days later sold the house he planned to enter.
"So that's good news," he said. "It means our (real estate) market is improving."
It's true that the number of Kitsap home sales increased in April -- over 1997, and over the sales in the first three months of 1998.
The market has also shaped up in terms of active listings within the last year, Castle said. A year ago, some 3,000 new and existing homes were on the market, he said, compared to about 2,000 now.
But while Kitsap County's real estate market may be warming up, new home construction is still not thriving.
Most of today's new home construction is custom, not spec homes, Castle said.
Constructing spec homes -- homes builders finance themselves because they have no buyer when construction begins -- "can be a very risky business," he said.
Castle said he knows of one builder who has an inventory of 50 spec homes he is trying to sell. Each month, he's paying interest on the construction loans.
"When we're in a lower-demand cycle," Castle said, "spec and higher end homes tend to sit longer."
Reach Elena Castaneda
at (360) 792-9210 or at ecastaneda@thesunlink.com.
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