The St. George Parade of Homes

The Parade of Homes is one of the most firmly established events on the local calendar, and it draws a far wider audience than people actually shopping for a house.

What it is

A self-guided tour of newly built homes across Washington County, held annually in February and open to ticket holders over a run of days. You buy a ticket, get a map, and drive yourself between the houses at your own pace, on whatever route and schedule suits you.

The homes are typically recent custom and semi-custom builds by local and regional builders, spread across the region rather than clustered in one neighborhood — which means the tour doubles as a tour of the area's communities, from established parts of St. George out to newer master-planned developments in Washington, Hurricane, Ivins, and Santa Clara.

Who puts it on

The event is organized every year by the Southern Utah Home Builders Association (SUHBA), the trade association for home builders, remodelers, and trade professionals working in Washington County. SUHBA's role goes beyond scheduling: it recruits and coordinates the participating builders and runs the official event site and app that carries tickets, the home map, and day-planning tools. The parade's official archive of past showcase homes reaches back more than a decade, which is a reasonable proxy for how long the event has been a fixture here even without a precise founding date attached to it.

Why it draws people who are not buying

Most attendees have no intention of buying any of the houses, and the event works anyway. It functions as:

An architecture and interiors event. It is a rare chance to walk through finished, furnished, high-specification homes rather than looking at photographs or a builder's model. The event has drawn national recognition for its scale and quality, and turnout on a strong year has run into the tens of thousands.

A practical education in building for this climate. This is the genuinely useful part, and the reason to go even if you are not in the market. Homes designed for southern Utah deal with problems that homes elsewhere do not — solar gain and orientation, shade, roofing and materials that survive severe UV, desert landscaping, and cooling that has to work through a long, punishing summer. Seeing how good local builders solve those problems is more instructive than any amount of reading.

A tour of the region. The homes are scattered, so the route takes you through communities you might otherwise never see.

A social outing. People go in groups and make a day of it, and February is a pleasant month here for driving around.

What makes a parade home different from a base build

Every home on the tour is built as its builder's showcase entry for the year, not a standard spec build. That changes what you are looking at. A parade home is usually built at or near the top of a builder's option list — upgraded cabinetry, flooring, fixtures, and landscaping that a buyer would normally add at extra cost, plus furnishing and staging that is not part of any home sale. None of that is dishonest, but it means the house in front of you is closer to "everything this builder can do" than to "what this builder's base price gets you." The gap between the two is exactly what you should be asking about.

If you are actually house-hunting

It is a genuinely efficient way to meet builders and see finished work rather than a model home or a rendering. A few things worth keeping in mind:

Ask what is standard and what is an upgrade. It is the single most useful question to carry around with you, for every room in every home.

Ask what the same floor plan costs on a builder's own lot versus a lot you already own. Site work, grading, and utility hookups vary enough around this county that the answer is rarely a flat number.

Note the orientation and shade. In this climate, how a house sits on its lot affects comfort and running cost for its entire life, and a parade home is a good place to see it done well or done poorly.

Collect builder information rather than making decisions on the spot. The value of a single day of touring is in narrowing who you would want to talk to, not in choosing a house.

Practical notes for visiting

• The tour is entirely self-guided. There is no group, no host walking you through — you set the pace and the order.
• Socks are required in every home, and several ask you to bag your shoes at the door, so wear something you can slip off easily and repeat all day.
• Plan a route by geography, not by favorites. The homes are spread across a wide area, and the driving time between clusters adds up fast if you bounce around.
• Go early in the run if you dislike crowds. Attendance builds toward the busier days later in the schedule.
• Check the current year's dates, hours, and ticket details before you go — they are set fresh each year and posted on the official event page.

How it fits the local new-construction market

Washington County's new-home market runs almost entirely through builders rather than a resale-heavy market, and the Parade of Homes is the one stretch each year when a large slice of that builder community is visible in one place, competing openly on craftsmanship. That makes it useful even outside the tour itself: the builders and floor plans you see on parade homes are frequently the same ones building the production and semi-custom neighborhoods going up around the county the rest of the year, just without the upgraded finish package. Treating the parade as a scouting trip for builders, rather than a showroom for a house you will actually buy, is the way to get the most out of it.

The honest summary

Worth going even if you have no interest in buying. It is the clearest window available into how houses in this region are actually designed for the climate and who is building them well — and driving between them in February is a genuinely pleasant way to spend a day.