The birds are chirping, the trees are budding and the flowers are blooming - spring is officially upon us! While spring brings the beginning of the baseball season and kicks off planting in the garden, it also represents the beginning of the home buying season.

This spring, there is no better place to start that search for the home of your dreams than the 2010 Spring Homes Tour. Produced by the Home Builders Association of Greater Kansas City, the 253 homes on this year's Tour represent a wealth of housing choices designed to help buyers find the home of their dreams.

With so many new homes, veteran home builders and new-home communities on display, the 2010 Spring Homes Tour offers an abundance of choices for every lifestyle. The Tour features a vast array of housing types, from single-family homes and condominiums to urban lofts and villas, from builders in new-home communities on both sides of the state line as well as in the city's urban core.

When the first homes opened their doors during the inaugural Tour in 1962, no one knew that it would eventually grow to become the nation's second-largest scattered-site home tour and offer hundreds of new-home options each spring. Now, as we move into our 48th year, we can look back with great appreciation for just how far Kansas City housing has come.
As the single biggest and most important investment most will make in a lifetime, finding your dream home is an experience that you will always remember. We encourage you to take advantage of Kansas City's premier new-home showcase to discover the homes that match your lifestyle, preferences and budget perfectly.

And now is one of the best times ever to buy a new home! With tax credits for first-time and existing home buyers set to expire soon, the Spring Homes Tour is the last-chance for many to take advantage of incentives out there right now.
First-time buyers can qualify for up to $8,000 in federal tax incentives, while current homeowners are eligible for as much as $6,500 when they meet certain criteria. However, time is of the essence with expiration dates looming ahead; buyers must enter into a sales contract by April 30 and close by June 30, 2010, to take advantage of the credits.

Buyers who want to make the most of homeownership should make plans to check out the Spring Homes Tour. Offering 16 full days of new-home shopping, the Spring Homes Tour has been a Kansas City tradition that buyers have turned to time and time again when looking for the home of their dreams.

To help you begin that journey, this special section includes all the homes featured on the Tour separated into four areas - Urban Living, Kansas, Missouri North and Missouri South - so that you can visit the homes in the neighborhoods where you want to live. The following pages also provide a glimpse of the builders and communities featured on this year's Tour.

Planning your Tour experience is made even easier thanks to the wealth of resources available through the Spring Homes Tour site, www.kcspringhomestour.com. Once there, you can browse homes by price, location, builder, floor plan, subdivision and more as well as visit virtual tours and builder Web sites.

For five decades, home builders across the Kansas City metropolitan area have shown their commitment to building a better community together by offering a wealth of housing choices in the places where we live, work and play. We invite you to come out once again and experience the latest and greatest innovations the homes on this year's Spring Homes Tour have to offer April 10-25. Admission is free, and the homes are open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily.

The 2010 Spring Homes Tour is produced by the HBA and presented by First Federal Bank and Time Warner Cable.