Nov. 7, 2007 file photo.

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NAPLES — The Collier County Building Industry Association won’t let a tough economy rain on its parade.

The Parade of Homes will go on. But not this fall.

Originally planned for later this month, the scattered-site parade has been rescheduled for March in hopes of drawing more interest from local builders, who have been slow to sign up as they struggle through one of the worst housing slumps in decades.

Only 13 entries were received — not enough to make a fall parade worthwhile. Typically, there are 30 or more homes displayed.

“Everyone who entered is disappointed in the turnout and the cancellation,” said Brenda Talbert, the building association’s executive vice president, in a letter to the media and marketing partners that it had lined up for the event.

The association lowered its entry charge for a home to $2,300 from $2,800 for the parade, and offered discounts for multiple entries to give builders a break. But that wasn’t enough to sway enough builders to buy in.

“I’m going to really try to sharpen my pencil and get the price down even lower,” Talbert said.

By holding the parade in the busy winter season, when there are more tourists and part-time residents in town, the CBIA expects to get more entries because there is the potential to draw a lot more traffic to the homes.

“I think we will have more success,” Talbert said. “I didn’t want to run the parade and do it halfway. I wanted to do it successfully.”

These days, builders are watching every dime and looking to spend their money “where they are going to get the biggest bang for their buck,” she said.

“I’m very optimistic about the March parade,” Talbert said.

The parade is now scheduled for the first three weekends in March. “I expect we will have 35 models, maybe more,” Talbert said.

At least 20 homes are needed to run a successful parade and pay for the map and marketing campaign that includes print, radio and television advertising, Talbert said.

Many builders are “absolutely pulling in and not expending any more resources than they have to,” as they fight for survival, while others are going out of business or bankrupt, “losing everything they ever worked for,” she said.

New-home construction has slowed to a crawl in Collier County. In August, permits were down 23 percent for single-family homes, compared to a year ago. Multi-family permits were off 81 percent, according to a monthly report by Naples-based The Bidder’s Broker.

The Parade of Homes has been held for more than 25 years. It’s not just a marketing event for builders, but a major fund-raiser for CBIA.

For many years, the association has done two parades annually: one at a single site and the other at multiple locations.

In 2007, there wasn’t a multi-site parade. “That is when things really started to adjust,” Talbert said.

The association held its last Parade of Homes in February at Lely Resort. There were 30 furnished and decorated models showcased in 12 neighborhoods in the East Naples community. It was very successful, Talbert said.

She hoped to have another parade this month to bring “a little positive” to the industry in these difficult times, though it’s quieter this time of year.

“We are not dead,” she said. “People are still building houses. Our custom builders are still doing very well and our remodelers are doing very well.”

London Bay, a Naples-based custom luxury home builder, was one of the few to sign up for the fall parade. Lindsey LaCroix, marketing manager, said it will probably still participate in March.

“It’s a couple hundred people that wouldn’t normally come in,” she said. “Even if they are coming in for design ideas, they are looking.”

Custom Construction Associates, a family-owned builder of multimillion-dollar homes on Marco Island, signed up for the parade this month too. But Lynn Lilly, an office manager, said she understood the decision to postpone it. She said traffic for new homes on the island this year has been very slow.

“Last year was a little off,” she said. “But it has been tremendously off this summer.”

She said once the presidential election is out of the way and the crisis in the financial markets settles, she expects buyer interest to pick up.

“We just have to hope — going down the road — that the economy starts to turn things around,” Lilly said.

The last time her company participated in a Parade of Homes a few years ago, it did get “a nice chunk of business,” she said.

At this month’s parade, the builder was going to showcase a new $3 million model. The four-bedroom, four-bath home has more than 4,000 square feet of living space and is built to withstand 160 mph, Category 5 hurricane winds. It includes a four-car garage, a separate 50-foot motor home garage, an elevator and a propane generator to run all three floors of the waterfront home.

The more builders that participate in the parade the better, Lilly said. More people want to look when there are more choices, and when there are more choices, it reflects well on the housing market, she said.

“This is a numbers game,” Lilly said. “Parade of Homes is definitely something that is driven by numbers.”