Amarillo Parade of Homes People's Choice: How Voting Works & How to Win

A builders' association and a home tour in Amarillo

The Texas Panhandle Builders Association, abbreviated TPBA, organizes the Amarillo Parade of Homes, an annual tour in which local builders show finished houses to the public. The People's Choice element is the public voting page that accompanies the tour: visitors who walk through the homes are invited to vote for their favorites. The page is hosted on the association's own site, tpba.cpjam.com, and its title reads 2026 Parade of Homes Public Voting.

That setting differs from a newspaper readers' poll. The things being voted on are real houses that visitors can enter, and the people who vote are largely the people who toured them, which gives the contest a built-in sequence: first the tour, then the vote. The page's navigation reflects that sequence with links named Properties, Map, Builders and Vote, so a visitor can move from finding a home to backing it. The footer names the association, and the site credits its builder, CPJ AM.

The 2025 and 2026 editions and the announced tour weekends

Editions of the Parade vote are verified for 2025 and 2026. The 2026 page carries the clearest dates, though they describe the tour and not the ballot. The announcement reads Save the Dates for the 2026 Parade, with the tour running April 23 to 26 and again April 30 to May 3. Two separate stretches within spring make the Parade a longer event than a single weekend, and they give visitors two chances to see the homes in April and early May.

The vote page says voting in the home tour is currently closed, so the 2026 ballot has ended, but the day it stopped accepting votes is not printed, and neither are any categories or a per-visitor allowance. For all of those, confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Supporters should not assume the voting period matched the tour weekends exactly.

How a visitor votes for a favorite home or builder

Voting starts with the tour. A visitor walks through homes on the announced weekends, notes which builders and properties stood out and then returns to the Vote page of the Parade on tpba.cpjam.com, where the heading says Vote For Your Favorites. The Properties and Builders views help match a memory of a kitchen or a floor plan to the correct entry, and the Map view helps a visitor who toured several addresses in a day.

The page text available does not print the number of choices per visitor, whether a sign-in step exists or what awards the votes feed, so those mechanics are not described here. What it does state is the current status: voting in this home tour is closed. A supporter arriving after that point cannot cast a ballot and should look for the next year's tour page on the same site.

For builders, the lesson is to make the vote easy to find during the tour. A sign at the front door of the home or a mention during the walk-through that the Vote page exists gives visitors the address while the house is still fresh in their minds.

Visitors have their own part to play. A person who liked a home can tell the family they toured with, post a photograph of the front elevation with the builder's name and say that the Vote page is open. Because the page ties each entry to its builder through the Builders link, a vote for a favorite house also credits the company that built it, which is why builders take an interest in every visitor's opinion.

Amarillo's home tour next to other Texas ballots

Texas public ballots on this site are mostly metropolitan readers' polls run by publications: Best of Austin Readers Poll, Best of Dallas Readers' Choice, Best of El Paso, Best of Houston, Best of San Antonio and Best of Fort Worth. Those ask readers to name restaurants, shops and services across many categories.

The Parade of Homes vote is different on three counts: its organizer is a trade association of builders, its subject is houses people have walked through, and its page lives on the association's own domain. The audience is local visitors in the Panhandle, and the votes are tied to an event with fixed tour dates. Builders and visitors who know newspaper polls should note that daily repeat voting, common on some readers' ballots, is not something this page describes at all.

Gathering support for a home or builder in the Parade

Support in an event-tied vote comes from visitors, so the most effective step is to bring people through the door. The association has published no statement in the text available about outside voting help, so its own page is the reference for what is acceptable.

A builder can invite past clients, neighbors and social followers to tour the home on the announced weekends and point them to the Vote page afterward. The votes guide describes outreach for public ballots, and the award votes page covers the paid option some entrants study. No outside route can promise a particular result, and the association's rules decide what counts.