Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Reader Comments

at 2/28/2008 12:59:24 PM, Dave Wipper said:
What world are you living in? The attendance was down from well over 250,000 to 92,000 and there were a lot of empty/unused exhibition space 9hence the newly created central sitting places!!) In exhibit hall A there were a lot more exhibitors than attendees! Oh, and by the way, we are in a recession and most builders are really, really hurting.

at 3/4/2008 12:32:37 PM, Jeff Emmerson said:
There is no doubt whatsoever that we are the middle of a major housing slump. We’ve been in business for over 30 years and have seen this happen before. It’s also true that attendance at the show was down drastically from previous years and that some of the biggest vendors declined to show at this year’s event. We work day in and day out with builders nationally and are well aware of the challenges they, and the industry as a whole face in these troubled times. Our post was not a reflection of the state of the industry. Rather, we thought it good to share some of the positive notes we made at the show. We were in the west hall of the show and the spaces were for the most part filled. Throughout the 3 day event, traffic was consistently strong for us and the feedback from the vendors around us was that the quality and quantity of the leads was very good. We deal primarily with custom home builders and it is widely noted that this segment of the industry rarely if ever feel the effects of a recession or down turn in the housing market. The existing clients we spoke to at IBS and the bulk of new contacts we made all reported little negative effect of the market and many reported an increase in business.

at 3/4/2008 5:27:00 PM, BloughMee said:
Wha WHA ? Yo dude - Top attendance IBS was around 135K, and it happened a couple years ago in Orlando. And that includes all the vendor wonks and wonkettes. That aside - this year was a disaster, and cut the "downturn doesn't affect us" crap. The industry is in the worst slump in post-WWII history - and it has nobody and nothing to blame but itself.... You can't build twice as many houses as you have demand for year after year and sell them to people with no income and no way to pay. Dumb.

Post a comment

Display Name
Before submitting this form, please type the characters displayed above: