by Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
Over the years, the Realtor Builder Trade Show and Luncheon has evolved from a tradeshow and sit-down luncheon with speaker to a tradeshow with finger food and entertainment.
In the beginning, there used to be two separate events - one was a luncheon, the other a trade show.
But times changed and attendance dropped at both.
“The last year we did that, we had a total of 75 people show up for 150 booths,” said Cal Williams of Beazer Homes. “The next year, I was going to be the chairman of the trade show and I thought, ‘Why don’t we combine the two?’”
In 2003, the luncheon speakers were as big as you can get in this business: the presidents of the National Association of Realtors and the National Association of Home Builders. To make it even more of a big affair, the NAR president was from Jacksonville: Cathy Whatley of Buck & Buck Realty.
“Since we are going to have all of these people there to see the presidents, why not do the show in conjunction with the luncheon?” said Williams. “Everyone was pretty much open, since the previous year had been so miserable.”
The first-combined event was held at the Osborn Center.
“We set up the show as you walk into the door,” said Williams. “I think we sold 20 booths and were excited about it. We started the show at 10 a.m. and then we were thinking we would have a larger crowd at the meeting. Everyone got set up, but people weren’t expecting a trade show prior to the luncheon so our initial show was not very well attended. Everyone showed up at the last minute for the luncheon.”
The program was fairly long and afterwards the vendors weren’t prepared for visitors. They thought they were coming before the luncheon.
“It sort of got off to a stumbling start,” said Williams. “But, the next year, we had 50 booths and we advertised that it was going to start earlier.”
That, said Williams, was a really big success.
“Then it sort of took on a life of its own,” said Williams. “It has evolved as a result of the industry’s challenges.”
Each new Realtor Builder Tradeshow and Luncheon chair or co-chairs have tweaked and reorganized the show.
It was held at the stadium for a few years and is now back to its roots at the Osborn Center.
The luncheon and speaker evolved into a buffet lunch with mini-speakers during the event and now to no speaker at all. This year, the lunch will be provided in an appetizer fashion from 10 different food vendors who will have booths throughout the show.
Also, the booths are not only manned by builders anymore. Pretty much anyone associated with real estate, even Realtors themselves, have booths and provide information for the visitors to the event to peruse.
“I think we are going to see things evolve again,” said Williams.
The event is put on by the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors and the Northeast Florida Builders Association’s Sales and Marketing Council.
“It is a fundraiser for us both,” said Williams of SMC. “NEFAR is a much larger organization by far than SMC. I think we are going to have to address the participation on the Realtors part and on the builder’s part in the future.”
Williams feels that discontinuing the speaker was not in the best interest of the attendees.
“The big piece that we are missing is that when we had the Realtor Builder Luncheon, it was a time when we brought our two industries together and had a speaker that spoke to the real estate business on a nationwide level,” he said. “When we had the FHBA and NAR speakers, they spoke on how important it is to have the cooperation between our two organizations as well as having the same goal and objective.”
Williams said one purpose of the event as well as SMC is to get Realtors to interact with site agents so they could eventually increase sales.
Though the event grew and flourished over the year’s market changes have led to several adjustments again this year, but next year will bring more.