IBS held in Las Vegas
Las Vegas -- The International Builders’ Show opened here with more than 1,700 exhibitors, bringing together home builders from around the country during one of the industry’s most challenging periods. The annual trade show, sponsored by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), spread across all three halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center, and foot traffic was brisk at times, particularly in the South Hall.
(Click HERE to watch the HCN TV report of the International Builders' Show.)
Major LBM suppliers like Georgia-Pacific, Louisiana-Pacific, Dow, Dupont, Boise and Weyerhaeuser were all in attendance, along with most of the larger window and door manufacturers. Among the pro dealers, national players like ProBuild, Stock Building Supply and 84 Lumber sponsored booths, as did Home Depot and Lowe’s.
Lanny Jass, general manager of GeoDeck, didn’t see any production builders in his booth, but they were not his targets anyway. Jass sells composite decking to remodeling contractors, custom builders and distributors, and these individuals were well represented, he said.
“We were talking with people who can actually write orders,” Jass told Home Channel News. “They weren’t the tire kickers.”
The education portion of the three-day show was comprised of more than 250 sessions, many of them centering around green building and survival strategies during the housing downturn. An economic forecasting session was less than optimistic, however, as economists from the NAHB, Freddie Mac and the PMI Group predicted that home prices will continue to sink, and rising unemployment will result in more home foreclosures.
“We are expecting the trough to happen [this year],” said David Crowe, NAHB’s chief economist. “We’ll come out the other side of ’09 on the upswing.”
Two builders who specialize in apartments painted a stark picture of the future rental market in “Multifamily Housing: The State of the Industry.” The credit freeze has stopped up their development pipelines, which typically take two to three years to produce a project, they said. When the market recovers and Gen Y starts looking for apartments, “We won’t be able to turn out housing right off the bat,” said Steve Lawson, president of the Lawson Cos. in Virginia Beach, Va.
The event continues through Jan. 23.