I Was Expo’d
This past weekend was Seattle’s first condo expo at the Westin Seattle Hotel. The expo is an outgrowth of last year’s Downtown Condo & Realtor Symposium which was a single evening event aimed towards industry professionals.
The 2007 Seattle Condo Expo expanded to a two-day consumer event (May 19th & 20th) with a Realtor Symposium on the evening of the 19th. As the event approached, there was great optimism and expectations that this was going to be a fantastic consumer-focused event, providing information on numerous projects all at one place.
On the surface, I’m sure the sponsors - Seattle Times & PI and the condo trinity of Realogics, Urban Condominiums and Windermere OnSite (RUCWOS) consider the event a big success. That fact that they were able to pull off the Condo Expo, in and of itself, is a success.
Dig a little deeper, though, especially from a consumer-centric and Realtor standpoint, it was a bust. Granted, this was the first event of its kind and there’s sure to be logistical and informational challenges faced by the sponsors and vendors.
As the principal sponsors, RUCWOS projects dominated the event. In addition to RUCWOS, Vulcan had a sizeable corner while Intracorp’s Expo 62, GIS/John L Scott’s European Tower and Williams Marketing’s Brix each had a table. But, notably missing were Williams Marketing’s other major projects (Olive 8, 5th & Madison, 22 West Lee) and Miller Condominium (Queen Anne HS, Trio, Luxe) who were no where to be found. You can’t have a condo expo without two of the larger condo marketing firms absent from the event.
The expo was billed as the “ultimate urban open house”. If you were a prospective buyer, it was anything but. Very few of the vendors had full sales brochures available, and many, just had single sheet flyers with a PR article printed on the back (e.g articles published in the Seattle Times New Homes & Downtown Living inserts). There were no floor plans, pricing information, scale models, vignettes or sample finishes. If you wanted more information, and if you were serious about purchasing, you then had to go to the individual sales centers scattered through the city.
Not only was there lack of info, there was lack of knowledge as well. I spoke to the woman who was manning the table for a new project (not yet pre-selling) and she didn’t know anything about the neighborhood where the project is to be built.
The Realtor Symposium was more of a social event than informational. The set-up, location, and visual aides were not conducive for presentations. One had to stand in the small area in front of the screen to have an unobstructed view of it and people were interspersed through out the expo floor where many distracting side conversations were taking place.
Most of the topics focused on the demographics of urban buyers - retirees and younger professionals as well as trying to reassure the public that projects are keeping tabs on flipper-investors. Essentially, they’re trying hard to dispel any notion that there’s going to be an excess of high-end condo units on the market in a few years. The only bright spot was Matthew Gardner’s talk on the current building cycle which was more rational than the soundbites coming from the marketers.
Last year the Realtor Symposium drew 800 attendees, was informative and conducted in seated theatre hall. This year they charged agents (with buyers for their projects) to attend. From the looks of things, there appeared to only be a few hundred in attendance. In my opinion, compared to last year, the Realtor Symposium was a disappointment.
While I’m less than impressed with the expo, I do have to give props to the visionaries behind it. I realize this is the first of its kind in the city, challenges were faced and logistical decisions had to be made. I’m sure the expo sponsors will take away important feedback and lessons from this year’s event. And, should there be a 2008 Seattle Condo Expo, sponsors and vendors need to take heed of the needs and expectations of consumers. Simply, more information that’s easily accessible and transparent.
I was disappointed too. And the $9 plastic cup of Merlot didn’t help lighten my mood…..
[…] My thoughts about the expo can be found here. […]
[…] The ever-vigilant Matt Goyer of Urbnlivn reports his impressions (and shares a good collection of links to other reports): Overall the Expo was a bust but the talks were good. To get a sense of who was all there I uploaded the map of the showroom floor. As you can see there were a lot of downtown condo projects not represented there and for the ones that were there the representation was lacking. Ben summed it up pretty accurately in his blog post about the event: The expo was billed as the “ultimate urban open houseâ€. If you were a prospective buyer, it was anything but. … […]