The RAR Housing Forum with Congressman Cantor
I owe a thank you to Laura Lafayette CEO of the RAR for trusting me with a microphone.
I was honored to be one of the panelists for a little mini town hall with our esteemed Congressman Eric Cantor about housing. The Richmond Association of Realtors grabbed him and put him on stage and we got a few minutes to talk about specific topics….ok….gripe about the state of lending and how it is the culprit for extended malaise in the housing market. I was the ‘condo finance/urban renewal’ guy. That is me with just to Eric’s right. The caption calls me ‘Eric Jarvis’ but that was close enough (they later corrected it.)
It was a good exercise and I got a lot of good feedback from the members of the RAR that attended the event. I don’t know if he heard our message but he nodded a lot…which I can only assume was a good sign. He obviously has a lot on his political plate, but any chance you get to a chance to deliver a documented message to public figure, it can’t be all bad.
The Downtown Loft Tour
We were asked to plan the inaugural and subsequent Loft tours beginning in 2008.
In 2008, Venture Richmond thought it would be a good idea to do organize a tour of the new lofts and flats that had been created during the period of urban renewal that was sweeping the City. One South Realty was a part of the inaugural (and subsequent) planning committee(s), served as sponsor each year and actually provided its agent to serve as tour guides on the busses that looped around the city going from project to project. There were some pretty cool videos shot during the tour of some of the property owners that will give you a better feel.
Feedback for the tours was overwhelmingly positive and exposed the Downtown market (from Manchester to Rocketts to Jackson Ward) to a entirely different segment of Richmond than who would have ever seen it before. The next version of the event will probably highlight some of the commercial developments that have gone on in the Downtown marketplace.
Development Forum
Sitting on stage sure is different from leaning on it at a show...
Sitting on the stage of The National Theater next to the heads of Williams Mullen, Apple REIT and Highwoods Properties (just to name a few) and having your peers staring back at you from the audience was pretty intimidating….but a wonderful opportunity. Getting to promote several projects on behalf of the developers was fun.
I still have not had a chance to give Lucy Meade of Venture Richmond a hard time for putting me on the spot with a little impromptu Q and A about the state of the market. I think I stumbled through it pretty well with a bunch of references to ‘cautiously optimistic’ and ‘inventory correction’ type buzzwords.
My public speaking professors would have been proud…
Rho Epsilon
I am not sure if we had a secret handshake
In 1995, I received a promotion from Social Chairman (unofficial, of course) to President of the VCU Rho Epsilon fraternity. While I may not have fully understood the opportunity at the time, it had a much larger effect on me than I realized. Because of the role, I got to meet some pretty interesting and powerful people and acted as emcee at the annual awards banquet which was attended by many prominent developers, bankers and investors.
The VCU RE Department does an excellent job of exposing the students to real world scenarios getting them out into the field with the people of Richmond RE. By creating the VCU Real Estate Trends Conference and sponsoring the VCU Circle of Excellence, they have created a partnership with the RE community and given graduates a leg up when it is time to start looking for a job…
