Home again, home again...

We just returned from Florida where our buyer’s group met. It is a mandatory annual meeting where the group must have a quorum of its membership to act on items.

It is interesting to see how others in the industry are doing both personally and professionally. It was nice to see some old familiar friendly faces who asked about the boys. They were surprised when they heard that Josh just turned 16. Many of them met him when we first joined the group in 2000, after taking ownership at PHO. A few met him even before that in '97 on a Fleetwood Homes cruise (photo.) He was just two then and we were the only ones who brought our kid. Needless to say, he got a lot of attention from the moms in the group missing their own children. I’ll never forget when he said to me after returning home “Mom, when are we going back to the boat?” Funny kid.

It was nice to see some new faces too, mostly the next generation in a family owned business. There were a couple of young men in their early twenties clearly trying to get out of their father’s shadows and make a name for themselves. And there were other young families that looked like ours when we first started. Amazing how fast this all goes by.

I was surprised by the optimism in the room. This is not a naïve group of people. Many have been building homes for 3 or 4 decades, and they represent all areas of the country. While most thought there were still challenges ahead, they were excited by the traffic at their sales centers and number of commitments to build they have received. We too are feeling excited about the opportunities that this year will bring. With 54 in attendance at the seminar, we felt like most folks have realized they need to take advantage of these low interest rates. And while not everything is necessarily perfect, that’s life. We have often found that when people wait for everything to be just perfect, they never achieve their dream, because perfect rarely comes.

So, it’s back to the cold as I write this on the plane, and I am looking through the new agreements we forged with our building partners, pleased about what was accomplished and excited to pass on our efforts to our customers for a great housing value.

Oh, and there was a celebrity sighting to report- we saw Johnny Damon at Margaritaville enjoying lunch with his wife and kids. Eric says he signed with Tampa. Pretty cool.