Following the resignation of 11-year CEO Matt Morrow, the HBA has hired and accepted resignations of two CEOs during the past year. In November, you took over as interim executive officer. How is the organization dealing with all the changes?Change is always a challenge. That being said, it’s actually very common when an organization has had a leader for a long time. When you have such a change, it’s challenging to find a person who is the right fit. We are still a very strong organization. 2014 is our 60th anniversary, and we are very excited about that. In a year of massive change, 2013 was the first time our membership was up since 2007. Our membership is still strong. We are up by 12 members to 380. Is that huge? Absolutely not. But of those 12 members, nine of them are builders. For an industry that’s struggling, to be up nine builders, that is huge.
I feel like we have a strong team going forward and our membership has faith in our staff and board. Looking for a new CEO is not my final decision, it’s the board’s. However, I know we are looking to expand the staff by at least one in 2014. My goal is to hire an administrative position.
How are you approaching your new lead role as interim executive officer?The HBA is really important to me. Having been here so long, I have good relationships with so many of our members. We have been through this downturn economy together. We are a team of four people now – three staff, plus a consultant. It doesn’t leave a lot of us to get everything done. We are really exploring everybody’s skill sets and making sure we are taking the best advantage of what they can do for the organization and our members.
As executive officer, there are lots more meetings in my day. I think that’s the sentiment you hear from everybody in the business world. We have so much going on, so many parts and pieces. I’m trying to step back a bit and look at the big picture.
What does the HBA have on tap for 2014?We have the Home Show coming up Jan. 31–Feb. 2. A minor thing we are really excited about. Southwest Audio Visual has donated two 200-inch televisions for HBA advertising. That doesn’t sound like a big thing, but for us, it’s huge.
Our biggest change coming up is a mobile parade app. The [Parade of Homes] is the single event we have done since we chartered in 1954. People love the parade. The biggest challenge is locations. If you enter an address on your phone, it usually can’t take you to that house. It’s either in the middle of a field or subdivision Google Maps doesn’t recognize.
The app will also give people walking through the house a chance to leave comments for builders. In 2014, we will have tickets. They don’t cost anything if you reserve them online, but it allows us to track how many people went through each house and when. It will help the builder know what style or location people are interested in.
We worked with a company called Parade Craze on the app. It’s an app which has already been developed nationwide and is free. When you download it, it looks at where you are and downloads the parade closest to you.
Ron Stenger Cos. is planning to build a three-phase, 82-acre subdivision beginning this summer. What else is on tap?The Stenger subdivision is exciting. I don’t know if it’s the first, but if not, it’s amongst the very few which has started in the last couple years.
Residential building is starting to see rebounds. The research we do covers a six-county area – Barry, Christian, Greene, Stone, Taney and Webster – and in those, 1,256 residential building permits were issued, that’s up 18 percent. We are forecasting another 18 percent increase for 2014, to about 1,486 in those counties.
That’s obviously down from a high, but headed in the right direction. Back in 2005, we were over 5,200. We got down as low as 853 in 2011. We are on the way back up.
