More variety and larger, this year's 10th annual Chamber Home Show is a place to be 'part of the community'
Photo by Howard Owens.
Chuck Flynn is poised and ready to ask visitors a question throughout this weekend.
What do you think your home is worth? Take a guess. What do you think?
“So when they give me their guess, let’s say they guess $220,000, and I type in their address and we get an immediate estimate for what it might be, and we find out how close they are, up or down or not. And then everybody who guesses, they get entered into a drawing for an awesome gift certificate at Max Pies Furniture in Batavia,” said Flynn, a licensed associate broker at Howard Hanna Real Estate Services.
He is representing one of 65 vendors at Genesee County Chamber of Commerce’s 10th annual Home Show. It began Friday evening and continues from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday at McCarthy Ice Arena, 22 Evans St., Batavia.
Now, if you’re thinking that Flynn’s game is easy because most folks ought to know their property’s assessment, he has found that many homes are actually worth more than they think. One visitor was surprised to learn that his Southside home’s value ranged some $10,000 more than his overpriced guess.
Besides a source of entertainment, does having a booth at the home show serve a business purpose? Absolutely, Flynn said.
“I definitely have connected with new relationships and reconnected with old ones,” he said. “And we get business from it every year. It’s fantastic.”
It’s a seller's market, he said, because there are more buyers out there than there are properties, “so for every 10 buyers, there’s one seller.”
“So just by the metrics, we’re just getting more buyers. And part of that’s driven by demographics, generational, the millennials are the biggest generation, right? There’s more millennials and baby boomers, so baby boomers aren’t the biggest generation anymore,” he said. “As the newer generation is coming up, there’s just os many more buyers, and they’re entering their prime home buying years, which is a little later in life for those generations than it was for my generation or the baby boomers.”
On the opposite side of the arena was Ron Weiler, owner of Sterling Tents. He’s been part of the home show since the Jaycees operated it at Batavia Downs years ago, he said. His wife’s grandfather, Roie Sterling, founded the company in 1911 on Main Street in Batavia, and it has remained here, except for a location change to Pearl Street.
He enjoys the annual event for the exposure it brings to his company and what it can provide for people, Weiler said.
“You meet the people, bring awareness to them, so that they know that there’s options for like, they put up a beautiful deck and it's too hot, they can't use it. So then we can use covers for that. And what we are is, life's a series of events. There are the poor ones, but there are good ones, like a graduation or wedding. So with our tents and our equipment, we make it so great that when you have a bad day, you can think about the good time you had,” he said. “So we have protection, and it’s festive. You think of tents, you have festivities, and it's social interaction, and that's what we need. We need social interaction and to have fun; life should be fun.”
Are you actually conducting business when you’re here?
“We make contacts, and then you go back and forth. It's always rewarding, you know, and we've always gotten a lot of work from it,” he said. “But it’s not like next week or anything; it’s simmering, and they return. My office manager, Sandy, she’s the one that handles all of that. I’m on the jobs mostly.”
There are other vendors that participate for reasons other than to gain an immediate or impending sale, Adam Clark said, with the clever draw of his 3-year-old golden retriever Dazey nearby.
“Just being part of the community, seeing all the familiar faces, whether it’s the other vendors, your existing customers, or new customers. It’s just nice to get out and be in the public,” said Clark, co-owner of Cedar Street Sales and Rentals. “We might gain a few sales from it, but it’s more of just a PR kind of thing, getting out in the public.
Friday evenings have typically been fairly slow; however, there was a steady flow of visitors carrying the home show bag to store goodies from each vendor. There are pens, chip clips, magnets, wrapped candies, rulers, bumper stickers, keychains, radon kits, and mini fishing, golf, and pick-a-duck games for entertainment and with chances to win prizes.
Vendors cover a wide range of areas, from driveway sealing, municipal services, and plumbing to realtors, community theater, health and wellness, financial advising, local media, household and garage needs, heating and cooling, and equipment repair.
While many vendors are from Genesee County, some travel from other areas, including Neil Delves, owner of Never Wet Basement Waterproofing. This is his fourth or fifth year at this show, he said.
“It just generates new appointments for us because I'm in the basement waterproofing business, and therefore, we do not really get any repeat business. Once we fix someone's house, we don't have to go back and see them ever again. So it is a one-time fix, done right and permanently,” he said. “Always looking for new customers. So we come here every year, as I do all the other local home shows. This is one of my favorite home shows because it's not very big, but people know what they want here, and they come up to me and say, ‘Okay, I need you to come out and look at my house.’ And the leads we get are very fruitful.”
Perhaps that’s why a third of these booths are new vendors this year, which has provided a good variety, Chamber President Brian Cousins said.
“A lot of Chamber members as well, which is great for the chamber membership. It's great to support the members as a chamber organization, to highlight all the businesses that we have for our community," Cousins said. "We get a lot of people that over the course of time … they've had a lot of home projects or home things that they've needed to do and wanted to do, but either didn't have the wherewithal or thought that they were going to do it themselves, and then come now and they find a vendor to be able to really help them.
“The other thing that happens throughout these shows too is a lot of the vendors do vendor-to-vendor, business-to-business deals as well, so they can find out how to support each other," he said. "Some of them have like industries, and some of them have a little bit of a different of a context, or a complimentary business to be able to help each other grow and to work. I was just talking with a couple people on the other side over here that were doing just that, so it was kind of nice to see.”
While you're at the home show, please remember to stop by The Batavian's booth to say hi and enter to win two VIP tickets to the Wings Over Batavia Air Show.
Photo by Howard Owens
Photo by Joanne Beck
Photo by Howard Owens.
Photo by Howard Owens.
