PCBC 2012: Powered by Connections

PCBC 2012 is June 27-28 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

PCBC 2011 - the beginning of next

Registration and housing open March 8th.

PCBC 2011

It's Fall. We are selling booths, accepting program proposals and discussing our registration options.

It's Fall. Halloween is just around the corner. Not much longer until Thanksgiving.

It's Fall. We have retired our polo shirts for the year. We have rediscovered our sweaters and jackets. It's starting to rain. The leaves are falling.

It's Fall. Time for the World Series! The Giants have never won a World Series in San Francisco. The Texas Rangers have never been to a World Series. This one feels different, almost magical.

It's Fall. A great time of the year. As a life long Giants fan...Go Giants!

PCBC 2010 - Hybrid Core Home

New to PCBC 2010

A full size concept house on the PCBC Exhibit Floor showing an innovative, new building process called the Hybrid Core Home. This process offers the best of both worlds: “off-site” control and “on-site” craftsmanship. The core of the home is a stick-constructed structure built in a precise, tightly controlled indoor environment protected from the weather. It is then carefully moved to the site and finished to the highest quality standards. The savings are revolutionary, overall project time is significantly cut and the home is green to the core.

Learn more

PCBC 2010 - Energy Retrofit Series

Energy Retrofit Series

Friday, June 11, 2010
Moscone Center

Energy efficient retrofitting can reduce home energy use by up to 40 percent per home, increase real estate values and help create jobs. There are now many local, State and Federal programs that provide marketing, incentives and financing to homeowners and training and certification to contractors. Learn how to use these programs to your advantage and examine how you can translate existing building techniques, technologies and business skills to enhance and expand your current business model.

10:00–10:45am
Energy Retrofitting
- An Overview of Programs, Incentives and Financing
Retrofitting existing housing can slash consumer energy expenditures and increase real estate values, but lack of information and capital can stymie homeowners’ good intentions. Rebates to lower the costs, a mechanism to alleviate high up-front borrowing costs and a simplified retrofit process will help stimulate the market. The federal Home Star program, the Investor-owned Utilities’ programs, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funded programs throughout California provide consumer rebates and quality control. Improved tools for financing and repayment through existing billing mechanisms will improve opportunities for capturing retrofit work.

Guaranteed you will learn:
• Basics of the federal “Cash for Caulkers” Home Star Program and California retrofit programs that will engage the retrofit market
• Available financing choices including Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) programs

11:00–11:45am
Recovery through Energy Retrofit – Training and Certification
Energy efficient retrofitting can reduce home energy use by up to 40 percent per home, reduce home energy bills, lower associated greenhouse gas emissions and put Americans back to work. But despite the benefits, barriers exist including the lack of skilled workers to expand efficiency retrofit programs. A large reserve of ready labor in need of moderate retraining and proper certification can be repurposed to enter the retrofit market. Special attention needs to be paid to combustion safety training as well as lead paint training. Community-based training programs, the nationwide Building Performance Institute and NAHB’s Home Builders Institute (HBI), HERS providers, and utilities are all providing retrofit training and certification.

Guaranteed you will learn:
• Requirements/training/certification needed to perform the work for the various programs
• Resources and providers of training

12:00–12:45pm
From Production Housing to Full-service Building Performance Contractor
Most current retrofit businesses serve only a small niche – windows, HVAC, insulation. Few businesses actually understand whole-business systems and the science and techniques behind comprehensive energy efficiency improvements. Who better than production builders to translate existing building techniques, technologies and business skills to enhance and expand their current business model? The public sector is jump starting new energy efficiency markets, but the private sector will develop improved business and finance models. The country currently retrofits about 200,000 homes a year, spread across publicly subsidized programs such as low-income weatherization and private homes. The challenge of the Obama administration is to retrofit one million buildings per year! Do you have what it takes to go down the retrofit road?

Guaranteed you will learn:
• How production builders have translated work in new construction to the retrofit market

Participate in the learning opportunities at the Exhibitorium with your PCBC Exhibits Pass.

Learn more about PCBC Exhibits

PCBC 2010 - Prepare for a Rebound

Multifamily Trends Conference Preview: Prepare for a Rebound

Now in its ninth year, PCBC's Multifamily Trends Conference, developed in partnership with Marcus & Millichap for 2010, is dedicated entirely to providing attendees with the insight and knowledge needed to navigate the multifamily development and investment market. After speaking with Hessam Nadji, Senior Vice President & Managing Director of Research Services for Marcus & Millichap, a theme for this year’s conference became clear: 2010 is a staging year and Multifamily Trends will prepare you for the rebound.

According to Nadji, the worst of the downturn in the multifamily market is over and is now in a stabilization period, giving way to a year in which property owners and multifamily developers can examine their portfolios and determine what to buy and sell, and where and what to build. He cited reports from the first quarter of the year showing more stable occupancy rates and decreases in the steep discounts offered to renters in order to retain them as tenants. He also cited a return of investors to the market as property owners are beginning to see multiple offers, a signal of stabilized product.

“This is an interesting period for the multifamily market as we appear to be stabilizing from the worst crisis in occupancy faster than anyone had anticipated,” said Nadji. “This will be a staging year and allow property owners and developers a chance to set up for what we see will be the strongest recovery in history from 2011 to 2016.”

PCBC’s Multifamily Trends Conference, he said, will provide companies with the knowledge and insight needed to prepare for that recovery.

“By 2011, we should be well under way with a recovery in the new cycle, so it was important for us to develop content around this planning cycle to help prepare companies for the rebound,” said Nadji. “We’ve really tried to position the conference to address the components of investment strategy and try to pinpoint how strong the recovery will be to show the audience that it’s now safe to shift from a defensive position into an offensive one.”

Among the sessions developed for the conference will be an entire segment dedicated to a local market drill-down on apartment supply and demand forecasts. Half of the session will be dedicated to the Northern California/Pacific Northwest region, while the other half will tackle the Southern California/Southwest region, both offering insight into when and where the strongest rental market recoveries will take place.

Another session will dissect capital markets and apartment investment strategy by looking at financing options currently available and what to expect in the future, both in the short- and long-term. The session will also cover the viability of Fannie and Freddie in the wake of continued political pressure to reign in deficits, and will also address how all of these factors will affect construction financing in the near future.

Nadji said that the panels will consist of the most renowned and seasoned industry experts, which he dubbed “The Wisdom Panel”, who will be able to put perspective on the topics being discussed. He said that property owners should walk away with a sense of how to improve operations, what to buy and sell, and whether or not to add to their portfolios, while multifamily developers should get a specific sense of timing, location, and the type of product they should build.

“We’ve worked hard to design the conference to be a gathering of practitioners as opposed to theorists,” said Nadji. “We want to add value by having practitioners share their knowledge and experience with other practitioners, and that’s really what PCBC’s Multifamily Trends is all about.”

PCBC’s Multifamily Trends Conference will take place Wednesday, June 9, at PCBC 2010.

View Conference Agenda & Speakers

PCBC 2010- What Are We Working On?

The theme for PCBC 2010 is Reframe the Dream. Within the theme we have a supporting idea which is "Better is the new bigger". This idea of focusing on being better rather than bigger is what we're working on for PCBC 2010.

Examples of how "Better is the new bigger" include:

PCBC Executive Conference - In the past we have had over sixty breakout sessions and no overall group sessions. We are now focused on creating a more intimate conference experience by offering a combination of both. Group sessions will layout the ideas, challenges and discussion-points to everyone that will be discussed and developed throughout the day. At the end of the day everyone will get back together in a large group for the closing group session.

PCBC Exhibits - The basic model of exhibitor selling and attendee buying is outdated. Attendees want to discuss, debate and learn about the latest products offerings and solutions. We are challenging our exhibitors to bring more designers/developers and less sales/marketing to PCBC to fulfill this need. Through improved learning centers and new pavilions everyone can experience PCBC in a new way.

Social Media - What's your budget for PR? What's your budget for customer studies? Do you have one? Do you hear your customers? Social media is relevant to everyone because it allows us to have meaningful conversations with one another without investing thousands of dollars. Our Winning in a Web 2.0 World Social Media Workshop on Tuesday, June 8th will address these issues and many more.

Learn more about The Show at http://www.pcbc.com/theshow/TheShow.html