I Survived Real Estate 2008 - Bringing together the real estate community to benefit the Orange County Affiliate of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure

Richard Labrose, Chief Executive Officer of the Building Industry Association of Southern California joins the I Survived Real Estate 2008 panel!

Richard Lambros is the Chief Executive Officer of the Building Industry Association of Southern California (BIA/SC), a non-profit trade association representing over 2,200 member companies involved in all aspects of the building industry in the six-county Los Angeles metropolitan area. The 38,000-square-mile region is home to over 16-million residents.

Richard is responsible for the day-to-day management of the sixth largest local homebuilding trade association in the nation and the largest local association in the state. He works with BIA/SC’s Board of Directors, six chapters and twelve councils to craft and implement strategies that will grow the size and strength of the association, provide valuable member services, advance industry causes and create a pro-housing climate that is conducive to sustained housing growth in Southern California. At BIA/SC, Richard has utilized his wealth of political, business and association management experience to help the association reestablish itself as the leading regional voice for the homebuilding industry. His efforts and skills were recognized nationally in 2004 when he won the National Association of Home Builders’ (NAHB) “Executive Officer of the Year Award.”

After nearly winning an election in 1996 to represent California’s 56th Assembly District, Richard served a two-year term as Executive Director for the California Republican Party, where he managed the administrative and political activities for the largest state Republican Party in the nation.

Prior to his political post, Richard spent over 10 years representing the interests and efforts of the housing industry. He served as the Vice President and Director of Public Affairs for the Apartment Association of Orange County (AAOC) and as Director of Governmental Relations for the Rancho Los Cerritos Association of REALTORS©. His years of service and contributions to the housing industry earned him special recognition in 1996 as the Alliance of Real Estate Associations’ “Legislative Advocate of the Year.”

A second-generation California native, Richard was born in Los Angeles and raised in Downey, California. He attended the University of Southern California, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science. Richard is married and lives with his wife, Colleen, and four children in Fullerton.

Joel Singer has now joined the I Survived Real Estate 2008 panel. We look forward to spekaing with him on the radio show and seeing him on August 23rd.

The Norris Group received the signed NBA basketball by Carmelo Anthony of the Denver Nuggets. Thank you Carmelo and the Denver Nuggests for helping us out with our fundraiser!

Bruce Norris is joined by Vice President of Marketing for RealtyTrac and panelist for I Survived Real Estate 2008, Rick Sharga. Bruce and Rick discuss preventive measures currently in the works to help the current real estate downturn, how these solutions are structured, market psychology, lenders being risk averse, social trends contributing to problems, lenders and the dance with Wall Street, the consumer and lenders as the true speculators, the definition of market value being skewed, RealtyTrac keeping up with the sheer numbers of foreclosures, military foreclosures and issues because of volume and people falling through the crack, fraud in the marketplace, how RealtyTrac counts foreclosures, conversation rate for notices of default, alt-A loans and what’s coming next, equity positions and behavior of different consumers, percentage of consumers buying with the intent to walk away from another home, the unintended consequence of adjusting principle on loans, percentage of US housing units facing foreclosure, REOs dictating prices in a market when they are the majority of listings, looking at the rest of 2008 and 2009, other areas not in the same position as California, other states that are doing well, California adjusting to allow for massive migration, why California could be extremely attractive in the coming years, underestimating the impact real estate had on jobs, auction attendance, the Internet and auctions in the coming years, bid4assets and RealtyTrac, shill bidding and the Internet auctions, realtytrac.com, isurvived2008.com

Rick joined RealtyTrac in 2004 as the Vice President of Marketing. He is responsible for building and maintaining the RealtyTrac brand, corporate positioning and messaging, public and investor relations, and marketing communications activities. As a spokesman for the company, Rick has been quoted extensively in the press on foreclosure, mortgage and real estate trends, and appeared on NBC Nightly News, CNN, CBS, ABC World News and NPR.

Prior to joining the company, Rick spent more than 20 years developing corporate and product branding strategies for technology start-up companies and international corporations such as DuPont, Fujitsu, Hitachi and Toshiba. Rick created and executed successful sales and marketing programs in B2B, technology, consumer electronics and retail for companies like JD Edwards, Philips, Cox Communications and Honeywell.
Rick began his career with one of the world’s largest ad agencies, Foote, Cone and Belding, and also had successful engagements with Ketchum Communications and McGraw-Hill. He founded his own consulting firm, CJ Patrick Company, in 2002 to help companies develop business and brand strategies that clearly communicate a unique value proposition, create a position of competitive advantage, and leverage the strength of their brands in the marketplace.

A nationally-recognized speaker on Branding, Rick spends his spare time taking Tae Kwon Do classes with his 10-year-old son, and trying to keep up with his increasingly-mobile 4-year-old daughter. He also continues in his lifelong quest to find the perfect wine to compliment his BBQ’d baby back ribs.

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Special thanks to the following partners who are helping make this event possible: the San Diego Creative Investment Association and Bill Tan (sdcia.com), the Investors Workshop in Orange County and Shawn Watkins (investorsworkshops.com), Frye Wiles, the results-oriented web design, internet marketing, branding and creative design firm helping us with the web (fryewiles.com), MVT Productions who always does an amazing job with our audio/visual needs (mvtproductions.tv), Proxibid who has graciously offered to air this event nationwide live via the Internet (Proxibid.com), White House Catering (whcatering.com), and finally, the Nixon Library for allowing us to use their wonderful White House Replica of the East Room to hold the live, black tie event (nixonlibraryfoundation.org).

The Norris Group
6391 Magnolia Avenue, Ste. C
Riverside, CA 92506
www.TheNorrisGroup.com