My Sign?!

My Sign?!

They are just signs. I use them to direct buyers to my listings or open houses. I use them in front of my listings to get the word out to all of the people passing by.

They are just signs, but I have so much trouble with them.

I have an Open House and I strategically place the signs, with colorful balloons, to lead into my listing and then I wait for the flood of potential buyers . . . and I wait, and I wait, and no one shows. When I eventually close down for the day and go to retrieve my signs, I find that they are not there, or, at least, the ones that are on the main route. No wonder no one came. Who took my signs?

• Perhaps it was an agent who was just starting out and had no signs of his own. I am glad to help.
• Maybe it is the neighbor who lives at the corner house. He may have a two acre lot, but he'll be damned if anybody is going to put a sign at the corner of his lot. Usually I ask for permission.
• Occasionally, I have found my signs. I have spotted them thrown in the gulley on the side of the road or back into the woods. Young punks with nothing better to do. One time I found them by the side of the firehouse. There were no fire fighters available to ask what had happened.

. . . And then there are the signs in front of the house.

• In one case, a neighborhood punk thought that I needed a greeting on my sign, hence he wrote "curse you, b____". Why didn't I think of that? I should put that on all of my flyers.
• On another listing, in a more upscale part of town, the youngsters wrote something along the lines of "Joanie loves Chachi". I wonder if that was a material fact which I needed to disclose.
• There was a listing with no front yard, but a nice railing along side the steps. I took great care placing a sign on each side of the railing and making sure that they were level and secure. The next day when I came by the house, the signs were sideways.
• Was it windy or was it a hooligan? At this particular listing, I kept finding the sign hanging from one hook or completely on the ground. I noticed that it was frequently windy at this site, but I was sure that I was giving extra security for this sign to remain hanging. Eventually the sign was removed and gone.
• And then there was the worst of all. I had a great waterfront listing. It had a sign on the road side and another on the water side. I was getting calls like crazy from the boaters seeing the water side sign. But then, the storm surge came. Six feet of water did quite a bit of damage. As I looked around afterwards, with the owner, surveying the storm's wrath, his SUV floated over to the neighbor's property, his boat severely damaged, and the walls of his house collapsing, I wondered "Where in the heck are my signs?" The signs, the posts, and all were nowhere to be found. And the sign company wanted to charge me for the posts. Hey, it's not my fault that you don't have hurricane proof posts.