Elaborate ‘For Sale’ Signs Are Trend in Tight Economy

“Owner motivated.”

“Price reduced.”

“$5,000 down.”

These and many other similar one-liners have become signs of the times on the front lawns of homes for sale in the San Fernando Valley and Ventura County.

With a near-record inventory of homes and condos offered for sale, and the number of prospective buyers continuing to shrink in the recession, some real estate brokers and property owners are trying to get their listings to stand out.

Balloons, banners, flags and all sorts of add-on messages are being used to catch the eyes of prospective buyers. Most of these marketing efforts have been around for some time, but it seems that many sellers and their agents are now more anxious than ever to stand out and sell.

“Some people will come in and spend $150 on signs, riders, flags and other attention-grabbers. It adds up pretty quickly,” said Vince Avila, partner in Moorlee Display Advertising in North Hollywood. Real estate agents who used to just stick a metal stake in the ground with a simple sign are instead paying for wooden posts with a hanging sign and room for “riders” at the top of the post touting immediate possession, a master suite with Jacuzzi, gourmet kitchen and the ever-familiar pool.

A simple 18-by-24-inch or 24-by-36-inch rectangular sign sells for about $15 when ordered in bulk. One-of-a-kind signs start out at about $25, according to Avila. Moorlee stocks about 80 riders that sell for $2 each.

“I’m seeing a lot more brochure boxes,” observed Judy Christy, vice president and sales manager at Fred Sands Realtors in Studio City. Most of these are wooden or plastic boxes with set-up sheets describing the house in more detail. Sometimes brokers even stock these brochure boxes with advertisements of other houses for sale or those that have sold in the neighborhood.

Not everybody is keen, however, about offering brochures to anybody who happens to stop by the house. “There’s a question of privacy here. People are a bit paranoid about putting out too much information about their home,” Christy said.

Another popular advertising ploy is stating the price of the home right on the sign or on a rider or banner. “Things that used to be in an ad are now on the signposts,” Christy said. “One of my agents put on a big banner with the price and it attracted a lot of attention.” So far, however, the attention has yet to translate into a firm offer.

J. R. Christopher, owner of Archer Real Estate in Canyon Country, has given a lot of thought to his sign. “When everybody does things one way, I do it another way,” he said. Almost every “for sale” sign is a rectangle, but Christopher’s is round. “My idea was to create a unique sign, not just for business, but to satisfy my own aesthetics,” he said. “I’ve gotten some flak about the signs from prospective sellers. I tell them they can list with someone else.”

Archer’s round signs have green letters on a white background. “It’s the most readable color combination you can put together,” he said. Green suggests stability, integrity and security, Archer said. Signs should avoid the use of “impulse” colors such as red and yellow, he said. And, most importantly, Christopher said, “you’ve got to have a short name and a sign that people can read at 50 miles an hour.”

Howard Smith in Pacoima isn’t fazed by unusual signs. His company, Hang-On-Time, specializes in putting up real estate signs throughout the Valley and Santa Clarita area. “Everybody is using info boxes,” Smith said. Some agents are adding signs advertising home warranties and in one case, he said, a life-size photo of the real estate agent’s face.

Claudine Allen, an agent with RE/MAX Realtors of Valencia Inc., recently ordered 10 for sale signs with a photograph of herself laminated onto each sign. “It’s important for people to recognize who you are,” Allen said. “It was a good way to build name recognition.”

Before deciding to spend about $90 for each sign, “I was debating whether they’d be a benefit or not, and I had some serious concerns about being perceived as narcissistic,” Allen recalled. She finally decided to be bold. “Everybody is looking for an edge to make them different,” she said. “This is kind of a new twist.”

Another residence on Oxnard Street in Woodland Hills boasted an orange sign advertising a $5,000 down payment. An add-on to the sign said: “Sold. But we have others.”

How effective all these signs are in getting sellers the most value for their properties is questionable. “Buyers who drive around quickly get the message that it’s not the best way to find a home,” said Joel B. Lewis, vice president of sales and marketing at R. R. Gable Inc. in Encino.

“There’s hardly anything that someone can do or say that not only hasn’t been used but overused,” Lewis said. Signs that say “reduced” or “seller motivated” don’t mean anything anymore, he said. “That applies to everything in this market. It becomes an obvious statement.” With so many homes for sale and so many signs, Lewis said, buyers just keep comparison shopping instead of buying.

But realtors and sellers aren’t likely to dispense with for-sale signs anytime soon. And even R. R. Gable is studying how to make their signs stand out more than ever.

In the mid-1980s, R. R. Gable used designs with radio transmitters that drive-by buyers could tune into for more information about a home for sale. The experiment turned out to be too costly for most agents, but R. R. Gable is now working on a more economical version of the radio transmitters. Basically, the system works with very localized radio frequencies that any driver can tune into from a car radio. Prospective buyers can listen to a prerecorded message telling them about the house and its amenities.

The trick to using these radio transmitters and information boxes effective is offering buyers information--but not too much information, said Roger Hance, president of R. R. Gable Inc. in Northridge. “Our purpose isn’t to give information out, but to meet people,” Hance said. “Giving people so much information that they don’t call the broker defeats your purpose.”