When a house goes up for sale, the listing agent usually places one of their signs on the front lawn. As soon as closing is complete, I own the house. The sign is now on my property, and I didn’t give permission for it to be there. Can I keep it? Is there something in the contract to prevent his?
ADDENDUM: Before someone flames me on behalf of the poor Realtor: I’m not house shopping, I don’t plan on doing this, I’m not going to do this. I’m just curious.
If the contract you signed specified that the sign was included as part of the purchase (like a refrigerator might be), then it is your property. Otherwise, it belongs to the agent that placed it there.
If you want it that badly, negotiate. 
I have to question if that is the case; I would have thought the opposite was true. I’m fairly sure the contract on my house failed to specify that the shovel that was left in the shed was being transferred to me. Can the former owners come back and claim it two years later since its not mine?
I’m curious as well. What possible reason could you have for wanting the realtor sign? 
IANAL, but I believe that there is a legal distinction made between abandoned property vs. an object that someone hasn’t had the opportunity to reclaim.
Presumably, if someone leaves a mop in the closet when a house is sold, that person has had an opportunity to clean out the house of everything he wants to keep before vacating. If a mop is left behind, there’s a decent argument to be made that the person just didn’t care enough to take it, so that it is abandoned, and you may assume ownership/possession of it. If the guy came back years later and tried to claim it, you could probably tell him to shove it, because he didn’t see fit to take it when he left.
A sign, on the other hand, could be left temporarily on the front lawn of a house because the realtor just hasn’t had time to come by and pick it up. At least in my neighborhood, real estate agents don’t actually install and remove those signs themselves, they contract with a guy who can dig those little holes and get his hands messy with dirt. Maybe it is the fault of the contractor that he didn’t pick up the sign in time. Either way, it’s a pretty hard argument to make that a realtor must be compelled to remove his sign immediately before closing, rather than giving him a reasonable amount of time before doing so.
In the final analysis, the argument might come down to the Law of the Schoolyard: the sign has the realtor’s name on it, so it is his.
This is actually a very interesting question. My own political philosophy gives an answer which is of no interest here, but it does raise a related question: suppose the yard also had a campaign sign placed there by the realtor who happens to be running for state auditor or something. Does that sign become owned by the buyer?
I don’t know the legal answer. Just speculating here but:
If a person pulls onto your driveway to turn around they are trespassing, but the driveway owner doesn’t have the right to keep your car.
If a childs ball goes in the neighbors back yard, to retrieve the ball without permission is trespassing but the owner doens’t have a legal right to keep the ball either.
Why would a realtor sign be any different?
If the shovel was not listed as something owned by either party, it is indeed in a gray area. Could the previous owner come back and claim it? Sure, but let’s do a reasonableness test: is there a receipt? How long is later? He would have a better claim if it was a day later rather than two years.
A contract should be unambiguous about anything not nailed down. Curtains, appliances, removable fixtures, furniture, all should be specified in a good contract, or at least with language like “all furniture present on {date}” (and that could be backed up with pictures).
In the absence of contract specifics, other ownership criteria would apply. The Realtor’s name on the sign is a big plus for him.
Just because an object is physically on some property does not convey ownership to the property owner. What if someone parked in your driveway? Does the car’s ownership change?
The realtor would first have to obtain permission from the sellers (owners, presumably) to put up his campaign signs. At least that’s the way it is locally. Jane Doe cannot put up a sign on my lawn without my permission, and it can remain there for as long as I’d like until the election. If I don’t want it there a week after it goes up, I can take it down. After election day, she has a reasonable amount of time to remove her signage or face fines. (Well, not her, but the Committee to Elect Jane Doe).
If a buyer really cares all that much about “ownership” of the sign, then it would be negotiated at closing. The REALTOR might sell it to you, but would probably agree to have it off the property within a limited amount of time.
Putting a political sign up on somebody else’s property because you had it listed for sale would be against the REALTORS Code of Ethics and could get you into serious legal trouble. I cannot image any broker anywhere telling an agent they could even do that.
Lets work with this car analogy a bit more. If I come home from work and find somebodies car parked in my driveway, I certainly can’t claim possesion of it. But I am within my rights to have it towed, aren’t I? So I do have some leeway in regards to the disposition of items left on my property. In re the sign, I assume I can take it down if I wish, but do I have an obligation to store it until its rightful owner claims it? Can I throw it away?
I’m a commercial - industrial Realtor. You want my sign after the fact Buy the property and we’ll talk. 
Kidding aside those signs do cost money. The large double post 4x8’s I put up on industrial properties can cost from 250- 400 depending on customization. Re residential little steel yeard signs are probably 20-30+ or so each with the cost of he panel inserts and the frame, and the larger "post style" yard signs can be 50- $100 each depending on how fancy they are.
If an agent has left a sign on your property after the listing has expired or the property is sold for an (in your opinion) unreasonable amount of time , give fair notice of your intent to remove it in a few days, then take it down. If the agent does not respond to your notice, IMO they have constructively abandoned the sign.
A better analogy is a workman left a tool behind. I think you’d have a tough time claiming ownership of it. However, I could see where it might be tough for the tool’s/sign’s owner to show you have a responsibility to care for it.
My understanding in cases like this is that if there’s not a specific legal ruling that applies, that reasonableness is a general standard used. If you disposed of the sign the day you moved in, you might well be held responsible for replacing it, as it wouldn’t be condsidered reasonable to expect the realtor to collect it so soon. If it’s still there two weeks later, it might be a different story. If you remove the sign from the lawn early on, you may then incur some responsibility to care for it (protect it from theft) beyond what would be expected if you left it where it was.
I asked my boyfriend about this. He is a licensed realtor in 5 states and has the reciprocity to buy and sell in 15. Here’s our little IM convo:
BF: Musicat is exactly correct
Stpauler: got any more info about it?
BF: No, its a very simple answer for a very simple question
Stpauler: Do realtors just leave their signs behind or do they usually come back for them?
BF: They return for them or have an associate of some kind return for them because they are expensive as well as one of the primary tools of the profession
Stpauler: what would happen if the new home owner throws it away?
BF: I have seen and heard that some realtors will leave their signs on the property just to get the name exposure and additional essentially free advertisment, this is highly effective when the “SOLD” addition is added to the NAME plate. However, this is not something a Realtor can just do, It needs to be signed off on by the buyer if the idea is to have it on after CLOSING AND MOVE IN
I asked my Gf about this. She is a broker. She said she asks the new owner if she can display a sold sign on the property for a couple weeks. The amount of time is negotiable of course. They almost never say no but if they do she just takes the sign immediatly afer closing.
Annie-Xmas and Astro know this, but for the rest of you: Not all real estate agents are Realtors®.
A few years back, that happened around here. The opposing candidate was a real estate agent, and we noticed a bunch of his signs appearing in front of houses that were for sale. Including several that we knew to be empty. Probably technically illegal, but I suppose he felt safe in doing this without the owners permission, since they had already moved away and weren’t likely to ever know about it.
In the end, it didn’t help his campaign much.
First, lawn signs mostly influence people on the nearby block. But those people generally knew that this house was empty, and had been for several weeks. And it doesn’t really help to have your lawn sign in front of the house that is considered the neighborhood eyesore.
Second, our campaign made an issue of this. We printed a lit piece saying “Candidate X – supported by 70% of the people who have moved out of our district. But your neighbors who are still here support candidate Y.” And we made sure our doorknockers mentioned it to people, especially on blocks where one of these for-sale houses had one of the opponents lawn signs. Jokes about ‘all the voters in that empty house support our opponent’ generally went over well.
On election day, we beat him easily, getting nearly 70% of the vote!
Funny story, T-bonham, thanks!
Preface: I’m a lawyer, but real estate is not my field, so to some extent I’m going on law school memories here.
You don’t own the sign after closing because:
- Your purchase contract is with the owner of the property;
- The sign doesn’t belong to the property owner;
- As a general rule, you can’t convey title to something you don’t own (that’s why you need title insurance, to make sure the guy selling the property has clear title); so
- After closing, the sign still belongs to the realtor.
If you didn’t give the real estate agent permission to keep her sign on the property after closing, then she’s arguably committing a trespass by leaving it there. However, I think your remedy is to force her to remove it; the sign doesn’t automatically become yours. Of course, in most cases people just handle this by informal agreement, and ownership of the sign is not an issue.
If the contract you signed specified that the sign was included as part of the purchase (like a refrigerator might be), then it is your property.
I don’t think this is correct, unless the real estate agent was a party to the contract; the seller of the property has no power to convey ownership of a sign he doesn’t own.