Around these parts, it’s pretty common to see cheaply made coroplast signs at street corners by strip malls or highway exit ramps advertising “We Buy Houses!” or “Make $5k-$10k From Home!” or “Area Singles Want To Meet You!”. My personal favorites are the ones where someone stole someone else’s cheap sign and wrote on the back of it with a big marker. Because if there’s anyone I’d trust my finances to, it’s the wildly successful real estate mogul who has to recycle stolen signs to advertise.
My thought on these are that they’re like physical spam e-mails – if they didn’t work, people wouldn’t be using them. So is there anyone here who has called one of these signs to buy/sell their property, stop foreclosure, settle their debt, find love or become financially independent? Or knows someone else who has? I’m not counting garage sale signs or signs advertising puppies for sale but ones looking to advertise actual (however legitimate) services.
These signs are litter, and the least imaginative way possible to advertise.
I hate them with the intensity of a thousand suns.
They’re a blight on every corner in my county, and I would never give anyone the satisfaction of thinking this crap works.
They are illegal in my city, county, and state, and at least once a week I gather a truckload of them from around my neighborhood. Political, roofing, real estate -everything goes except lost or found animals. They need our help.
The large ones - mostly politicians - go in the trash. I take the rest to the outdoor firing range when I go; someone always forgets to bring targets with them, so having 200 virgin plastic signs leaning nearby is always helpful to someone.
Hmm, I was thinking about putting a sign like this on my front lawn to advertise my gardening services. I was concerned about it looking stupid, though. Is advertising your own services on your own yard exempt?
I automatically consider anyone using such advertising to be rather shady, except in the case of advertising about work done on the property (such as the gardening, or perhaps roofing), and in the case of lost or found pets.
Not necessarily true – all they are is an indication that the person who put them up got scammed. They bought in to a sucker plan and were told that the sure-fire way to big money was to pepper the neighborhood with these signs.
Around here 90% of those type signs are directing you to a new development where they want to sell you a house or condo. That might be related to the fact that this is a high growth area. (but not as high as before the real estate bust) Near my house they never stopped building a set of townhomes for sale, they slowed down but never stopped.
I responded to one once. I was newly single and some signs were up advertizing some sort of dating thing. I figured it was some sort of local personals. Instead it was a service that ended up calling me every couple of weeks for about a year.
There may be laws about what type of signs you can put in your front yard. You can generally put up free speech type of signs like political, school, new baby ,etc. But business related signage may have regulations. If the business is physically located in your house you might be able to put up a sign. But if it’s located somewhere else you might not be able to (it’s considered off-site signage like a billboard). For business related signage you need to check with the Code Compliance office.
Some cities do allow certain signs in the Right of Way. However, it’s usually very restrictive. For instance, real estate signs are allowed from Friday evening to Sunday evening. But in most cases people have illegally placed the signs.
Well, I assume the primary means of proliferation is that some other desperate sucker calls up and spends $100 on the “Make $10k a Month!” plan which is a packet reading “Put up a bunch of signs selling this packet”.
Cat Whisperer, personally I’d have no problem with your sign since it’s on your property which means both that it’s your yard to adorn as you wish and I know exactly who is offering the services. That’s different from hand-written signs popping up like mushrooms along the off ramps saying they can save me from foreclosure if I call their anonymous number.
Funny that this thread should show up today. Some time over the weekend one appeared on the corner near my shop. It says (handwritten in black marker, not very neatly) “We buy cars. $300-$1000. We apreciate your business.” and gives a phone number.
As I drove buy it I wondered to myself how this busniess model works, and even intended to start a thread about it. Around here I see such signs offering to buy houses fast! than any other variety.
We have a lot of we buy houses signs. I asked a real estate guy and as I expected he told me these people will only give you a very low ball price. They look for people who are real stupid or real desperate to sell.
That’s what I’ve always assumed, and wondered how despearate I’d have to buy to see one of those signs and think “that’s the answer!”
I’d assume they make money doing it, and if you buy in multiples you can get printed signs very inexpensively. If I ask one of these folks for a business card are they gonna give me their info written on a Baskin Robbins napkin?
There is one of these signs near here that says “AMISH BUGGY RIDES”. It’s on a quiet country road, easily a mile from the nearest house or building or corner or noteworthy feature of any kind. There’s no number to call, no additional information. I’ve always wondered what somebody who really, really wanted an Amish buggy ride would do if they saw it.
