Board Stupid!

I was inspired to write this article by a great story in yesterday's newspaper. It reported that estate agents in Hammersmith will now be required to apply for permission from the council to put up their 'For Sale' boards because so many people have complained about conservation areas in this borough being blighted by board blitzing. Could this be the start of a National cull on the estate agent's favourite advertising tool?

I have some first hand knowledge of this as in my dark and distant career past I spent three years as on of London's finest... no not a police officer, but an estate agent in the Docklands and North London, so I know from first hand experience that there are two things more dear to an estate agent's heart than anything else; his commission and his boards. 'Sell the board, always sell the board' my old manager used to say. Woe betides anyone who failed to get a board outside a property they gained instruction on. There's nothing finer for a branch manager's ego than to be able to do a walkabout around his area and see more of his boards up than anyone else's. It's a kind of status symbol, an estate agent hierarchy indicator.

This fixation on boards stems from the tradition of buyers choosing their agent by wandering around an area and seeing what boards were out. They would then contact the agents whose boards were either larger in number, or were in the locations they wanted to live in. However times have changed and the majority of people now are happy with virtual wandering instead. A very high percentage of those surveyed over the last few years have said that they would be searching through the major property portals on the net as part of or the entirety of their search for their next home. Also of course nobody registers with just one agent in these enlightened times, it's far more productive if you register with all of them.

That being said, if you know exactly what house or what road you want to buy in you may go the old fashioned route. Also it is true that at some point we've all called up the agent whose board has gone up on the house next to ours so we can sneakily ask what it's on for to discover how much ours might be worth now. Then again our buying habits have changed so much over the last 10 years that the 'For Sale' board has become near redundant to the process.

It's not R.I.P. yet for the 'For Sale' board though. They are after all the advertising banners of your local estate agent. They indicate and imply size and status of the agent, the more boards there are the better that agent MUST be. This could influence your decision on who to buy or sell through.

But something sinister has been stirring for some time now and being a London lad all my life I've noticed that some agents have become a little over zealous with their board presence. I'm sure the rules when I was an agent were that no property, including a block of flats, could have more than one post outside it with agent's boards on it. That means a maximum of two, one of either side of the post. But more and more I have seen three or more nailed to the same post, on two or three posts leaning at precarious angles and in varied states of disrepair. There are also unscrupulous agents who will put up boards on properties they do not have for sale, who will put them up at the end of a road so no-one is quite sure which property it is meant to be outside, and that will mass their boards outside a property they all have for sale.

I have to say that I have never liked the 'For Sale' board. Whilst I completely appreciate its role and purpose I do not feel that it's the miraculous selling tool that the agent will try to tell you it is to keep his manager from berating him for not selling it to you. They clutter up our streets and make pretty little roads look untidy, or indicate by their numbers that streets or areas are undesirable as it looks like everyone's trying to leave them. I feel the £150 removal fee the Hammersmith and Fulham council has said it would charge any agent that does not comply with their new rule might hit where it hurts, and could at least reduce the advertising clutter that blights so many of our roads today.