Every now and then I get a client who tells me they don't want a yard sign.  It seems they don't want the neighbors to know they are selling their home.  Maybe breaking up with the neighbors is too hard.  Maybe they just don't want to answer a lot of questions about why they're moving or where they're going and, oh by the way, how much are you asking? 

Who knows?  I've never really figured it out. 

What I do know is that homes without yard signs seem to sell equally as fast as home with yard signs, all else being equal - price, condition, location. I also have come to experience that most people who call me from my phone number on the yard sign fall into one of two categories:

1. neighbors being curious (how much is it? where are they going? can we see it [because we just want to look]?)
2. people riding around aimlessly in their cars day dreaming about a home and being clueless about what it means to be able to buy a home

Usually, I can get rid of the neighbor curiosity factor by having an Open House the first or second weekend the house is on the market.  Just mail out a 100 postcards to the 100 nearest addresses and bring some cookies.

It's the second group of people who perplex me.  They're out riding around and happen to see your yard sign.  They call the number of the sign and ask the same questions:

• how much?
  
• How many bedrooms and baths?
  
• Is there a finished basement?
  
• Is the price negotiable?
  
• Can I see it...right now!?... or tomorrow morning, at the latest.
  

These folks have usually done zero preparation and have zero understanding of what it takes to buy a home.  It is these folks I'm supposed to have the patience to "convert" into my buyer clients.  In reality, these folks are typically unqualified, financially, to buy a Big Mac on credit and even if they could get a mortgage it's for an amount way under the price of the neighborhood they're cruising.

Now, I may be doing it wrong because I haven't memorized all the scripts and have long since tired of making appointments that yard sign shoppers never keep but I would just as soon have these yard sign shoppers call another Realtor to act as their buyer agent.  You see, I have no problem splitting my commission with a competent buyer's agent who has a motivated client who is well prepared to make the purchase.

In fact, if it wasn't for the fact that yard signs make good location markers for agents that don't know the area and happen to be working the nieghborhood because their license says they can, I wouldn't use yard signs at all.

Yeah, I know.  If I have enough of them scattered around the neighborhood, I become the "neighborhood expert".  People will  think I'm the Big Kahuna of the 10 block subdivision. Well, maybe.  The fact is that my farming efforts (i.e., monthly direct mail into a subdivision) and the Internet have done far more for my business than a bunch of yard signs in the neighborhood.

So, I've become a little ambivalent about yard signs.  Do they work....or are they just one more holdover from a real estate past that we are holding onto...just because?