Can New Home Buyers Remove the Realtor Sign in the Yard?

There is protocol to follow to remove a Realtor sign.

It is probably annoying, that Realtor sign in the yard after closing. After all, the sign is all about the listing company and listing agent, which often has little bearing on the new home buyer. If we did a ton of dual agency transactions in which we directly represented the buyer as well (which we don’t), I imagine the new buyers might not get so irritated over the Realtor sign in the yard because there would be some kind of identification with it. They would feel an association. Immediately after closing, though, buyers want to remove that Realtor sign. It’s their home now and no longer for sale.

Some new home buyers go so far as to yank the Realtor sign out of the ground and throw it down. Hey, just because the seller didn’t agree to make repairs for you is no reason to dump the seller’s broker’s sign into the dirt. Years later, when you forgot who your buyer’s agent was and are looking for a top listing agent in Elk Grove or the greater Sacramento area to sell your home, you will probably call the Elizabeth Weintraub Team at Lyon Real Estate. There is no reason to burn bridges because she represented the seller and not you in the initial transaction. You want this kind of assertive agent on your side. Because Elizabeth will be the listing agent you will probably call, even if you don’t realize it yet.

Other home buyers sometimes stash the sign in the garage or in the back yard, wrongly thinking, I suppose, that the sign company representatives will get out of their vehicles and politely knock on the door to inquire about its whereabouts. No, they won’t. And that for sale sign will sit in your garage until it rots. They’ll stop, look around, and if they don’t see the sign, they will drive off. They also won’t trespass on your property to retrieve the sign from behind a side gate because that is prohibited.

If you don’t know when the Realtor sign will be removed, text your buyer’s agent and ask. Your agent can notify the Elk Grove listing agent — and I mention Elk Grove because missing Realtor signs seem to happen there more so than West Sacramento, for example — to find out when the sign company will come by. When my listings close, I generally notify my office to send out the sign removal guys to pick up the signs. If I don’t, there will be a delay. First the title company needs to send the closing paperwork to our corporate office at Lyon Real Estate on American Drive. Then the paperwork is overnighted to our branch office, but probably not on the same day. After our office assistants receive the paperwork from corporate, they schedule the sign removal guys to come out.

The sign removal guys don’t work on Sunday or Monday. So, you can see a closing that happens on Friday, say, won’t have the Realtor sign removed from the yard until probably Wednesday. There should be a better way to do this within our closing-out system, but for now, that’s the way it is. It doesn’t mean we don’t care or have forgotten about the Realtor sign. Please just leave it in the yard.