Yesterday, I whipped into the City of Carlsbad maintenance yard where they have all the realtor open-house signs locked up. They have been diligent in their enforcement efforts!
When the city first threatened to do something, we realtors didn’t take it seriously and failed to get out in front of it.
As a result, the city imposed a rule that requires our open house signs to be inside of the right-of-way, which is tough around Olde Carlsbad where there are no sidewalks and in many cases, no place to put signs that are ten feet from the street.
Not only are they collecting the signs every weekend now, but their driver has an attitude too, especially when he is on patrol with his girlfriend – which has to be against city policy for her to be riding along.
I asked about political signs.
They explained that those have a ‘special’ permit so they can be put anywhere. Politicians give themselves special treatment!
Wonder what the enforcing guy is paid. I’m guessing 25/hr + full benefits and retirement.
What about “Sold” signs in front of houses? How many months are those allowed to be left up after the sale of a house in Carlsbad?
What about “Sold” signs in front of houses? How many months are those allowed to be left up after the sale of a house in Carlsbad?
No rules on that one except being within the 10-ft city right of way like the open-house signs.
If realtors would be willing to police themselves, we should agree to some minimum standards….like the for-sale sign coming down by closing day, and limit the number of open-house signs per intersection.
Carlsbad is the only city I know of who has this strict ruling and sends their goon squad around on the weekends to collect signs. It’s unheard of.
So leaving the Sold sign up 3 months after the house sold isn’t normal? sigh…my old neighbor sold their house and moved. Sign stayed up. Someone even came and updated the hanging sign AFTER the sale of the house, not sure if the realtor changed companies or just updated her logo and wanted the new logo on it. Her realtor lives in our neighborhood and I wonder if she is trying to advertise??? I thought maybe she just forgot, but when the sign was updated well after the sale of the house I realized they probably didn’t. I walk past the house every single day which is why I noticed.
And for the open house signs, I saw the enforcers out on a weekend with a truckload of the signs, while all the open houses were going on. I hope you guys can get it reversed. It seems kind of extreme to me.
Find out who was behind the new rule/ordinance and go pick a nit with them.
I asked our new NSDCAR CEO Tommy Thompson to help us out, and this was his reply:
Hi Jim,
Thanks for the kind words. NSDCAR has done a lot of work in Carlsbad on this issue over the years. It was before my time, so I asked Ernie Cowan to catch me up (he’s copied on this email). He shared the following with me…
Carlsbad and every other city have tightened up sign regulations for two reason: One is liability and two is a U.S. Supreme Court decision in Reed vs. the town of Gilbert that says government cannot regulate signs by content. Simply this means if a city allows any signs, then all signs are permitted, regardless of content. Carlsbad has been aggressive about this, but all cities are also following the no-sign policy, mostly responding to complaints.
Our effort has been to educate Realtors and urge them to comply with the law.
Carlsbad, in particular, had some serious abuse of sign regulations. There was one Realtor office putting out 200 signs on weekends and they did not have any open houses. It was an advertising scheme. This kind of abuse hurts everyone.
I wish this was an issue we could take on, but Carlsbad has the Supreme Court on it’s side and it would be pointless to try and fight it.
At best, Carlsbad won’t pick up signs if put out just before an open house and picked up immediately afterward…unless there is a complaint. You are still breaking the law.
Pointless? Thanks for nothing Tommy!