Gooday Pete,

I do a lot of real estate work.

A standard sign here is 600x900mm. I use 5mm corflute because it lasts longer. I also use fPVC if it is going in a flash or expensive area.

I usually frame it with timber, with legs 200 or 300mm longer than the sign.

The client pays for the sign, I always own the frame.

The client rings me when the property is sold, and I collect the sign in the price originally quoted. That way I tell them it is a free removal, and it ensures I usually get my frame back. You will have to allow for some frames to be stolen (about 20%), so they can not be too dear to make. Always paint the frames as they last longer, and look more expensive. I usually make a batch at a time.

Cost wise, you're on your own, me being in Oz and all.

Finally, you'll need to find the legal size that your local authority allows. Councils in Australia universally only allow 600x900 signs without needing permission. We also use 1200x1800 signs, and although they are technically illegal, the councils tolerate them until a member of the public complains, then they must be removed.

Support of the frame is simply with star pickets. They are cheap and quick to install. Your council may have a ruling on this too, as some areas or developments have a building code that covers this style of temporary sign as well.

Hope this is of some help.

Cheers
Shane

I was told by one estate agent (who's a good client) he only pays £3.75 to get each sign fitted, and something about renting the signs from them??
not a lot of money...unless your fitting one hundred a day

Pete,

There are a few things to consider when taking on estate agents work.

You have to consider how many instructions a day you will get from the estate agent, to work out if it is going to be worthwhile - the last thing you want is to be doing a round trip of 20 or 30 mile to visit one sign a day - remembering that you will have to make that trip 3 times for your £14/16 - the ideal solution would be you do 40 or 50 instructions a day all in the same street as you - but that is obviously not going to happen.

You also have to be prepared to lose about 20% of your boards & posts - estate agents will generally want the sign left in situ reading "sold" for at least six weeks - this gives them positive advertising - but in that time the new owner could have moved into the property & the first thing they do is take down the sign & ditch it.

be careful who owns the boards - the last thing you want is to be left with a load of stock boards you can do nothing with when the estate agent decides to move on to another contractor.

Most estate agents want a next day service - could you cope with that?

You effectively go from being self employed to being "employed" by the estate agent & they are a difficult breed at the best of times.

Their office might be local to you now but could you cope if they opened a new office in a neighbouring town?

Could your vehicle carry a 2.1m post? Escorts or the like will need a top box.


I realise this post sounds extemely negative - bit to sum it up - estate agent work can be profitable but you need to be doing a lot of instructions every day to really make it pay.

best of luck

Hi Pete
One of my customers asked me if we could put up their house signs,
"What are you paying now?" I asked, "£1.75 per board, can you better that", he replied...Er you can guess what my answer was!

It's a bit of a cut throat market, the only way that makes it worthwhile is if they get you to do the new development type signs.

Good luck

Johnny

I gave up working for estate agents, margins are cr*p and they treat you
like they are the only clients you have, so about a year ago i set up SaleSigns


http://www.salesigns.co.uk/

i do on average 15 boards a week and it makes GOOD money from very little work, for a side line.............

Play them at there own game.................

Thanks to everyone thats replied, thanks to you all I now have an excellent
check list which exceeds the one I'd drawn up alone. I'll have another discussion
with the guy, checking these points off as we do.

My gut feeling is that it will be more hassel than its worth if they insist on
a next day kind of service, best scenario would be based on a batch fixing
basis, but that would be in an ideal world. I'll post back once I've chatted
with him again.

Thanks once again for all the great support.

Special thanks to Adrian, with his alternative thoughts on this, I like it

Cheers, Pete

You guys can not be serious . How do you make a living with that!

I am presuming the Real Estate must supply the board over there, already signed?

There is no money in that. We charge anywhere from $100 to $150 to produce, install and remove a for sale sign for a 48 hour turn around in most cases. The signs include photos too. The flute costs me more than you guys get.

The money you guys are talking is unbeleiveable. Things must be a lot different over there than here.

I'll never complain about my small margins again..

Cheers

i do loads of estate boards!!

I print double sided as many colours as required, then courier to their door, then i have no more to do with them!! great, if you get plenty of them, they are great fillers for the week, and if the print quality is good they always come back!! oops and the price!!


Nik

we do a couple of standard for sale signs. we dont do estate agents.. we simply couldnt & wouldnt try and compete. we basicaly cator for the private sold house customers. a bit like adrians boards. we are a bit cheaper i think, but thats prob down to loaction, adrians in london im in east side of glasgow..
we do the plain 24inch by 24inch corex board with for sale in red and the phone number below in black.
single sided is £18 and double sided is £26 i think...
we will attach it to a timber 2x2 post cut at a point at one end for about £36-£39 roughly...
we dont do loads of these but any enquires we get, we get them...
any time i see one of our guys doing nothing i tell them to knock one or two up for stock.
we also have our own version of V-shap projecting boards. again, these sell good and fix into place very very easily.
i have a demo done for these signs also... should be in place with some others early next week..

(i hear some say.. yeh right rob.. we have heard this 100 times )
i do have though and ill pormise to get my finger out and get the new stuff loaded. just been total chockablock in the background

i actually advise the estate agent to do this themselves!! and they agree full stop...cheap pole!! and i don't have to make it!! (like we used too) let the timber yard do it!! hours saved all round!! it's only a bit of timber!!

Nik

Nice one Adrian!!

I too looked at providing a service to estate agents a number of years ago but quickly came to the conclusion that it was only commercially viable if you were going to specialize in this. Margins are very low, so you need a guaranteed high turnover otherwise it's not worth doing.

Supplying individual customers (with much higher prices) as already stated are much more lucrative prospects.

I had a commercial agent approach me a while back. After looking at their estimated schedule of likely workload, I decided not to touch it with a 90 foot bargepole. I got the distinct impression that they would have me running all over the place, driving longish distances to fit 1 sign for 20 quid. Round here there are a couple of geezers who do just agent sign fitting and are geared up for it. I'd rather make real signs. Of course, getting the job to produce a few hundred boards would be nice, but I think offering the fitting service could turn out to be a big pain in the Dewi.

Same again here. We used to supply "specials" and slips (the bits they stick over to say sold etc) to a company that specilised in fitting these. They had 4 transit sized vans working all day long doing this in kent and surrey and still complained about price.

I know they paid £6.00 for a pair of 30" x 24" residential correx type signs but these were obviously screened by the 100. We used to charge about £40 a side for the commercial 4' x 3's we did on a regular basis for them. Dont forget to allow for the expensive correx d/sided tape needed for the back-to-backs used on residential signs.

Its a cut-throat business and I know they had shed loads of old correx boards where the client had moved on.

Colin