THE Sign Handlers : Market Perspective of Firms Who Install, Remove Realty Signs

A species of woody growth seems to have put down roots in thousands of Southland front yards over the past few years. Its sturdy stalk can be white, blue or yellow; its dangling blossom is found in many colors.

It’s the “For Sale” sign.

But it doesn’t just sprout in the lawn, ubiquitous as it is. It’s planted there, and not always, as most people think, by their real estate agent.

The job of marking the realty turf is usually done by an installer working for one of a half-dozen companies that specialize in installing, changing and removing “For Sale” signs.

The companies range in size from the American Sign Co. in Van Nuys, which has 24,000 signs in the Los Angeles area, to Mr. K’s Sign Service in Downey, a mom ‘n’ pop operation owned by Tom and Linda Barton. They tend 2,000 signs from the San Fernando Valley to San Clemente.

The residential sign industry is a small club in which everyone knows everyone else. “We’re friendly competitors,” said one entrepreneur, and raiding each other’s customers is frowned upon.

The sign handlers complain of fly-by-night “alligators” who offer their services for half-price, steal the sign posts of legitimate operators and go out of business in three months.

And many of these new companies apparently do fall by the wayside. Established operators say that, above all, they provide a service and must be able to put up signs quickly, maintain them and be willing to drive lengthy distances just to install a post or take it down.

The companies manufacture and own the posts from which they hang signs belonging to the realty companies. They typically charge about $10 to install a sign and $10 to remove it.

Not all communities allow “For Sale” signs with substantial wooden supports, the type most sign handlers install. Local ordinances in a number of expensive Southern California communities permit just modest metal signs that hang from knee-high aluminum posts that can be installed by the realtor.

Palos Verdes Estates, for instance, not only dictates the size of the sign but also its color--deep brown and gold. With that color scheme all residential “For Sale” signs in that Palos Verdes Peninsula community look as if they belong to Century 21.

But that is a coincidence, said Betty Collier of the Home Owners Assn. there. Their residential sign ordinance was established in 1923.

Why the strict regulations? “We try to keep this area as downplayed as possible,” said Collier. “We don’t want it to look gaudy.”

On the other hand, the nearby City of Rolling Hills, permits no “For Sale” signs at all, an ordinance since 1937. “This is a sophisticated community where homes start at $1 million,” said a representative of a homeowners association there. “ ‘For Sale’ signs look trashy.”

One might think that these are boom times for these sign companies but that isn’t necessarily so. While they have installed a record number of posts, they make their money on turnover, and since sales are down, so is their business.

What’s more, numerous realty offices have closed, the sign handlers say. That means less business for people such as Willis Kennedy, the owner of Mister K’s Signs Inc. in Huntington Beach, which has installed 5,000 signs in Orange and Los Angeles counties. (The similarity between the names of the Bartons’ company and his own is “a coincidence” and a “nuisance,” Kennedy said, that only occasionally causes confusion among sign manufacturers.)

Kennedy said he has lost dozens of accounts and he estimates that his 1992 revenues were “50% to 60% off those of the previous year.”

Signs of the closed offices are stacked up in front of his warehouse and spill over the sides of a filled dumpster. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with all of them,” he lamented.

However, two areas of his business are thriving, he said, signs on houses in foreclosure and replacing signs for homeowners who are dissatisfied with the performance of one realty company in this stagnant market and switch to another.

This is a far cry, the sign handlers fondly recall, from the buying frenzy of a few years ago when realtors ordering a “For Sale” sign also asked for a “Sold” sign at the same time.

And gone are the days, recalled Crenshaw Scott of the Ups ‘n’ Downs Sign Installation Co. in Bellflower, when a realtor, trying to get a jump on new listings, followed his truck to see where he was putting in a sign.

“I turned left and he turned left. I would go right and he would go right,” Scott said of one particular incident. “I was getting a bit nervous, because this was a high-crime neighborhood.”

Scott began in the sign installation business eight years ago when he was laid off from Hughes Aircraft. He works out of a three-bay garage behind a modest home on a quiet residential street. Wooden posts are stacked on one side of the back yard and signs bearing such names as ERA, Remax and Century 21 are neatly stored in racks in the garage. Workers saw redwood lumber for the posts and spray paint them in another corner of the lot.

Scott’s four installers ply the far reaches of Los Angeles County putting in signs. But in one instance, when his neighbor was selling his house, all he had to do was walk a sign across the street. In this slow market it is still there.

Linda Barton of Mr. K’s Sign Service in Downey said she likes to get to know the homeowners. She is curious about where they are going and inquires tactfully about why they are selling their house.

She and her husband, Tom, install signs in locations as distant as Victorville and Lancaster “at 2:30 or 3 o’clock in the morning,” said Tom, “when the wind has been blowing so hard you can’t see.”

In a well-rehearsed daily routine, they get to their first stop at the crack of dawn. Linda unloads the post from their truck while Tom scouts for the best place to put it. Then in a matter of moments he has dug a hole and installed the post. Linda paints it the color that is appropriate for the realty company and hangs the sign. Ten minutes after they arrived they are on their way.

The couple is frequently confounded by the vagaries of the market. “We will pull up in front of a house that looks fantastic, clean. This one will sell,” he said. “But that will be the one that doesn’t sell.

“Then we pull up in front of one that’s a dump,” he continued. “I wouldn’t ask anyone to walk through some of the houses where we have put signs. Thirty days later we’re pulling up the sign. It’s been sold.”

The Bartons and their fellow sign installers have a unique perspective on the current housing market in Southern California, for they drive the side streets of Los Angeles and Orange counties and they see the evidence of their handiwork.

Tom Barton can verify, for example, that there is faster turnover of their signs in neighborhoods where homes are selling for under $200,000 than in areas where the asking price is higher. In more expensive communities their signs languish for 6, 8, 10 months or even a year.

“Over $600,000 and you’re in trouble,” Barton said.

He has noticed something else about the lackluster market: Real estate agents who specialized in high-priced beach communities are now branching out into inland cities where asking prices are lower.

“In that way they can make something,” Barton said, “rather than nothing.”

Unlike the Bartons, David Capo, owner of the American Sign Co. in Van Nuys, remains office-bound. He employs two men whose sole job is to arrange the daily routes of each of his nine installers. Everyday the two set out the posts for each truck in the order in which they will be put in. On a busy Monday the installers may make a total of 500 calls to put in or pull out “For Sale” signs.

Capo’s clients include such companies as Jon Douglas, Century 21, Fred Sands and Coldwell Banker.

Capo, who originally trained as an accountant, said he gets the most grief from renters. Some are unhappy when the owners of the homes they occupy decide to sell their property, and they simply pull out the post. One man, however, draped the “For Sale” sign with a tarpaulin and spray painted “Hazardous Material. Enter at your own risk.”

Once, in a sticky divorce situation, a woman emerged from the house and started swinging a broom at the sign installer. Her ex-husband had failed to tell her that he was selling the house. “In those kinds of situation we just tell the drivers to leave,” Capo said.

He added that realtors can be very particular about where they want their signs and he has gotten calls to move them just six inches.

“So we ask realtors to put a stake in the ground were they want the sign,” Capo said.

The Bartons knew exactly where to put in the sign that has graced their own front yard since August. The couple hopes to move to Las Vegas, where they say the climate is more hospitable to small business.

However, in spite of repeated price reductions, not one visitor has come to look at their well-tended property in Downey. Like so many other people, the couple agonizes over the lack of interest in their house.

“What’s wrong with our home?” they ask. “What more can we possibly do?”

The Bartons understand all too well the anguish of homeowners with a “For Sale” sign on their front lawn.

Still, said Tom Barton, there is a finality about the sign.

“You talk about selling and you finally get up the gumption to call an agency and have a person come out,” he said. “And then you go through this big song and dance about what they will do for you and you sign the papers.

“But it really doesn’t set in until you see the sign in your front yard. Now it’s real.”