Industrial Property Landlords in Cape Town do themselves no favours by allowing brokers to cover their properties with signboards. Brokers obviously love to put their signboards up wherever they can, it’s free advertising and promotion of their brand. Signboards are silent salesmen and they work 24/7. Usually leads that come from signboards are well qualified i.e. a potential tenant or buyer is driving the area actively looking for property. Do sign boards work? Absolutely! Do you need the property to be plastered with signs? Absolutely not!
Too many signboards give the property an air of desperation, particularly if the property has been on the market for a while. This also weakens a landlord’s negotiating position. Too many signboards give the impression that the market is soft and prices can be heavily negotiated. How often do you hear a tenant say “there is so much property on the market, look at all the agent’s boards.” Another reason for not allowing brokers to put up too many boards is that Cape Town industrial property is often vandalised when it’s vacant and a property plastered with signboards is an invitation to criminals who steal fittings, wiring and anything that can be sold for scrap.
So why do landlords allow this? Mostly landlords want to build up relationships with brokers and do not wish to favour one broker by allowing them to put up a signboard and not allowing the other one to do the same. There are many strategies to overcome this. I believe there should be no more than three signboards (preferably two) on any one property at one time, so a landlord can allow:
- the first two or three brokers to have their boards up
- brokers who they have done their last two or three deals with
- a shared board with two or three broker’s logos on it
- rotate broker’s boards, i.e. allow two or three agents to put up their boards for a month or so and if the property is still available, get them to remove their boards and allow the next two or three to erect their boards.
Cape Town Industrial property suburbs are close knit communities and the owners and tenants often talk to each other. The way a property is marketed often sets the tone for future negotiations with buyers and tenants. Professional industrial property brokers never put up a sign without permission from the owner and put their client and his/her property first before their need to earn a commission. A broker who puts up a sign without permission is directly contravening the PPRA Code of Conduct as follows:
5. No estate agent shall:
5.8 affix any board or notice to immovable property indicating that such property is for sale or hire or has been sold or let, unless
5.8.1 the seller or lessor (as the case may be) has given his written consent to do so; and
5.8.2 the estate agent concerned in fact has a mandate to sell or let the property, or in fact has sold or let the property, as the case may be.
