“What can we do to get more people through our open house?”  Tilton & I were hoping to find a buyer for this simply gorgeous bank owned mansion at 554 Wycombe Ct. in Norris Canyon Estates so we were brainstorming ways to increase traffic.  I had remembered hearing about ugly yellow signs which is something one of the real estate coaching gurus had promoted at one time so I popped that idea into the mix.  Hmmmmm.. sounds worth a try.

So off we go to our local friendly Fast Signs in San Ramon and pick up 6 pieces of yellow corrugated sign stock.. really cheap to buy and then we found the largest chisel point black sharpie we could find and made our signs.

This is where we could have titled this article “Not in MY backyard“  While making the signs it occurred to me that some of the neighbors of our bank owned home in Norris Canyon Estates might not appreciate such blatant advertising about our bank owned home and the stigma it might cast on their upscale neighborhood of $1.5 to $2 plus million dollar homes in San Ramon. It was almost time for our open house and too late to implement “plan B” so we set out with our usual A-frame signs plus are new arsonal of ugly yellow signs.

It was sweet.  Shortly there was a steady stream of luxury home buyers coming through the front door!  So many people that the two of us couldn’t even keep up and talk to them all like we usually like to do.  then the traffic stopped….  “What’s going on, I asked Tilton?”  We decided that he would take a quick run to check on our signs.  After 10 minutes and no new visitors Tilton returned to report that two of the signs were laying flat on the ground and both yellow signs previously securely affixed atop them were missing.  Not to worry, we had a few extras and he replaced the missing signs, set the A-frames back up and open house resumed to a steady stream of luxury home buyers looking for a fabulous deal in the San Ramon school district.

Another hour or so went by.. time passes quickly when it’s busy… and traffic again stopped.  Hmmmmmmmmm… ok, take another ride only this time I’m going.  Sure enough, right at the main turn to head people up to the home, our sign was laying flat on the ground and the ugly yellow sign was again missing!  “Ok… we have more.”  I set us up and we were good until open house ended.

Yellow signs were the topic of conversation on the drive home to Danville.  Seriously, we had no intention of offending anybody and we even talked to the sales office staff of Toll Brothers just inside the guard gate about signage and they could not tell us that there was anything in the CCR’s prohibiting what we were doing.  Next week how were we going to handle it so we would not offend a homeowner and also draw attention to our open house?  These days buyers are all looking for “a deal” and “bank-owned” SCREAMS “D E A L” to buyers… so that’s the hook we were counting on to draw buyers… and apparently our instincts were right on with the amount of traffic we were getting!

Next time we’ll let you know how we handled it… lookkii for more next week…

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