A leading Chiswick estate agent, Christian Harper, is lobbying Hounslow Council to outlaw 'For Sale' and 'To Let' boards from Chiswick. Harper Finn's own signs would be banned under the new proposal.
London Borough of Kensington & Chelsea has banned boards in conservation areas since 1995 using Regulation 7. Hammersmith & Fulham, Wandsworth, Westminster and Camden have introduced similar measures. As reported on local news website
ChiswickW4.com, Christian has written to the head of planning at Hounslow Council urging that Regulation 7 be adopted for the Chiswick area, but he has yet to receive a reply.
Boards don’t help to sell houses and without them local streets would look better
The letter points out that over the past ten years the internet has superseded traditional estate agency techniques. He believes that almost 100% of buyers and tenants go online to find every agent and every property from the comfort of an armchair. There is no need to drive around spotting 'For Sale' and 'To Let' signs or walk up and down Turnham Green Terrace looking in windows.
After a simple search on Rightmove or Zoopla clients receive an email when an agent adds a property that matches their criteria.
Christian Harper: “With this in mind I began to explore the purpose of estate agents' signs. Why do we still use them? Is it to sell a property or just to exploit free advertising promoting the agent? Once a sale has been made and the ‘For Sale’ sign is changed to ‘Sold’, any benefit to the client disappears..."
"...agents then leave the board up for months until moving day, and in some cases beyond, until the new homeowner is fed up and calls the agent to remove it.”
He also raises the issue of school sponsorship boards: “One summer I had 500 sponsorship boards up in Chiswick at the same time, which was great for me and great for the schools that benefited. However it wasn't great for the residents of Chiswick who had to look at a sea of boards."
Read the
full article on Chiswick W4.com.
