Natalie Ward-Kerr, Founder and Director
www.frankestateagency.co.uk
The global property market is a constant programme of evolution, from marketing methods and sales trends to how we search and find our dream home and even in our perfect little slice of the world in Norfolk and Suffolk, it’s no different.
Think back, it wasn’t so long ago that house hunting consisted of circling the streets in search for those elusive for sale boards, our high streets were overflowing with estate agency offices and your weekly local paper had a property supplement several pages thick, ready for you to scour through in the hope that from that one grainy thumbnail image, yes you might find ‘the one’. Fast forward to 2025, where Rightmove and Zoopla are monopolising the online portals, the once previously bustling agency offices are being replaced by ‘For Lease’ signs and local newspaper advertising seems redundant having been replaced by glossy and arguably more informative online advertising, but one method is appearing the stand the test of time, which is sale boards.
A recent survey showed that 96% of us started our property search online which begs the question, why does this practice still persist? To start this conversation, lets understand the purpose of the board. One may say that it is there to advertise the sale of the property, but of course what is actually being advertised is the estate agent. Undoubtably, my fellow agents would argue that if an advertising opportunity exists then grab it with both hands which in a highly competitive industry is a fair point, but does it outweigh the negatives? In Frank Estate Agency’s first two years of trading, keeping our overheads down was one of our focal points in a bid to survive our launch and help keep our fees reasonable for our clients. It became immediately apparent that boards do not weather well visually, especially in the harsher months, meaning that after two uses, our boards then looking slightly shabby and tarnished were at the end of their cycle, a compelling argument for the environmental impact. Boards are usually made from a plastic called Correx and whilst technically recyclable, you would be astonished how many of the UK’s boards end up in landfill, where they take around 500 years to biodegrade. Boards are also commonly attached with plastic cable ties which are not recyclable and often find their way into our rivers and seas where they are catastrophic for wildlife. Whilst these factors both impacted our choice, there was another big reason we made the big decision to rid our business of boards and that’s simply because, no one likes them! Who enjoys looking out of their window seeing a ghastly for sale board in their front garden just waiting for the neighbours blinds to start twitching or to see their pretty road cluttered up with an array of boards.
www.frankestateagency.co.uk
Not only do they spoil the aesthetics of a neighbourhood, they give the impression of turf wars from agent to agent, displaying a bravado of chest beating agents claiming one road to another and perhaps even more frustratingly, not abiding by the laws surrounding them in terms of timescales and positioning. The law states that boards must be taken down within 14 days of a property being sold or let. The fact this rarely happens highlights that it’s not about advertising properties at all, it literally territory marking at the expense of the homeowner.
At Frank Estate Agency, we are taking a different view and making the bold step to ‘ban the boards’ within our independent agency. We are not concerned about joining the pack, we’re more about moving forward and losing practices which in our opinion feel outdated and unnecessary and instead concentrating on modern evolving marketing methods which serve our clients and their home selling aspirations rather than us.
What are your thoughts?