You can tell the times have changed as to how we get our information. In 140 characters or less, word of an old sign ordinance spreads like the Swine Flu.
Many, many years ago, the City of Chicago passed a sign ordinance banning signs from being placed in the public way. There are fines ranging from $100-$500 associated with this offense making each sign you put in the public way a very expensive lead.
Every so often the Chicago Association of Realtors is informed that real estate agents are violating the law either by various aldermen’s offices or members of the public. Periodically, the association communicates to its members they are violating the law with their open house signs via the communication of the current time. At first the Chicago Realtor newspaper, then the magazine. Now it is posted on their website and warnings emailed out to its members. All along there has been outreach to the designated brokers.
As a long time member of Chicago Association of Realtor's Government Affairs Committee, I was well aware of the weekly violations and complaints coming into the association as well as all of the years of ongoing outreach efforts the association does to make its members aware of all legislation that affects our industry. Most of the Chicago Real Estate community has ignored the sign law like it did not apply to them until last week.
Mary Ellen Podmolik of the Chicago Tribune article about a certain alderman and the sign ordinance posted early Friday. Within minutes many of the Tweeters were all in a Twitter about this law they claim to have never known about and how it will fringe on their business. It was spreading like a wild fire on Twitter as it kept being re-tweeted. As someone who keeps Seesmic(a desktop platform that integrates Twitter and Facebook) running in the background of her computer and is on Twitterberry when she is away from it, the uproar is still continuing days later.
What occurs to me is that these same real estate agents used the same medium they are expressing their rage in to promote their open houses they would have quality prospects coming through their listings rather than somebody who stumbled over a sign on a corner a block away. Buyers who are real purchasers have typically toured the home virtually online before coming to the property. They have downloaded the list of the homes they want to visit from a variety of sites including brokerages websites, open house portals or Googling.
The odds of a qualified buyer finding your listing is a lot better optimized/advertised online via websites, portals, good SEO, syndication and social networking than putting signs at every corner in the neighborhood that the Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation could throw away or fine you. Is this a quality lead at the cost of $500 per lead?
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