For long it’s been the practice of local property agents to remove banners or boards placed or hung on a property to let or sell and I have come to ask myself on several occasions why this is so.
This unwholesome happening led me to interact with some local property agents who confided in me with the following reasons for their action:
- The local real estate agents are like hunters chasing one squirrel when one of the agents finds the hideout of the squirrel, he secretly conceals the hideout and diverts the attention of his associates away from the squirrel’s direction so that at the end of the hunt he alone will drag out the squirrel and take to the village on his shoulders for the praise of man. They are quick to remove a To-Let banner on sight to prevent other agents from knowing that a property is up for sale or let. They would want to be the only person or people who have direct information on the brief.
- They want to prevent the public from knowing that a property is for rent so that people won’t just walk to the firm that has a direct brief from the property owner to sell or rent a house.
- It is their practice to do all that’s possible to be a middleman between the firm managing a property and the prospective tenants for profit (or commission) and at the expense of best practices.
- They wouldn’t want to share fees with other firms or agents
- They remove the firm’s banner so they will go behind to find the landlord to strike a deal or take over the management or sole agency of the property
- Local property agents are in the habit of removing firm’s banners if they don’t like the firm in question
- They have evil intent and, therefore would want the public to only have their contact.
- They want to come after their rival in the business and would want to overtake the person.
- They want to create scarcity to extort unsuspecting prospective tenants.
- They are buying time to strategies on their next line of action in letting or selling the said property