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Estate Agents Boards
Hi All – Hope someone on here can help me with a bit of a pricing dilemma I am struggling with.
My sign business has been operating now for 7 months and after working on average 70 – 80 hrs per week, we have built up a good reputation in the local & surrounding area with a decent amount of work on the books.
We have today been contacted by a large local estate agent that wants us quote for the supply & fit/erect of their residential property signs.
My obvious line of thought with this is that the fitting charge will be below my usual charges due to the expected repeat work, but what is the going rate for such work ?
Can anyone on here give me some much needed pointers ?
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20 Replies
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about £2.25 for the signs, £1.00 for the post, and about £1.50 to erect,
at least that’s what my local estate agent told me he could get them done for, before i told him to %&*^(*£ "($£*$£*( !"£"**"$( off!! 😀 -
I’ve been asked to do these in the past also but stayed away because they always make out that they can get them dirt cheap
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ignore them, waste of time chasing your tail for nothing.
the amount of estate agents going bust these days is high too… so getting paid might be a challenge also.
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Avoid – unless you can do the work for many other Estate Agents in your area
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I’d agree with just about all of what has been said
They want them cheap
They want them up the next day
They want slips on them at a moments notice
They want them down when they say
They expect a first class service for peanuts
Realistically you need to be servicing multiple Estate Agents within a fairly small locality to make it pay…….
I don’t know where you are but I doubt very much you could compete with the established companies in your area and offer an acceptable service to make it worth your while
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There are special sign firms dedicated to this sort of thing with vans, crews, and the lot. Its difficult to compete because they do things at such a low margin
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we do them… but i think we only do one commerical agent now for vboards… yeah we dont make much on it but it only takes about 10 minutes.
i think we have a set fee. -
i have to disagree with most of your comments, as I printed estate boards in between sign fitting jobs and other screen printing waiting to go out, the price was set for different quantities of boards, screens were always kept for the client, then over the years, the clients were repeat customers, and I got myself into a routine of churning them out, rather make ex amount of money to fill in that hour, than sitting surfing the net 😉
nik
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quote Nicola McIntosh:i have to disagree with most of your comments, as I printed estate boards in between sign fitting jobs and other screen printing waiting to go out, the price was set for different quantities of boards, screens were always kept for the client, then over the years, the clients were repeat customers, and I got myself into a routine of churning them out, rather make ex amount of money to fill in that hour, than sitting surfing the net 😉
nik
I’ve only just come over to print so it is a little more viable but before that it would have to be the vinyl cutter. Its fine knocking out the five or ten signs but if we’re talking in orders of 500 hundred then that’s going to be stiff competition. You know the guy is going to be spending time getting the best quote
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I have to agree with John, and the opinion of most,
its a specialised market, so unless you are set up for it, hardly worth quoting, you will most likely not be in the running,OK Nick did it "in between" but most agents want a "tomorrow if not sooner" service, and need the "for sale" "under offer" and "sold" bits changing, pretty quick
Peter
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i did do them pretty quick peter….in fact very quick, when you have a good stock of boards all cut to size and ink all mixed in clients own colour pots, and screens ready to go, its a breeze to screenprint to order when all the setting up has been done beforehand 😉
nik
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Nic
not disputing the speed and ease of screen printing, but just saying profit margins are usually very low, and the work needs to be done in quantity to be competitive,
if you can do it (royal you) and make a profit, then no reason why not,
Peter -
now now peter…you know how easily it is to wind me up :lol1:
nik
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I did a load of sign boards for the 10K London run a few weeks back, and was thinking about pushing doing estate agent boards (10k London run signs are pretty much the same thing) because of how easy they were.
But at them prices, I think I’ll pass on them and let the local franchise company keep the work. 🙄
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Nicola, were you just producing them or were you having to to go out and fit them as well. Peter’s original post was to supply and fit the boards.
I would agree with you that if you are a screen printer then you can do them and make a little profit but when it comes to going out fitting them then it becomes a little different.
Dave said they were doing "V" boards which I assume is for commercial premises, there does seem to be a difference in what you can charge for that sort of work but most of the house for sale type signs are done by specialist companies that work for lot of different estate agents and charge very little money for each board stuck in the ground. -
no fitting martin, just printing 😀
nik
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A localish sign maker to me does them but he has contracts with a good quantity of estate agents so has 1 employee fitting and changing them all day.
he told me how much he pays for each board and how much he gets per board (included fitting and taking down + sold etc) and I wouldn’t bother.
Also told me were he got them screen printed at (which was how the conversation started) and I’m not sure the screen printer was making much either.Seem to remember he was getting £14 per board.
Steve
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We have an out of area company doing the work, probably for peanuts…………. they do however get a massive amount of exposure as their van is out and about all the time……could be writing the loss (low margin) against advertising….just a thought
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quote Stephen Morriss:Seem to remember he was getting £14 per board.
I’d say that sounds about right
for that £14 we have to buy a post….drill it….slot it….undercoat it……gloss it
we have to print his signs (double sided obviously)
erect it……add a Sold or Let slip at a later date….remove it (if you are lucky and it is still there)
Like I said earlier…..you have to become a service to the Estate Agent and they are extremely demanding
good luck to anybody that can make it pay under the present housing climate though
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unless the estate agent can guarantee to you a MASSIVE amount i would avoid. by the time you gotten all the material and actually built the board then actually fitted it one or two boards arnt worth the bother. i did estate boards for over 3 years and they can be as simple as the can be a pain! we did have the contracts of at least 12 estate agents so we were fitting hundreds a week which did make it worth while
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