COLUMN FOR PROPERTY PROFESSIONAL

April 2009

Working towards a national solution on showboards

Over the past few years, the display of for-sale, sold and on-show boards has been a big bone of contention between estate agents and local authorities, with some municipalities threatening to ban boards altogether.

However, work by the Institute of Estate Agents (IEASA) and some of its regional offices has largely mitigated that threat - and given rise to a successfully-tested solution to the problem of illegal board display that is already in operation in some local authorities, and will hopefully soon be replicated countrywide.

In Port Elizabeth, for example, a council proposal to ban all boards was avoided when the local IEASA office lobbied to be allowed to monitor the situation, and it now employs a monitor with a bakkie to go around the city five mornings a week (including Sundays) to photograph instances where boards are illegally displayed in terms of the council’s by-laws and remove them. The offending agencies are then advised and have to pay a fee to reclaim the boards.

“However”, says IEASA vice-president Ken Ralph, “we are hoping to do even better, and secure a contract from our local authority to take full control of board display. This would mean that we could charge agencies a registration fee to be able to put up boards and that we could cover the cost of a full-time monitor.”

This is the current situation in Pretoria, where the solution reached by IEASA North is being used as a blueprint for the efforts of other IEASA offices around the country. Bully Smit, the IEASA North director in charge of the board operation explains how it works: “Through negotiation with the Pretoria municipality, IEASA North has been successful in retaining this important medium for estate agents, and given the responsibility for controlling it for the past five years.

“All estate agents have to register with IEASA to be able to place advertising boards and a full-time employee ensures that this is done in accordance with the bylaws. Where boards are placed illegally, or the estate agent is not registered with the IEASA, the transgression is photographed, and the boards removed. The photographs of the offences are placed on the website of IEASA North and the agents and principals involved are notified by sms and e-mail. A list of transgressions is supplied monthly by IEASA North to the Tshwane Municipality for offenders to be prosecuted in court.

“This co-operation with the local government has lead to a lot of goodwill towards the IEASA North, and lessened the visual pollution of illegal boards. Even so about 1000 boards have to be removed every month.” 

And there is an urgency to find a national solution, as illustrated by the current situation in Bloemfontein. Here, using a new set of by-laws, the city council is attempting to bring the display of agent boards under control by demanding an R8000 annual registration fee from agencies and insisting that they also maintain huge public liability insurance policies in the event of anyone being injured by their boards or signs. 

“This is clearly over the top,” says IEASA director Jaco de Lange, “and on behalf of our members as well as the other agents operating in Mangaung we have proposed that council urgently look at an alternative arrangement like the one that works so well in Pretoria. We have been supported in this by the very strong local MLS and hope to discuss it soon with the city environmental manager.”

Meanwhile the situation in the Ethekwini (Durban) metro is also chaotic. Here, says IEASA vice-president Kerry Warburg, each local council not only has its own by-laws and rules regarding board display, but a different response to transgressions. Some just destroy the boards while others have recently been imposing fines on agencies of up to R700 per illegally-displayed board.

“Again, what we would like to see here is a situation like the one in Pretoria, and we have taken the proposal to the metro council with some success.”

Meanwhile, as the IEASA vice-president responsible for legislative matters, Warburg has also been working closely on the matter of estate agent signs with Dr Frans Jordaan, the deputy chief landscape architect in the national department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT), who has been responsible for drawing up the new national guidelines for outdoor advertising that are due to be gazetted in May, and should become law before the end of the year.

These guidelines – which recommend that the estate agency industry be made responsible for controlling its own boards - are contained in the Revised SA Manual for Outdoor Advertising Control (SAMOAC) which, says the DEAT, will serve as the “backbone” of outdoor advertising control in South Africa and as the national guideline document to all controlling authorities including town and city councils.

In other words, SAMOAC will become the umbrella law and all local authorities writing by-laws to do with estate agent boards (and other outdoor advertising) will have to follow it in future. This means that they will all be working from the same page, instead of each having a different set of rules, and this should make it easier for the IEASA branches around the country to get them to consider and accept the Pretoria-proven formula for estate agent board control.

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