“We Buy Houses” and “We Buy Homes” signs
Monday, March 13th, 2006“We Buy Houses” and “We Buy Homes” proclaim the illegal signs placed on utility poles along Delaware’s roads. Highway and law enforcement officials have been unable to reach anyone at the various telephone numbers printed on those signs. As of last month the Delaware Department of Transportation removed nearly 800 such signs. The violators owe the state $20,000 in fines.
The second most egregious violators of Delaware’s stiffened sign laws are new home sellers and furniture stores going out of business. Some builders have paid their fines but the furniture stores still owe a lot of money. In one case, a dealer tried to claim immunity because the store was in bankruptcy. Deputy Attorney General Frederick Schranck says that excuse didn’t hold water. Schranck has been unsuccessful for months in contacting anyone connected with the businesses behind “We Buy.” They usually appear overnight, but the attorney says so far no one has been spotted actually nailing them to the poles. If you see such a violation call DelDOT at 760-2080. If you can, get a license number of the violator. Schranck, who represents DelDOT in legal matters, is also concerned because the attorney general’s office cannot check up on the name behind the signs to make sure that legitimate business is involved. He says a similar series of “buy offers” in Indiana turned out to be from groups that did not outright buy the houses, but instead offered loans and claimed the houses when the owner defaulted. Real estate people I questioned said they had no idea who was behind the purchase offers but, naturally, they urged homeowners to exercise great caution in dealing with the advertisers. (That is provided they have better luck than the attorney general’s office in reaching anyone.) I also tried unsuccessfully to get in touch with someone through the phone numbers which always have an answering machine, or the Web site to which one number referred me. One Realtor wondered whether people in desperate need of money would succumb to a low-ball offer from someone who then quickly “flips,” or resells, the house at a nice profit. The revamped state law, passed by the 2005 General Assembly, added a $25 fine per sign plus a $15 recovery fee. The law is intended to “limit sign pollution” in medians and close to shoulders of highway rights-of-way. New Castle County also has been cracking down on this pollution with its own ordinance. Election time is, of course, the peak time for such signs to appear. DelDOT compiled for me a list of all the political signs it removed from illegal areas in 2006. Some candidates, such as Attorney General Beau Biden, paid $425 in fines, but allowed DelDOT to dispose of his signs. His opponent, Ferris Wharton, paid $625. He also didn’t ask for his signs. Many of the legislative and county candidates whose signs were seized officially ignored DELDOT’s violation notices. Among them was Christine O’Donnell, whose giant signs appeared late in the campaign. Candidates and their followers can place signs outside the prohibited zone only for 30 days before and after an election, a time period often violated. Schranck is floating a great idea: deputize concerned citizens to take down illegal signs. It would be similar to the trash collectors in DelDOT’s Adopt-a-Highway program. DelDOT workers now do their sign policing largely on weekends, earning overtime. The danger of citizen action is reflected in the experiences of someone who called me about the problem. He regularly stops to take down such signs but was recently stopped by a New Castle County policeman who asked whether he had the right to do that. The encounter ended in a stand-off.