The short version: Every JRE listing uses a JRE sign. Agents choose the standard sign with a custom black rider (name and phone), or a custom JRE sign with their phone number up top and their headshot or team logo, name, and two lines of text below. One consistent look builds recognition for every agent (repeated exposure raises familiarity, and randomized lawn-sign experiments found a measurable lift), keeps signs TREC-compliant (broker name at least half the size of the largest agent contact info, §535.155), and keeps a quality floor. Stashed Signs installs and removes them.
We’ve gone around and around on yard signs more than almost anything else at JRE. A few agents have told us it was the reason they almost didn’t come over. So I want to lay out exactly what our sign policy is, what you can put on it, and why we landed here.
Short version: every JRE listing wears a JRE sign, and your name, your number, and your face or team logo go right on it. We support your personal brand. We just don’t let anyone go so far off script that it hurts everyone else’s.
Your two options
1. The JRE brokerage sign, with your rider. Use our standard JRE sign and post, and add a custom black rider with your name and phone number. Stashed Signs installs it and pulls it when the listing closes. You just cover the install and removal fee.
2. Your own custom JRE sign. Same JRE design, made for you:
- Your phone number goes front and center, right under “For Sale.”
- The bottom panel is yours: your headshot, your team logo, or nothing at all.
- Your name plus two lines of your own text: designations, your website, your social handle.
Renderings of our real Option 2 templates with sample info. The team shown is made up.
What we don’t do: one-off designs where the brokerage name is an afterthought, or a different look on every listing.
Why one look helps every agent
Think about it as impressions. A brokerage of thirty agents each running their own sign design is thirty small brands, each one seen a handful of times. Thirty agents on one design means every JRE sign in Round Rock, Georgetown, or Pflugerville makes the next one more familiar, including yours.
That isn’t just a marketing hunch. Psychologists have studied it for almost 60 years. Robert Zajonc’s 1968 research on the “mere exposure effect” found that people come to like things more the more often they see them, even when they don’t remember seeing them. A 2017 review of 268 of these results confirmed it: familiarity and liking climb with repeated exposure, and the first few exposures do the most work.
And yard signs specifically? A team of political scientists ran randomized experiments across 376 voting precincts in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Precincts that randomly got campaign lawn signs gave those candidates about 1.7 percentage points more of the vote. Nobody talked to those voters. They just saw the signs. That’s a small number in an election, and a big one for a brand whose whole job is to be the name people already know when it’s time to sell.
Your number is the one they call
This is the part that surprises people. On our custom sign, your phone number sits right under “For Sale,” exactly where every driver looks, and the bottom panel is all you. A buyer driving by calls you, not a front desk. You get the reach of a brand people already recognize, with your contact info front and center.
Texas law has a say, too
A yard sign is an advertisement, and TREC’s advertising rule says every ad has to show the broker’s name in at least half the size of the largest contact information for any agent or team name on it (TREC Rule §535.155). Homemade designs break this all the time. A huge team logo and a tiny brokerage name is one of the most common mistakes we see. Our template is built to pass, so you never have to measure. (More on this in the advertising mistakes Texas agents make and Texas’s new ghost-sign law.)
A quality floor protects all of us
Sellers judge a brokerage by its signs before they ever meet an agent. A faded, crooked, or homemade sign in a neighborhood doesn’t just reflect on one agent. It reflects on every JRE agent working that street. Stashed Signs installs every sign straight and pulls it on time, so the next seller who drives past sees a brokerage that has its act together.
Your brand doesn’t live on a yard sign
Here’s what I tell agents who worry about this: your personal brand is your relationships, your reviews, your content, and how you show up. Most sellers pick an agent they already know or were referred to. A yard sign doesn’t change that. And we back your brand where it actually lives:
- Your own agent website on our domain, with your reviews and your sold map on it.
- Client reviews collected automatically after every closing and put on your profiles.
- Brand templates for your social media, emails, and print, with your name and look.
- Teams can keep their team name and logo, set up the TREC-compliant way.
We want you to build something that’s yours. We just think the strongest version of your brand is your name on a sign people already trust, not a sign people have to figure out.
Questions about signs, or want to see the custom template with your info on it? Let’s talk.
Sources
- TREC Rules, §535.155 Advertisements
- Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9(2, Pt. 2), 1–27.
- Montoya, R. M., et al. (2017). A re-examination of the mere exposure effect. Psychological Bulletin, 143(5), 459–498.
- Green, D. P., et al. (2016). The effects of lawn signs on vote outcomes: Results from four randomized field experiments. Electoral Studies, 41, 143–150.
General information, not legal advice. TREC says I can’t practice law, and I like my license. Run your specific situation past your broker or a real estate attorney.
← All broker notes · Get The Debrief monthly → · Talk with us →