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AMONG CARMEL’S many laws is a restriction on placing real estate signs on public property — particularly in streets and sidewalks, where cars swerve to avoid them and pedestrians trip over them. The rules aren’t changing, but their enforcement is.

For years, cops and the city building inspector have confiscated “for sale” and “open house” signs and stashed them at city hall. Building official Tim Meroney would contact the scofflaw real estate agent, who would come retrieve the signs after paying a fee of $15 each.

“It doesn’t work,” Meroney said this week. “We constantly have 20 to 30 signs in our possession.”

If their owners fail to pick them up within 10 days, the signs end up in the dump. “We throw away 95 percent of them,” he said. “It’s costing us time and effort, and there’s no payback.”

He hopes stiffer fines and immediate action will do the trick. Beginning June 1, real estate sales people who set up signs on public property will be cited for each violation of the municipal code, which carries a $50 penalty.

(A sign on publicly owned land between the property line and the paved street directly in front of a house might be OK, according to Meroney, but only if the property owner has received an encroachment permit from the Carmel City Council.)

Placing real estate signs on street corners to direct people to open houses has become very common on the Monterey Peninsula. But in Carmel-by-the-Sea, “sales signs that are off premises, down the street, at the corner — anywhere other than at the house — are not permitted,” Meroney said.

The Monterey County Association of Realtors warned its members of the impending sign crackdown, according to Meroney, and though he will give first-time offenders a warning, agents who continue to illegally place signs will face the per-sign fine.
“We’re going to pick up the sign, take it to the house that’s for sale and cite the agent immediately for putting it in the public right of way,” he warned.