Go back to News pageSAN FRANCISCO -- The strike against the Examiner and the Chronicle newspapers left many real estate firms in the Bay Area scrambling for alternative advertising vehicles. That's why there was a forest of A-frame "open" signs dotting street corners on the first Sunday of the strike.
Realty firms normally place three to six A-frames per property to attract potential buyers to their open houses. Once the strike was on, they doubled that number.
One firm, the Jon Douglass Co., put out 10 to 12 signs per open house. "We're ordering more signs even as we speak," said office manager William Holloway. "We're blanketing the whole city."
For print advertising of Sunday open homes and homes for sale, most realty firms turned to the Real Estate Express, the advertising arm of the San Francisco Association of Realtors. The Express is published as an insert into the San Francisco Independent.
"Our buyers and sellers are preconditioned to the print media," said Charlie Moore, president of McGuire Real Estate. "The only alternative source available to us in the Independent. The irony is that the Independent is nonunion."
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