Neighbor Asks Woman To Take Down A Political Yard Sign While They're Trying To Sell Their House — ‘That’s Not My Problem’
Are her neighbor's concerns valid? Realtors say yes, actually—but it depends on the circumstances.
Pressmaster | Shutterstock Unless you've been hunkered down in an underground lair for the past decade (or two… or three…), you may have noticed that we Americans are pretty bitterly divided when it comes to politics!
As most of us know, this tends to impact relations with everyone from our parents to our neighbors. A woman on TikTok has found herself dealing with the latter situation, and it highlights just how tense things have gotten and the ways our political disagreements might be spilling over into other aspects of our lives.
The woman's neighbors asked her to remove her Harris-Walz yard sign while they tried to sell their house.
TikToker Sammy Weiss describes herself as an avid supporter of Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.
Like many Americans, she wanted to show her support with a Harris-Walz sign on her lawn. "I was so excited to get my yard sign in the mail," she said in a video. But her excitement quickly hit a snag. "My husband came up to me yesterday and said that our neighbor has asked if we could remove the sign for the weekend," she said.
Her neighbors are Trump supporters, and are convinced her Harris sign will hinder the sale of their house.
Weiss' neighbors had their house up for sale and were getting ready to hold an open house that weekend. "He insinuated that by having the Harris-Walz yard sign, that he was concerned his house would not sell or sell for as much as it could." Weiss said her immediate response was, "Absolutely not." She said, "My political beliefs, the signage that I have on my property, have nothing to do with whether or not your house is going to sell."
She added that she somewhat understood her neighbors' stance — they were in a hurry to sell because they've already bought another house and don't want anything to stand in the way. "But that's, like, not my problem," Weiss said. She was initially adamant about not removing the sign, but after discussing it with her husband, she wasn't sure what to do because the situation is emblematic of our times.
She and her husband were worried about damaging their good relations with the neighbors.
"He doesn't agree with our neighbor," she said of her husband, "but he also is taking into account [that] our kids are friendly with their kids, and they often play together." And while neither of them is fond of the man next door, Weiss and the wife next door are also friends. "She's a lovely human being," Weiss said. "I've never really gotten along with him because we have gotten into heated conversations about different political beliefs before, but I still keep it cordial."
But she also feels that it's "not actually neighborly" to even ask her to take the sign down in the first place. Pretty much everyone on social media seemed to agree that not only would they not take down their own Harris-Walz sign, but they wouldn't want to live next to someone who had a problem with it in the first place.
Many also agreed that her neighbors were overreacting about the possibility of someone not buying a house because of a political yard sign. But according to realtors, that's not actually true.
Many realtors say political yard signs actually can hinder home sales, but it's very dependent on the circumstances.
To be clear, there are no hard and fast studies on this issue. But speaking to Money about the matter, several realtors adamantly agreed that election signs really do impact the speed and price at which a home sells.
This holds true even if the signs are on your neighbor's property — the buyer will have to live next to them after all, and the Appraisal Institute has said that "bad neighbors" can lower a home's value by 5-10%. Political affiliations are, of course, a defining characteristic of what many of us consider "bad neighbors" nowadays.
However, realtors gave some telling caveats to these rules. The impact seems to be heavily dependent on whether the signs are out of sync with the general political leanings of the neighborhood, for one. But by far, the most problematic are the signs and banners that are the most divisive — things like Confederate flags or signs with profanity.
Those don't tend to be found in Democrats' yards because that kind of rhetoric doesn't tend to be found in Democratic politicians' statements and proposals. Judging by social media posts alone, when buyers do become wary of buying a house because of political leanings, it is nearly always Trump-related imagery that sends up red flags
For her part, Weiss ultimately decided that she was not willing to cave to her neighbor's request and even turned the virality of her yard sign discourse into a fundraiser for Kamala Harris. Is it the most neighborly move? That's entirely subjective. But it's hard not to feel like the underlying issue is a sad commentary on our society nowadays — especially since alienating certain kinds of people often seems to be the point of many political yard signs in the first place.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.