For Lease and For Rent Signs: $85 to $280 a Panel

Nineteen guides on this site price for sale signs. Not one of them answers the question a commercial agent or a property manager actually types, which is what a for lease or for rent sign costs. The answer is short: exactly the same as a for sale sign of the same size, because it is the same panel with different words on it. Price one in the new sign tool.

The tool calls the residential product For Sale Lawn Signs, because that is most of what the shop prints. The panel, the H-frame and the price do not change when the face says For Lease. Pick the size, and say what you want printed in the notes field on the quote.

What does change is how long the sign stands, and that turns out to decide everything about which size is worth buying.

What a for lease or for rent sign costs

Two of those rows need a word of warning. The lawn range also sells a 36x48 portrait panel with a frame, and the commercial range sells a 36x48 single sided face at $90 that is 48 across and 36 tall with no frame at all. Same two numbers, different sign. And the four large panels come as printed boards only: no frame, no legs, no hardware. The frame question is worked through in the land and development signs guide.

A residential rental usually takes the lawn panel. A retail, office or industrial unit usually takes one of the large ones, because it is read from a road at speed rather than from the end of a driveway.

A lease sign is a much longer job than a sale sign

Every price on this site is quoted per sign. For a sale listing that is the right unit: the sign goes up at launch and comes down when the deal goes firm, and the whole job is a few weeks.

A lease campaign is not that. Commercial space is marketed until it is let, and that can be months. The same panel carries the entire campaign, through a rate change, through a tenant falling out, through a winter. So the useful unit for a lease sign is not the price of the sign. It is what a month of being seen costs.

Divide the card by the months and the order of the price list depends entirely on how long the sign stands. A 4x8 at $280 is $93.33 a month over a 3 month campaign and $23.33 a month over 12 months. A 24x36 lawn panel at $85 is $28.33 a month over those same 3 months. So on a long lease listing the biggest sign on the card is the cheapest advertising on it and the smallest is the dearest, which is the opposite of how the two prices read side by side.

That gives a clean test for the size decision. The 4x8 stops being an extravagance and starts being the cheap option after about 10 months of standing, measured against what the lawn panel costs per month on a short listing. Any commercial unit you expect to market for longer than that should be on a large panel, and the entry size at $90 is $7.50 a month over a year, which is less than a tank of fuel spread across the whole campaign.

The same arithmetic is why a rush fee is worth less here than on a sale listing. Rush is $25 flat and it buys days. On a listing that will run for months, days are not the constraint. Spend the money on the panel size instead. The window and the fee are in the turnaround guide.

Print the building, not the deal

The one real difference between a lease face and a sale face is how much of it goes out of date.

A for sale sign carries a brokerage, an agent and a phone number, all of which stay true for years. A for lease sign gets asked to carry the things that move: the square footage, the asking rate, whether the unit is divisible, and what it is zoned for. Square footage gets demised and recombined. Asking rates get cut in a soft quarter. A sign that was printed with 4,200 sq ft on it is wrong the day the landlord splits the unit, and a sign with a rate on it is wrong the first time anybody negotiates.

So the printed face should carry only what cannot change: For Lease, the company, the phone number, and the website. Everything else goes on a rider, which is a strip that comes off and gets replaced on its own.

A 4x8 has exactly one full width strip, the 8x96 at $60, so on the biggest panel the changeable line is eight inches tall. That is a square footage or a rate, not both. On a residential rental panel the equivalent is a sleeve rider at $23 or a top strip at $21. Which riders earn a call and which are wallpaper is worked out in the riders guide.

Reprinting the face instead costs $280 on a 4x8 against $60 for the strip, which is the whole argument in two numbers.

For rent signs on a residential rental

A residential rental is a different job again, and a smaller one. Most of the marketing happens on a listing site, and the sign is there to catch the street and the neighbours. The lawn panel at $85 does that, and at $75 each for two or more it is the only quantity break on the card, worth $10 a sign.

Two things are worth knowing if you manage more than a handful of doors.

The first is that a rental sign gets handled far more often than a sale sign. A unit shows for a week or two, the sign comes out of the ground, goes in a car, and goes back in somewhere else a month later. That is what wears a panel out, not the weather. Lamination is $10 a sign and it is worth more on a sign that gets moved ten times than on one that stands in a lawn once.

The second is that you need fewer signs than the door count suggests. Signs are only in the ground while units are actually showing, so a portfolio needs as many panels as it has simultaneous vacancies, not as many as it has units. Work out the honest number before ordering, then order that number in one go to get the two or more rate. The count arithmetic for a listing portfolio is in the how many signs guide.

If the panels are generic, with no unit number and no rate printed on them, they never need re-facing and the cost per listing keeps falling for as long as they survive. If a panel does need changing, a full re-face on a 24x36 is $55 and a half overlay is $40 against $85 for a new one, and the break even is in the update versus replace guide. Open house and showing directionals are $25 for an 18x24 if a walk up needs pointing at.

Mounting and permits

Nobody from the shop comes out to put the sign up. This site prices printing.

A lawn panel is a minute of work: push the H-frame into the grass. A large panel is not. It arrives as a printed board, and on a commercial property the usual mount is the building itself, an existing post, or a frame the landlord's property manager already owns. If the mount is a window or a building fascia, call before ordering, because that is a different print on a different material and the panel sizes on the card may not be the answer.

Permits matter more on a lease sign than on a residential one, for the same reason the economics are different: it is bigger and it stands longer. A standard residential lawn sign needs no permit anywhere in the GTA or Durham. A large panel on a commercial property often does, and a sign that will be up for a year is exactly the kind a bylaw officer notices. Check before the panel is printed rather than after, and the municipal detail is in the Ontario sign regulations guide.

How to order one

Price the panel in the new sign tool, under large signs for a commercial unit or lawn signs for a residential rental, and put the wording you want in the notes.

True Sign Group prints in Oshawa. Pickup at the shop is free, and for a 4x8 it is often the sensible answer, because a board that size is a pickup truck's worth of sign rather than a parcel. Delivery is $15 flat on the order wherever the van already runs, which is Toronto and the rest of the GTA, Durham Region, and Port Perry, Uxbridge, and Beaverton. Peterborough, Lindsay, Cobourg, and Port Hope are printed at the same panel price and picked up in Oshawa, so no delivery fee is quoted there. The list is on the service areas page.

Call (905) 259-4361 if the job is a portfolio rather than one unit. A property manager ordering six identical panels and a landlord ordering one are different conversations, and the second one does not need a phone call at all.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a for lease sign cost?

The same as a for sale sign of the same size, because it is the same panel with a different face. A 24x36 lawn panel is $85, or $75 each for two or more. The commercial sizes are $90 for a 36x48 single sided face, $160 for a 4x4, $220 for a 4x6 and $280 for a 4x8.

What size should a commercial for lease sign be?

Bigger than a residential listing sign, because it is read from a road rather than a driveway and it stands for months rather than weeks. The 36x48 single sided face at $90 is the entry size for a small storefront. A 4x4 at $160 suits a plaza unit, and a 4x6 or 4x8 at $220 and $280 suits an industrial building or a highway frontage.

Should the square footage go on the sign?

Put it on a rider rather than in the printed face. Square footage gets demised, combined and re-quoted during a lease campaign, and the asking rate moves more often than that. A large rider is $40 to $60 against $280 for a new 4x8 face, so anything that can change belongs on the strip.

Do you install a for lease sign on a building?

No. True Sign Group prints the panel and nobody comes out to mount it. A large panel arrives as a printed board with no frame and no hardware, so the mount is the landlord's property manager, the building's own fascia or an existing post. Call (905) 259-4361 before ordering a first one if the mount is a window or a fascia, because that is a different print.

Is a for rent sign worth it on a residential rental?

It is cheap enough that the question is really about handling rather than cost. A 24x36 panel is $85, or $75 each for two or more, and lamination at $10 a sign matters more here than on a sale listing because a rental panel gets moved between units rather than standing in one lawn. Keep the face generic and it never needs re-facing.