As a maker of house signs it never ceases to amaze me at how few home owners consider the importance of having a decent house sign on their homes. We are told that first impressions are the most important, well consider this, the first thing a new visitor to your home will probably see will be your house sign.

Take a walk down any street and you will see a remarkable variety of house signs and what I can only describe as non house signs.

I recently wandered through my village taking note of the house signs adorning the various properties. It is a small fairly prosperous place, the houses for the most part reflect this. They are on average well maintained and most have well cared for gardens showing every sign of having reasonably house proud owners.

However, the number of homes with frankly, tatty house signs is astonishing!

I saw house signs made of plywood and written with felt tip, old wooden signs so worn and sad they were unreadable, a house name painted on a concrete building block in a very shaky hand! One cast resin sign had some of its letters missing and one, with the name of a farm written on cardboard! Fully half of the houses in the village have signs that in no way reflects the quality of the properties.

Our village is not unusual. The sad fact is that many home owners just don't consider a house sign as being important. This is poor thinking for many reasons. Let us for the moment put aside the aesthetic reasons and consider the practical downside.

We are all doing more of our shopping on the internet, these goods have to be delivered, your local postman knows his route and will usually deliver to the right address no matter what the state of the house sign but drivers for private delivery firms and even Parcelforce often spend hours every day trying to find badly signed houses in long roads.

This is not only inconvenient, its harming the environment! The extra fuel burned driving up and down and the hot air generated by all the foul language must be punching great holes in the ozone layer!

Also if ever you have the misfortune to call for one of the emergency services you will be less than pleased if the paramedics can't find you with the defibrillator, or the burglar escapes before the police can find your house!

The aesthetic reasons are also pretty compelling, you may have spent thousands on improving and decorating your home, you have maintained the exterior of your property and paid that landscape gardener a small fortune to remodel your estate.

Now look at your house sign, does it really reflect the love and hard work you have put into your home? If not it may be time to consider a new house sign.

You do not have to pay vast fortunes for a suitable house sign. The main thing is to choose a design of the house sign that suits the quality and the style of your home.

There are plenty of sites on the internet selling house signs. Try to focus in on the style or material you would prefer for your house sign and narrow the field by doing a focused search on a search engine.

Browsing these sites and taking the time to choose a house sign that will enhance the selling of your house will be time well spent.