Exclusive | Real estate agents face shaky sales contracts – because their clients don’t like neighbours’ lawn signs

This heated election season is really bringing the house down.

Local real estate agents tell The Post that this split campaign cycle is bad for business. Homebuyers are so disappointed to see political signs of candidates they despise in their new neighborhoods — with some even trying to get out of a contract altogether when they discover a neighbor’s lawn sign promoting an opponent. Meanwhile, some industry professionals have even sworn off political purity tests before vendors give them their blessing to represent their roster.

“This election is very loud and heated, more than I’ve ever seen,” said Long Island-based broker Tammy Babadzhanov. “It’s bigger signs, bigger flags — it’s a lot.”

Buyers unwilling to move to neighborhoods where they see political signs — those for candidates they disagree with — is a growing problem, she said of Long Island’s politically charged areas such as Levittown, Sea Cliff and Roslyn.

“I was just showing a house and the buyers saw the Harris signs. They said, ‘No, there are Democrats, I don’t want to be here,'” broker Douglas Elliman recalled when a neighbor’s sign was spotted. “We’ll look elsewhere,” they raged.

However, it’s not like the agent can tell her politically noisy neighbors to get a sock in it just because she’s trying to sell their next-door neighbor’s house. “It’s free speech, it’s their property,” Babadzhanov said. “They can do whatever they want on their property.”

“I can’t tell them, ‘Your neighbor is trying to sell their house — please take your signs down.'”

During a recent trip through Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn to show homes in the town to a buyer, Harris’ signs were plentiful. That’s when Babadzhanov realized that buyers are making decisions based on quick moves and excluding some districts altogether.

“”This is not the neighborhood for me – I’m moving somewhere else,” Babadzhanov recalls the buyer rumbling.

But sometimes agents just can’t win.

“Some shoppers might think all Trump supporters are extremists and turn off — and then some shoppers see the Harris-Walz signs and write off the area as too smart,” she said. “A lot of these people have different perspectives on life – they believe in different things – they think the lifestyles are very different.”

And some agents put themselves in the hot seat.

Two weeks ago, Ellen Caprino, a licensed Long Island real estate broker, returned from a meeting with a potential seller. The octogenarian who was selling her house had long grilled Caprino: “”Okay, I like it, but I have a question for you,”” she recalled saying. “‘I want to know who you’re voting for’.”

A shocked Caprino thought, “What have I got to lose?” Knowing the listing was in jeopardy, she took a gamble and said, “I’ll tell you who I’m not voting for—I’m not voting for him,” and proceeded to reveal her chosen candidate.

Caprino was hired. “Over 20 years in the business, this has never happened,” she said of the unexpected baking.

“I didn’t have the list yet. But as soon as I told her I’m not voting for her, she said I’m hired,” Caprino added. “I think she wants to be comfortable with who she’s hiring during these times.”

Meanwhile, some agents are having to turn away their buyers in the face of political panic.

Milana Sadykova, a real estate salesperson with Sotheby’s, told The Post that she was taking a buyer to a house in Fresh Meadows, Queens, which he had already signed a contract to buy — when suddenly the new firms of to his neighbor, Kamala Harris.

“He’s a big Trump guy — he went berserk,” Sadykova said, adding that the buyer wanted out of the pending sale. “He said, ‘I don’t want to live next to a Harris person.'”

Sadykova knew she had to fix it – and fast – if she was going to save the deal. “I said to the buyer, ‘Nothing in life lasts forever – this neighbor is not going to live here all his life. One day he will sell.”

The strategy worked.

“I calmed him down,” she said of her triumphant de-escalation.

Babadzhanov aptly summed it up: “These elections cannot end quickly – we must return to business as usual.”