People are moving in and moving out, all the time, these signs tell us that people are on the move. This movement is the livelihood of the letting agent. But they are also a subtle reminder of the state of our economy. Those empty offices and homes, unwanted, spell a downturn for the economy. The closed shops is the end of someone′s business dream.

From anyone who has lived in rented flats knows, these signs are either never taken down after you move in, or show up 3 months before you move out!

These ‘To Let’ signs appear on the side of buildings, in our streets, up and down the country, and even overseas like the picture above. As a monument to them, we've created a rather niche group on Flickr, simply entitled ‘To Let Signs’. There are literally thousands of photos on Flickr alone of To Let signs, many of them comically defaced to become ‘Toilet’, it is a challenge for photographers to take something so ubiquitous and make it look good, in the way that photography does.

Considering how common these signs are, you would have thought some effort would have gone into their design, the sad fact is that they are all nearly identical, and very same. Perhaps it is time that someone came up with a fresh take on the sign.

Many people react to these signs as being a sign of the times. With all this recession and economic down turn, especially in property and housing, these To Let signs have sprung up everywhere. Even once large corporations now have shrunk down their offices. For example, BP closed down its Environmental department that had it's own office and moved them into their HQ, because there was so much spare office space left there after all the lay-offs.

The feedback so far has been fantastic, the group is less than 15 hours old, and already has over 100 photos added by it's new members. We′re going to add a rotating feeds of the new photos to our journal in the sidebar.

Join our Flickr group ‘To Let Signs’ and add your To Let Sign photos.

Here are some favourites...