What phone number should I put on a for-sale sign?

A sign is the one ad with nowhere to hide your number

Most online marketplaces have a chat. Kijiji has one, Facebook Marketplace has one, and if you are only selling through the app they are the right answer: leave the phone field blank and let their messages do the work. Our guide on hiding your number on Kijiji says the same thing.

A sign cannot do that. A card in a car window, a lawn sign outside a rental, a flyer on a community board, a table sign at a garage sale — they carry whatever you print on them. What most people print is their mobile number. The person who copies it down is not inside any app, not signed in to anything, and not attached to an account anybody can trace.

The part people underestimate: a sign outlives the sale

• Somebody photographs the card in the window and texts three weeks later.
• The next owner reuses your listing, sign and number included.
• A flyer stays pinned to a board in a laundromat for months after anyone has looked at it.
• A lawn sign gets picked up, reused, or photographed by a passer-by who was not looking for your property at all.
• None of that is a scam or a disaster. A printed number simply keeps working long after you stopped wanting it to, and there is no delete button for cardboard.

What to put on the sign so it actually works

• Text, do not call. Write "text only" on the sign. Fewer time-wasters, and a written record of what was agreed.
• Make the digits big. Somebody is reading this from a moving car or across a parking lot.
• Do not print your email. It is harder to copy down, easier to scrape, and it links to the rest of your life.
• Say what it is. "2017 Civic — text only" filters better than a bare number.
• If the number also goes online, expect the automated "is this still available" texts. Bots scrape listings; nobody scrapes cardboard. Our guide on those explains what the sender is after.

What people actually do, including the free answers

• Print no number at all. Works for a house with an agent, or a garage sale where the address is the point. It does not work for a car in a parking lot, where the whole purpose of the sign is to let a stranger reach you now.
• Use a free second-number app. In the United States, Google Voice is free, gives you a real number, and does calls, texts and voicemail with an app. In Canada the free consumer version is not offered, but TextNow gives you a free Canadian number with ads, and Fongo gives you a free Canadian number over data. Hushed and Burner sell app numbers by the month. The trade is the same with all of them: you keep the number, so you keep answering it, and you need the app on a phone you control.
• Keep a second SIM. Plenty of people keep an old cheap plan alive for exactly this. It works, it costs a plan every month, and it is one number for one person.
• Use a number that ends. If what you want is a number that stops being yours once the thing is sold, that is a different requirement, and it is the one this site is built for.

Where TheLocalRing fits, and where it does not

It gives you one number to print on the sign. Texts to it arrive in your email, and your reply goes back to the sender as an SMS from that number. There is no app.

Up to five people can answer the same number, each from their own email, with no shared login and no second account. Whoever replies, it goes out from the same number. Business phone systems do this too, at business prices, with an app to install. Here it is email. A couple selling a car, or two housemates renting a room.

A day pass is C$2.99, a three-day pass is C$5.99, and a seven-day pass is C$7.99. All three are texts only: a caller hears a short message asking them to text instead. When a pass ends there is a seven-day hold, and then the number goes back to a shared pool where it can go to somebody else. That is the point if the sign is in a landfill, and the wrong product if your sign is still up. Monthly is C$14.99, keeps the same number until you cancel, takes a card up front and charges on day fifteen after fourteen free days. Prices are charged in Canadian dollars, so a United States card is converted by its issuer, which may add a foreign transaction fee.

The first reply to each person carries a short label you choose, for example "Sofa seller via TheLocalRing. Reply STOP to end." Nobody is misled about what they are texting.

What it does not do: it does not work for verification codes, because banks and apps usually refuse internet numbers. There are no picture messages and no voicemail. You reply to people who text you and cannot text first. Call forwarding exists only on the monthly plan with a Canadian number. A Canadian number texts Canadian handsets only.

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