Real estate agent claims man stealing signs to give friends better chance at getting home

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - A Charleston agent real estate agent says she thinks stealing signs to interfere with business just goes to show how hot the housing market really is.

Elizabeth Baker claims someone is stealing her signs to give their friends a better chance at getting a home, and says she is not going to stand for people messing with her business,

“I’m working very hard. So, when someone interferes with our businesses as realtors...we’re all tired of it. And I finally got somebody caught on camera,” Baker said.

Baker filed a police report with the Charleston Police Department on April 12 for thefts of open house materials. In the report, she states the signs and attached balloons taken were valued at $200.

Thanks to HOA cameras at the entrance to Seaside Plantation on Johns Island, she said she was able to get video of a car pulling up and someone taking one of the signs.

She said she later contacted a person connected to the car from the license plate number.

“His response to me was that he did it right after the open house started on Sunday, April 10, to give his friends a better chance at getting the house,” Baker said.

The suspect’s name is removed from the public police report and no one has been charged at this time.

Baker says she plans to press charges, and says she has been working with the police.

“It is serious whenever you steal someone else’s property. I don’t care if you’re stealing someone’s election sign, their yard gnome, it doesn’t matter what it is. What matters is that people want to maliciously interfere with people’s businesses, and I’m standing up for the entire real estate community on this,” Baker said.

The police report mentions: “The victim stated that she spoke to the suspect and he admitted that he took the signs.”

“The fact that the man works as a VP of a company in West Ashley, lives in Mount Pleasant, but came all the way here to Seaside Plantation on James Island to, with malicious intent, steal my signs not because he didn’t like them or they were in his way or he lives here, [but] because he was trying to help his friends. It sounds like the wildest story in the world,” Baker said.

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