Contact your local papers, and get them to do an article, or write to the editor. It is not the price, but due to the fact you or anyone else was not notified. Or go down to actually see the ordinance, which they must show you and publish it in the papers by law. $1,000 is ridiculous, how about for sale signs, cars for sale, house for rent, signs in stores for items for sale.

With gas at over $4 per gallon it sounds like a waste of taxpayers money to me. I know of a town in NH that as a policy regarding the number of sales per year. It's to prevent the on going yard sale that are common during the summer.

I've never heard of such a thing -- it's just a garage sale, for Pete's sake!

So sorry you are going through this headache :-(

I understand that some communities have established rules because some households run a business of having garage sales constantly.

I'm calling the newspaper Monday to complain. I said to the "Authority" that I felt the person taking my garage Sale ad at the paper should have asked me about my permit. She said they used to but stopped about a month ago.
It is really the 2 per year that bothers me. not that I have a lot. I feel they are doing that to force people to participate in the 2 big city wide flea/sale over at one of the parks twice a year.

They tried to do that here several years ago. They came up with the idea that you could sell anything out of your house, but you couldn't put anything out in the yard. Some friends and I had already planned to have a joint yard sale. We went ahead and set up tables in the garage, all through the basement, down the hall and out the back door to the patio. Patio wasn't yard! Did well, sold a lot.

We joked all day about getting busted.

The city decided their idea wasn't going to work, so they gave up on it.

It was true even then that people were going everywhere and buying stuff cheap, setting it out in their yard, sometimes leaving it from week to week. Running a business without a license.

No rules now that I know of.

Sue

I think most cities have a rule/law like this on their books, we lived in 2 cities that did. I think you could get around the 2 a year limit a little bit by asking your neighbors if you could have one at their house and vice versa, letting them sell at your garage/yard sale.

We are not affected by a law like this because we live outside city limits, but a person down the road a few miles has an on-going, never ending yard sale and some of the junk she has hanging on her fence is so unsightly, like afghans that must surely be rotten by now, junk that is mildewing, etc, frankly I wish someone would come by and shut her icky operation down.

I think it's common in larger cities to have these restrictions. As others have said, it's to stop people from running a business from their garages and yards. The signs cannot be attached to any city or state signs or utility poles, etc. It's considered a distraction and endangerment to drivers who sometimes miss a stop sign, street sign, etc. due to the excess garage sale signs posted on them.

Some cities don't allow any signs at all except for the one in your yard on the day of the sale. That and your ad in the paper and/or on community bulletin boards is all you get to do. I don't like that when we go to a city on a weekend and want to garage sale but we don't know the streets.

It's the pits!

Leslie/KS

So silly! Can you imagine. However, I am sure that there isn't anything better to do with taxpayers money than sending someone down to check if someone has a permit or not for a garage sale. I find that just so wasteful!

Here is a link that might be useful: My son gets to come for a home visit!

We are expanding our road system and it is the second largest growing town area according to Forbes a while back, maybe we are just catching up with the big cities haha A friend uin the Dallas area said they are trying to do that in Plano Tx also

Those are the same rules that we have in our city. We can have two in a year, but must be 6 months apart. Signs cannot be on city property, so you ask the people on the corners for permission to put the signs up in their yards and you take them down afterwards. Having a garage sale causes congestion, people block driveways, the mailboxes, etc.. The reason they have these laws are because some people would be having a sale every week end and believe me you would not like a neighbor like that. We can buy our permits at grocery stores, the library's and other places. GS's are good ways to recycle used stuff.

My son and DIL were going to have one soon too....they found out they have to have a permit also. Not sure of the rules and regulations though, I guess they aren't going to mess with it now. I just donated all of the stuff I had ready for it to the Diabled vets. My sister said years ago they started this in her neighborhood and they even came around with an envelope for taxes! She quit having them too...They came snooping one day when they were cleaning out their garage to see if they were having an un-permitted one!

Unbelievable!

Playing Devil's Advocate for a minute...

You're looking at it from the point of view of the person who wants to have the garage sale. Try looking at it from the point of view of other folks who live in your neighborhood or have to drive through the surrounding area.

Folks who live nearby might be bothered by all of the additional traffic coming and going. Folks who live very close by might be concerned about strangers coming into their yards or open garages, etc. They might also be disturbed by the extra noise, especially those who are trying to sleep a little late (or who aren't feeling well), and are sleeping with their windows open.

Many folks who put up signs all around town to advertise their garage sale never go around to take those signs down after the sale is over, creating an eyesore and litter. Many folks have been known to staple signs to trees, which can cause harm to the tree. Staples left behind in telephone poles can cause problems for the telephone company linemen who have to climb those poles.

As has been said by others, above, there are a lot of folks who seem to "run a business" or make a living by having constant garage sales. Businesses are supposed to pay taxes on the sale of goods, and the folks earning money are supposed to pay taxes on their income. How many folks having garage sales pay those taxes? One out of 2,000 maybe, and that's a generous estimate. If these folks paid the taxes that, by law, they should, your taxes would probably go down. Municipalities raise taxes when the taxes coming in aren't enough for the stuff for which the money is needed (police and fire protection, street repairs, etc.).

I can see why towns have such a ordinance. I think our town does too. I would not want to live next to a residence that constantly had garage sales. As stated some people do make a home business out of it. Every weekend cars parked all over the place. Not being able to get in and out of your own driveway. Possible safety issues with people pulling over and just walking in the road to get to the sale. 2 or 3 a year is fine. More then that and I think it is pushing it. NancyLouise

my city has this law too and IMO they do not do enough to enforce it. we live at a 3 way stop and our yard is used as a posting grounds for signs for garage sales. can you imagine 20-30 of those cheap, tacky, unreadable, junky looking signs in your front yard from fri thru sunday or whenever we collect them? no one ever comes back to pick them up! one time in 7+ yrs someone came back to collect their sign, we made sure to thank them lol.

3 weekends ago code enforcement came to pick up signs and find their owners so they could get warnings about leaving those signs in public or private properties which is illegal. we did not call them and were unaware of the sign portion of the law. there is a law about only 2 garage sales per yr which i totally support. there is a house w/in my view that has already had several this yr and they keep this gawd awful cheap tacky blue canopy up for weeks at a time for their sales. that in itself is also against the law. few weekends ago someone had a sale who lives on main corner and our city police had to go and direct traffic around all those who stopped to get junk. i sure hope the city billed them for the help! i think 2 a yr is plenty, more than that & you need to get a real job that does not bring traffic clogging parked cars who block streets and often pull out w/o looking and drive & park on our lawns.

now that we know about the sign law we will call code enforcement. it's too bad it has to be that way but if they picked them up it wouldn't be so bad except we have to mow and edge that part of the front yard after the weekend...which if that isn't done every week is also against code, as the code enforcement lady informed my dh just as he was starting after the weekend junk sales signs could be taken down ~ liz

I don't HAVE garage sales, but I GO to garage sales. Went to about 7 this morning, in fact. Our community doesn't have the rule about how many sales you can have in a year, but they DO have the rule about not posting notices on city- or utility-owned poles. Those signs were extremely distracting and made our town look so run-down.

I got so I never, but NEVER, go to a garage sale that I read about on a sign. I tried that one day - three times in a row, when I hunted the address down, there was no garage sale going on. They had simply left their sign up from last week or last month. Gas is too expensive for me to go chasing after a sale that's not even there.

Three of the sales I went to this morning were what I call "perpetual sales" - they have a sale at least once a month. There are probably a dozen people in our small town that do that, and I try to memorize their addresses so I know NOT to visit their sale. You get so you know what they have - baby clothes, old tools, etc. Stuff I don't want. I think the rule about "no more than 2 a year" would be a good rule for my town.

Our nearest town has the same regs. You may not agree with them because it doesn't suit your intentions. But you wouldn't like it if your neighbor next door or across the street had several "sales" a month, and you had to tolerate people driving or walking on your lawn, throwing their trash out, etc. And if you had little ones who liked playing outside, you'd have to keep them indoors because of the traffic and strange people in/out of the neighborhood.

Trust me...the regs are a GOOD thing.

I went to a yard sale one time and it turned out to be someone who retired from where I worked. She was upset because she had to have a permit and was limited to a certain number of sales per year. I was telling another friend about it and was told by that person that the first person had a yard sale almost everyday year round. We pass her house whenever we go to Memphis, but never paid attention before because I didn't know it was someone I knew who lived there. She has things stacked from the floor to the ceiling in a carport and some spread out onto the driveway. She still sells every day, she just doesn't have any signs up. I guess she is getting away with it.

Linda

I agree with the regulations also. I don't know that I agree with the city employee driving around on a Saturday checking on it but I suppose there is no other way. I'm not sure that my town has this rule. I know that they have a rule about the signs. It can be posted but it must be taken down the same day. It's no real problem here. I do know that the police here will ticket people who leave garage sale signs up. I live in a very small town so I imagine it is easier for the police to ticket here. There's only one person that I can think of in my town that has garage sales several times a year. She actually has it quite tastefully done but I'm not sure that she pays taxes on it. Also 2 times per year seems like it is more than generous to me. I hate having garage sales and can't imagine more than 1 a year at most.

I respect your opinion Minnie.
But $3 isn't that bad of a charge. Also I know what people are saying about these "junky" sales that take place all year round. Not too many of those up here.
I go to garage sales and have them too. IMO they are LOTS of work! I'd think 2 a year would be plenty for me! Heck I can't find the time to barely have one a year! Going thru the house cleaning out closets, marking everything you took out, I clean stuff out periodically and box it up and haul to the garage marked "garage sale" too. Finding tables and borrowing tables and setting up and working all day and then tearing down and figuring out what to do with whatever is left over. Like I said lots of work, I can't imagine doing it twice a year, tho I know people that do! Maybe your city could limit it to 3 sales a year or something?

Hope you have a good sale and get rid of lots of stuff while making lots of money!

We made over $600 the two days and ended up with the DS's packing up the leftovers and hauling them to the Salvation Army.

About an hour later I noticed an outdoor temp read of 97°
It was just too hot so if we ever have another one it will be in the cooler weather. I was surprised that our paper listed close to 20 in our section of town. I don't objuct to the $3 or the permit but would like to have more than two a year If I desired to. Now that I know about the permit I'd plan it better.

And you're going to declare the $600 income on your taxes next year, right?

LOL Lindsey!

That is good for a couple hard days work Minnie!