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Rules and regulations for garage sales

A quick phone call to your local authority and/or your body corporate (if you happen to live in a group title or apartment development) can save you a lot of grief on garage sale day.

While many local authorities leave the conduct of garage sales up to the common sense of their citizens, many have specific regulations in place to stop garage sales becoming a free-for-all.

Here, for instance, are eight rules advertised in May 2005 by the Sanibel local authority in Florida.

Garage Sales on Sanibel may be conducted at any residential dwelling unit, without a city permit with the following conditions:

• the garage sale may be conducted by the owner or resident of the residential dwelling.
• the garage sale may only be conducted for no more than two successive days.
• no garage sale may be conducted at a dwelling unit within six months after a prior garage sale at the same site.
• garage sales can only be held during daylight hours.
one temporary garage sale sign, with a maximum sign face of two square feet and a maximum height of three feet, may be erected on the lot where the garage sale is held.
• Temporary garage sale signs may be erected no more than 24 hours prior to the start of the sale, and shall be removed within 15 minutes after the sale has finished.
• Off-premises signs, or signs directing persons to garage sale locations, are prohibited.
• Residents are permitted to advertise their garage sale in newspapers.

These regulations appear under Sanibel’s town planning code, which gives you a hint as to why they’re in place.

The first four regulations are to ensure garage sales do not ‘outstay their welcome’, ie, that a garage sale in a residential neighborhood does not become a permanent shop-front. The remaining four regulations are designed to protect the character of the neighborhood from excessive signs. Sounds reasonable, right?

Indeed, to the extent the Sanibel regulations have been published by a local authority that’s been democratically-elected by locals, the regulations are (almost by definition) reasonable.

Mind you, Sanibel’s ‘one garage sale every six months’ rule, and its ban on ‘off-premises’ signs go much further than garage sale regulations in other parts of the USA.

Which goes to show that whenever you move home into a new local authority, you need to check that individual authority’s regulations on garage sales.

Remember too that if you live in an apartment or group title development, the body corporate (of which you or your apartment’s owner is a member) may have further requirements to your local authority.

You might wish to have a copy of your council’s, and body corporate’s, rules at hand on sale day to help you if anyone queries how you’re running things.

Finally, whether or not your council has specific garage sales regulations, your sale will need to comply with all other controls your home would normally need to comply with - like noise controls.

Familiarizing yourself with and following the rules will ensure that if a council inspector, or unfriendly neighbor, pays you a visit on garage sale day, you are fore-warned and fore-armed!