Where to Have a Garage Sale if You Don’t Have a Garage

What if you don’t have a suitable garage for your garage sale?

If your garage is around the back of your house or used for storage or just plain falling over then consider these places for your ‘garage’ sale:

• Your driveway
• Front porch
• Front yard – now it’s a yard sale!
• Footpath
• Your neighbor’s garage
• The side lane
• Your own business’s car park
• Your club’s car park
• Your child’s school
• A friend’s or relative’s garage
• Your local church hall
• A local flea market

The benefits of a flea market are you are guaranteed more customers than a garage sale and they expect to pay more than at a garage sale. It will cost about the same as you would spend on advertising and signs but you have limited space and you need to transport your merchandise there.

Are you able to hold your garage sale in a more affluent or up-market area and is this beneficial?

• Generally, better quality items are found in garage sales in more affluent areas.
  • You are more likely to find near-new items because people in these areas are more likely to be able to buy new toys and clothes more often.
  • You may find quality exercise equipment bought with good intentions and last year’s fashions and fads.
  • I also think you’re unlikely to find items bought from “low cost discount stores” in these garage sales because the owners don’t want to give their neighbors something to gossip about.
  For these reason’s buyers come expecting to find quality items and are prepared to pay a bit more for them.
• Do you have a family member or friend in one of these areas that is happy to hold a group garage sale with you and also benefit from the advantages of holding a group garage sale?
• Having said all that, shoppers know that prices will be higher in these areas and the home owners are more likely to be business-savvy and haggle more seriously so shoppers may skip garage sales in these areas. Most serious shoppers are attracted to garage sales in middle-class areas.

Are you able to hold your garage sale in commercial property or car park?

• People associate businesses with items that are good quality, professionally made and are being sold because they aren’t needed rather than being worn out or broken.
• Having it in a related commercial property may be more profitable than having it in your garage. People will also expect dealings to be more business-like than a home-based garage sale and so you can set your prices higher.
• If you have mostly one type of items (eg computer, office and electronic items or furniture items) then see if you can set up in a car park of a store that sells similar products. You can benefit from shoppers of that type of product being in the area and the store can benefit from you attracting that type of shopper.
• The store may also have items of their own they would like to include in your “garage sale”.

Where to hold a second end-of-season garage sale

Some people hold a garage sale at the beginning of the garage sale season in spring and then another at the end of summer to have a second try at selling the leftovers from the first sale. Have your second sale at a family members’ or friend’s house in another suburb. It’s a bit more work to haul your stuff to another house but I’ve found the different customers at my second sale find my leftovers more appealing.