Want to make some extra cash this summer? Maybe find some good deals for your home? It’s that time of year to cash in or save money with yard sales. While yard sales are a year-round event in some sections of the country, in most of the states summer is THE season. If you’ve been thinking about having your own yard sale, here are 10 tried and tested tips for hosting a successful garage sale.
How to Host A Successful Garage Sale
Having a successful yard sale is a lot of work. It takes advance planning, patience, and some luck. Who hasn’t planned a yard sale only to have rain come down in sheets on the day of the sale? These tips will help you with everything except the weather!
Before the Yard Sale
1. Plan Your Sale in Advance.
It’s not a good idea to wake up one day, decide to have a sale and throw some stuff in the yard. Give yourself a few weeks in order to plan what you want to sell and why you want to sell it. Are you trying to make money? Are you trying to declutter? This planning period can really make a difference in the success of your yard sale. Decide on what items you’d like to part with, prices, and how low you are willing to go to get rid of the items. This is also a good time to decide where you will advertise your garage sale.
2. Know Your Prices
It is perfectly fine to do some dickering over prices, but you need a pretty good idea of what you want to charge for your items. Decide on the prices while you are setting the items aside for sale and tag them as you go. If you aren’t sure how much to charge for an item, check out some yard sales in your area and see what other people are charging.
Pro-tip: Have a clearly marked tag on your items so people don’t have to ask the price.
3. Know What sells — To save time and frustration, it is a good idea to get an idea of what items sell. I found a pretty awesome list of the Best and Worst Yard Sale Items here.
4. Know When to Sell
Most yard sales are held on Saturdays or Sundays when people are off of work for the weekend. The best months are spring and summer, but if you live somewhere warm, holidays might work too.
Pro-tip: Try to plan your event around the same time as you see in your community having sales. In our area, the best date and time seems to be Saturday from 7 AM until Noon.
5. Combine Sales with Neighbors
If at all possible, work with your neighbors to have a neighborhood yard sale. This has two advantages. It’s is the best way to attract lots of buyers. It’s also great because the customers can park their cars and walk all over the neighborhood from sale to sale. This keeps the traffic down throughout the neighborhood too. This is also a great time to allow the kids their own stands to sell lemonade, soft drinks, water, and cookies or baked goods.
The Day of the Sale:
6. Create Eye-Catching Displays
Never underestimate the power of displaying your items nicely. People love to feel like they are browsing at a store. Some Pro-Tips:
First, keep things clean. Don’t sell items that are so dingy no one wants to touch them.
Second, think about what makes you want to stop and look at a yard sale. Hang clothes on a portable clothing rack or stack them neatly. Place small items on tables.
7. Display eye-catching items- toys, baby items, tools- where people can see them when they drive by.
Think about what appeals to men, women, children, and teens and set up areas accordingly. Perhaps a small tool section for men or a toy and book area for the kids? This way the men and kids will browse into of standing by bored. Plus, they’ll often spend money too!
8. Make A Bank
Have change on hand. Do not assume that all the people who go to your yard sale will have small bills. They probably won’t. Try to start off with about $150 in $10s, $5s, $1s, along with plenty of change. After the sale, count the bank money out, and the profit will be what is left.
I highly recommend a bank, because truly it is much better to have the change on hand for those people with larger bills. I can’t tell you how many times someone would come up with a $20 to buy a $1 book.
Pro-Tip: This is one time a fanny pack can be a fashion accessory. It’s easier to have the money on hand rather than a cash box that could be snatched. Lastly…don’t accept checks. It is really not a good idea.
9. Have a Power Supply Handy If you sell items like radios, televisions, tools, or small appliances at your yard sales always, always, always have a power supply so people can test the item. No one wants to bring a stranger into their home to see if a toaster works or leave the sale area to find an extension cord.
10. Do Not Be Intimidated
Set your ground rules. If you do not want early birds, don’t allow it. If you have a certain level you will drop your price to and you don’t want to go lower, don’t (remember to look around at other sales and see what kinds of prices similar items are going for). You can also lower your prices later in the day if you choose.
What are your top tips for having a successful garage sale?
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I havent been to a garage sale in a minute! I wish my parents would have one…but they dont live where it is visable…but they need to!
Great advice! We were pretty clueless at our first yard sale, but will know better next time!
Pricing and what to sell are the most important, we’v done a lot of garage sales and I’m so thankful that we were success. Thanks for the tips!
Perfect! Im planning to have a garage sale! We need to out things that we don’t need. Love your tips Thanks!
Ya, I remember when we had our garage sale. People always come with bigger bills for like $1 purchases.
Planning our annual garage sale next weekend. It always feels so good to clean out the house and these are great tips to get the most our of your stuff!
Our neighborhood just had our big yard sale. It works well to plan it all on the same day!
I LOVE yard sale season! There is definitely an art to making them successful. Having good signage is a must.
And USE ARROWS! on your signs. Don’t write your address tiny on your sign and assume I know your neighborhood. If I can’t find your sale, I won’t be buying anything.
Thanks for the great pointers you list here. The fanny-pack comment was funny and i could see how it could be useful in this situation.
Great tips, i will have to use them for sure at my next garage sale.
This is giving me some good ideas. We have so much stuff we could sell at a garage sale and with summer coming it may be time to do it.
I love Garage Sales too going and having them. I would add have clearly marked colorful prices that are easy to read. Also the most we ever made at a yard sale was by selling some food items. Coolers of canned sodas, diet sodas and bottles of water will go good all day. Everyone is thirsty out in the hot sun. You can also have napkins, paper plates ready and sell store bought Cookies, Doughnuts very easily. Use a styrofoam lid/square and punch in the large Tootsie roll pops and you can get 25 cents each for those. The kids & parents love them. I find all snacks sell as long as they are prepackaged.
These are great tips! You’ve got to know your prices, and you’ve got to accept that a yard sale is about pricing to move not pricing what it’s worth.
These are all great tips. Making a bank is sssooo important. People will just head on if you can’t make change for them immediately.
This is a great list! I haven’t had my own garage sale yet, but these tips will come in handy when I do!