How to Organize a Subdivision Garage Sale

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By BellaCasa
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Neighborhood Garage Sale

If you want to have a successful and profitable garage sale, the best way to achieve this is to have a subdivision sale, or sub sale, with all of your neighbors. Subdivision Garage Sales always attract hundreds of shoppers and the more traffic you get, the more you will sell and make at your sale.

Organizing a neighborhood garage sale does take some planning and organizing though and here are some steps to make your subdivision garage sale a successful one.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Flyers
Signs
Balloons
Classified Ads

Step 1

Pick A Date

First, you need to pick a date for your garage sale. Most sales will last 2 days. The most popular days are Friday and Saturday. However, some areas have very popular Thursday sales and still others do well on Sundays. You should do some research in your newspaper classified ads and see which days are the most popular in your area.

Now, that you know what days of the week you want to have the sale on, you need to pick the dates. Again, you need to know what are the best times for your area. For instance, in my town, the weekend before Memorial Day is very popular for garage sales. And, in the little downtown area of my town, they have yard sales whenever there is an event, like a parade or car show in town. Pick a popular time to get the most traffic for your sale.
Step 2

Calculate the Cost of Advertising

Now you need to research the costs of advertising and balloons for your subdivision garage sale. Check your local newspapers for their costs of ads in their classified sections. You will want to run your ad in every local paper in your area for at least the week that you are holding the sale, but for even more exposure, you will want to run it the week before, as well.

You will also want balloons for each home that is participating in the sale. At least one per home, but 2-3 would be even better. This is up to you, because you have to take into account that more than likely, you will be picking up the balloons for the sale. How many balloons can you fit in your car? Will someone help you with the balloons?

So, now that you have the prices for the ads and balloons. You can divide this by cost by roughly 1/4 of the homes in your neighborhood, since that is about the number of families that will participate in the sale. If you charge too much, you can always refund the difference to your neighbors.
Step 3

Neighborhood Garage Sale Flyer

Now that you have chosen the dates of your neighborhood garage sale, you need to let your neighbors know. Make a simple, but FUN flyer, with the dates, information, costs to them (for advertising and balloons) and your contact information. Make sure to ask them what they will be selling at their sales, too. You'll see why in the next step. Pass out flyers to each home in your subdivision.
Step 4

Balloons

Now, that you have the dates and know what homes are participating in the block sale, you need to make up maps for your customers. These maps will have a list of each home that is having a sale and will list what they are selling. Every home participating should have at least 50 of these to pass out to their customers. This is a great way to get the word out about all of the sales so that no home participating gets missed.

You can pass these out the morning of the sale along with the balloons. You will want to do this about an hour before the sale starts.
Step 5

Meet Neighbors, Make Money, Have Fun!

Now the sale is under way. Have fun, make money and try to take breaks to walk around and visit your neighbors at the subdivision garage sale. It's really a fun way to make money and get to know your neighbors, too. Good Luck!