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Yard sales! Will they actually make you money? Do they make sense for your reselling business? How do you have a successful yard sale?
These are all things we’re going to talk about as we prepare for an upcoming yard sale. So let’s dive into the pros and cons of having a regular yard sale.
When To Have A Yard Sale
For us, Fridays and Saturdays are the best days for yard sales. We’ve tried them on other days, but they just perform the best for us where we’re at in Florida on Fridays and Saturdays.
We typically do one to two yard sales a year. So when we say regular yard sale, we’re not saying hold one every month, but we hold one or two a year. It’s important to know what works in your community. If you’re living in an HOA they may have specific rules about when you can have yard sales, or they might just do one date a year where the whole community hosts one.
Look up the rules in your neighborhood and city to see what your options are.
Why Hold A Yard Sale
There are two reasons we hold yard sales – to liquidate and because our kids like them.
Our kids accumulate a lot of stuff like clothes and toys. A yard sale is a way that we can help them declutter their rooms. Sometimes we’ll tell them they can’t get anything else until they sell something they already have because otherwise there’s just no room for it all.
We’re in this business of reselling and we’re always looking for deals, so we also accumulate a lot of stuff. While preparing for this yard sale I went through my garage, and I can’t really even use it right now because I’ve got so much stuff inside.
I found a couple of things that are really cool that I hadn’t listed on eBay and now I will list them since I took the time to go through my garage. And then I also found stuff that I will sell at the yard sale that maybe isn’t worth too much to put on eBay. As you’re thinking about having a yard sale, ask yourself, does it make sense for you to actually push some of this stuff out at the yard sale to get rid of, or do you want to go through it and then remind yourself to get it listed on eBay.
Another reason we do it is because our kids really love it. We make it a mini-event, and they sell water, soda, and homemade cookies. Sometimes we set up a bounce house for the kids to play in, and they love it and they get paid for selling their old toys.
What To Do With The Leftovers
In a perfect world, you would sell every item at your yard sale, but that’s never how it works. It’s important to have a plan for the leftovers so they don’t wind up back in your garage or under your bed.
If an item does not sell, the items that have the potential for a higher profit, like anything over $250 will be listed on eBay. The stuff under that price range, if it doesn’t sell at the yard sale, I might bring that back in and try to list it for parts or list it for cheaper online versus just donating it. Think about your pricing thresholds too when considering what to push to the yard sale pile.
Everything else gets donated, and there are multiple donation sites you can choose from. Some even pick up items from your house! Don’t bring the clutter back inside!
Cons To Yard Sales
One of the biggest reasons you wouldn’t do a yard sale is the time involved. It’s a lot of time and physical work to put a yard sale together, but the decluttering part is a benefit. And our yard sales typically bring in $500-$1,000, so it’s worth it to us.
How To Have A Successful Yard Sale
Have good signage. We put out six to eight signs on the big streets to get people to our smaller street. We make them on bright neon cardboards and put them on stakes in the ground. Then we add balloons or pinwheels to really grab people’s attention.
Have change at your yard sale. People will come with $20 bills and often want change for small items. Go to the bank and get a mix of $1s, $5s, and $10s. Get $20 in quarters. Be able to give people change. The other piece is to consider allowing digital purchases. If you use PayPal or Venmo, allow someone to pay you that way, but do not let them walk off with your item without verifying it is in your account. An email saying payment is pending doesn’t count. You actually want to see the money in your Venmo or Paypal account and have accepted it.
Don’t be afraid to drive around and look for some free items ahead of your sale. We picked up a hutch for free on the side of the road the other day and will be selling it at our yard sale. There are people looking for furniture to repurpose and flip, so someone may want to purchase it.
Take a drive around your neighborhood, do it for probably like two weeks, and then have a yard sale. Go find some cool stuff. Find some cool furniture, cool baby toys, and stuff like that. And you can probably make a couple of hundred bucks just by getting stuff that people are throwing away in your area.
Let us know your yard sale tips, and we’ll post a recap of how ours went later!
FURTHER RESOURCES
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