Serial Garage Sales Prompt Local Crackdowns

(The Wall Street Journal) - This week, local lawmakers in Liberal, a farm town of about 22,000 in southwest Kansas, passed an ordinance clamping down on recurring yard sales by requiring garage sale proprietors to obtain a license and limit sales to four a year.

Liberal is the latest in a growing roster of US municipalities to take action against what critics call a sham: garage sales that are effectively retail outlets.

The regulatory crackdown comes amid what some experts say is frothy, if hard-to-measure, growth for garage sales. "There are no scientific systems for measuring it, but absolutely the growth right now is significant," said Alfonso Morales, a University of Wisconsin urban-planning professor who studies street markets. "The publications where these people advertise are getting thicker."

City officials say the recurring garage sales typically disrupt quiet neighborhoods, cheat governments out of sales tax and pose unfair competition to retailers. "It's not a garage sale if residents are running businesses out of their homes, selling new merchandise," said Rolando Vela, city manager of Laguna Vista, Texas, where lawmakers this month began discussing a proposal to regulate garage sales.

The popularity of the sales has given rise to websites such as GSALR.com, which lists coming garage sales by ZIP Code. And the rise of internet markets such as eBay's has boosted the ranks of bargain hunters who double as sellers, often specializing in particular categories such as college textbooks. "I paid fifty cents for a textbook that I sold for $75," said Valerie Cudnik, a Virginia website designer who also runs a three-year-old site called Garage Sale Finder.

Today's sellers are not necessarily forced by circumstances to part with belongings accumulated over decades. In neighborhoods across America, sellers are offering ever-replenished supplies of often-unused goods, sometimes from the lawns of unoccupied homes, turning residential streets into impromptu parking lots. "Once we had to call 911 so that we could get out of our own driveway," said Gay Revi, a 72-year-old Dallas woman who launched a blog called Dallas Garage Sales From Hell, which she took down last year after the city began regulating garage sales, in part by requiring a $15 permit.

Concern about serial sellers is not limited to city lawmakers. "Anything they sell that doesn't come out of their house is a taxable item, and we've had to shut a few down," said Brenda Rogers, a Kansas state revenue agent based in Liberal.

Business groups are also seeking action against serial sellers. "It's not fair to the businesses that have store fronts, that pay taxes and that follow the rules," said Rozelle Webb, executive director of the Liberal Chamber of Commerce.

Few holders of repeat garage sales typically show up to oppose government proposals to regulate the events. At the hearing this week in Liberal, the only critic of the proposed ordinance was DeLari George, a plumbing company owner. "This is just government stretching its powers," he said.

Read more: The Wall Street Journal