It may take you a couple times to find some good neighborhoods. There are several options to make your chances of finding good neighborhoods better. The first is to simply ask someone you know who does go garage saling in your area. Similarly, if there’s a forum/community website for your area, you could ask people there for advice. When I was in Omaha for a wedding in July, I asked r/Omaha for advice on garage saling neighborhoods in the city. Another option, if you have any friends who garage sale, is to ask to go with them. Finally, you can look on Craiglist to try to find neighborhoods with a high density of sales. Keep in mind that most sales aren’t listed on Craigslist so with this method you’re getting an incomplete picture. If you do use Craigslist, be sure not to just go point-to-point from a bunch of addresses you wrote down as I discussed above.
One thing Craigslist is good for is looking for neighborhood sales. I strongly urge you to not go out of your way for neighborhood sales; I have never been to a neighborhood sale that had as many participants as it claimed in advertisements. The typical neighborhood sale has between one-sixth and one-fourth as many participating families as it claims; if you see an ad for a neighborhood sale consisting of items from twenty families, expect maybe five to actually have stuff out for sale. I actually went to a neighborhood sale one time that had exactly zero participants. Who organized it? Also, during neighborhood sales, many participants put out only one or two pieces of overpriced furniture or other undesirables yet are still considered participants for advertising purposes. Therefore, you should never go out of your way for neighborhood sales. If they’re on your route, go ahead and stop. One good item makes it worth it. If you have to drive more than a couple minutes out of your way, don’t bother. It’s not worth it.
In the near future I’ll be posting about reading people’s signage (this may seem unnecessary, but it’s surprisingly how poorly marked most sales are) and finding people willing to go saling with you. Then, I will move on to bargaining.
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