Tips for Multi Family Garage Sale, Please!

[DisneyToddlers]

Hi, I will be having my first garage sale with a good friend. Does anyone have tips for how to go about this in terms of set up, organization and payments when you have more than one seller?

I'm looking forward to destashing! Thanks in advance!

 

[virginiamama]

We used the price tags to organize the sales profits. There were 6 families in our sale. We started a page with each family name on top. When someone came up to pay, we peeled the price sticker off and stuck it on the page under the seller's name. If we had haggled, we crossed out the price and wrote in the actual sale price. When it was time to pay out, we divided the cost of the ad evenly off the top and then paid each family.

Now since you've just got one friend involved, it shouldn't be too complicated. Oh, make BROWNIES!!! They sell like crazy especially if you have a kid selling them.

 

[Disney Hot Mama]

Hi, I will be having my first garage sale with a good friend. Does anyone have tips for how to go about this in terms of set up, organization and payments when you have more than one seller?

I'm looking forward to destashing! Thanks in advance!

I never use price tags...to much work on my end. We set everything up. We each know who's is who's and talk about pricing before hand. We agree the lowest we will accept prior to beginning sales. Then we have two pockets for $$. After a sale is made the money from my sale is in one pocket and the other $$ is in the other. If it slows down we give each other the money. We don't worry about nickle and diming things. We usually give a price based on how many items they are purchasing too. One item the price is set more than one we can negotiate.

I have done garage sales with my sister many times and a friend a few times. No battles over money. We are fair in our pricing and agree in advance about item prices etc....

Another hint.. if you think you will not have much left over contact a charity in advance to pick it up for you ASAP. Then you are done. You can also use Freecycle dot com to have people come after the sale to pick you leftovers..

Good luck!

 

[Shelby5514]

Use different colored price tags or even different colored markers on masking tape works. When the item sells peel the tags off and stick them on a sheet of paper. At the end of the day, tally up each color and split up the cash. If there is any cash left that is unaccounted for, we usually give it to the person who's garage we used if it's under $10, if it's over $10 we split it evenly.

And I second the suggestion of arranging for the Salvation Army/Goodwill/Charity to pick it up at the end. (Although, I usually schedule it for the next day to give us time to weed out anything we may want to ebay/craigslist.) We've also done Freecycle with the leftovers.

Drinks sell REAL well if it's warm out. 50 cents a can for soda and 75 cents for a bottle of water.

 

[poohfriend77]

Work out the division of labor ahead of time, too. Are you both going to sit at the sale the whole time? It seems my "joint" garage sales always ended up being me doing all the set-up/selling work and other people dropping off stuff the night before or morning of the garage sale. I think people who don't regularly have garage sales don't understand how much work is involved. I stopped telling a couple friends when I was doing my sale. Now one neighbor brings stuff over. We both set up. Then I manage the sale (keep track of $ totals on a piece of paper, like other PPs have suggested), and she watches all the kids so I don't have them underfoot, trying to sneak toys back into the house.

 

[sherry7]

Speaking as a buyer, if an item doesn't have a price tag on it, I will very seldom ask how much it is...I just keep going to the next yard sale. So even though it's a pain, I think it's better to take the time to price everything.

I haven't had a yard sale in a few years, but I tried to group things by price when possible. For example, I had a big rack of clothes and put up a big sign that said $1 per item. Or, for a box of books, I would do a sign that said 25 cents each, etc, etc.

I like the idea of using separate sheets of paper and sticking the original sticky price tags on it. Write down the things that didn't have a price tag. I've never done a multi-family yard sale, but this sounds like a good way to keep track.

I agree about selling drinks...you'll make a killing, even if you buy generic pop and Huggie drinks for the kids. I've seen people sell Rice Krispie treats before, and they sold like hotcakes.

 

[OceanAnnie]

Speaking as a buyer, if an item doesn't have a price tag on it, I will very seldom ask how much it is...I just keep going to the next yard sale. So even though it's a pain, I think it's better to take the time to price everything.

I haven't had a yard sale in a few years, but I tried to group things by price when possible. For example, I had a big rack of clothes and put up a big sign that said $1 per item. Or, for a box of books, I would do a sign that said 25 cents each, etc, etc.

I like the idea of using separate sheets of paper and sticking the original sticky price tags on it. Write down the things that didn't have a price tag. I've never done a multi-family yard sale, but this sounds like a good way to keep track.

I agree about selling drinks...you'll make a killing, even if you buy generic pop and Huggie drinks for the kids. I've seen people sell Rice Krispie treats before, and they sold like hotcakes.

I agree with everything above.

I have had a huge, huge yard sale with extended family. The funny this is, what you don't think will sell, will, and what you do think will sell probably won't.

Price everything by asking yourself what you would pay for it. Sometimes things are priced higher than retail and nothing moves. Be flexible with pricing, you don't want it all going back in your house!

 

[merekc]

My sister and I do all our garage sales together. We set a high priced item amount, say $30. Anything over $30 the person who brought it gets the entire amount. Anything under that we put in the pot and just split the money in the end 50/50. So much easier than trying to keep track of it. This works for us because we both bring lots of stuff. We send what is left to charity at the end and we are happy to get rid of stuff and make a little money. Especially when both of us put in the same amount of time to get it ready and man it (for the most part).

We have it down to a science or at least we think so. We set up the tables a week or two before, and determine where we are putting things by type: Toys, housewares, etc.. We start hauling stuff out and putting in appropriate areas as it hits the garage.

Most of the kids' clothes we divide up into totes by sex and age (Boys 2T, Girls 10-12, etc.). Clearly label the totes and set up the boys on one side of sale, girls on another, totes in order of size. Everything in totes sells for $.50. New and (some limited) brand name items get hung up and priced individually. Our way of thinking, we can individually price every clothing item but we may ask more and sell less or ask less and sell more. We end up with the same amount of money either way, but if we price it to move then we have less to clean up in the end.

The night before we finish arranging the areas and go through working in different areas pricing using the pre-printed pricing stickers. We price our own stuff and each others based on what we think is fair. Again, priced to move. You could also price it yourself before it goes out to the sale. Then we only make stickers for the ones that we don't have an appropriate preprinted stickers for. Goes really quick, if we struggle with a price we hold up the item in discuss.

We do not price the clothes in the totes. We hang signs above them and clearly mark each tote with it's size. We put a sign in the yard clearly showing our big ticket items and also showing what type of kids' clothes we have (ie. Girls 6-10, Boys 2T-6). You can also put on the sign $.50 kids clothes. We have people come back every year for our sales.

MAke sure you greet people. We also tell them as they walk in...All clothes in totes $.50, clothes hanging are new or name brand and are marked. Boys over there, girls over there. This way people can head directly to what they are interested in.

Hope this helps.

 

[DisneyToddlers]

OP here! Thanks so much for all your feedback-It's all very helpful. My original thought was that we'd each be on one side of my driveway and have people pay for purchases on the appropriate side. Has anyone done it this way?

 

[iluvdiscruises]

OP here! Thanks so much for all your feedback-It's all very helpful. My original thought was that we'd each be on one side of my driveway and have people pay for purchases on the appropriate side. Has anyone done it this way?

We do this with 3-4 families each year, and everyone shops/pays separately. Never a problem! We all have such varied items that it would be really hard to justify splitting profits. We do all chip in for advertising, but profits are all separate.

I am doing one on a much bigger scale next month, a children's/baby item sale with about 25 families, and we are tagging each and every item with a name and price...but then people pay all at once at the checkout. We will record each item so everyone gets their own money from their items at the end of the sale.

Good luck with your sale! I am glad that garage sale season will be here shortly!

 

[cel_disney]

We have done the 'pay the owner of the stuff' yard sale approach before.

It is okay, but it can also make it a bit harder for you and your guest shoppers - they need even more small change and dont have quite the negotiating power or incentive to buy more of your stuff because they would have to buy alot from each of you to get the deal...that said - its still doable!

We have a big multifamily sale coming up in June (4 families) and I love the sticker idea for tallying up sales! Thats how the larger community sales do it (well, they use a tag gun actually) and I wasnt sure how to translate this to doing it on a smaller scale! I'm definitely going to be sharing this idea with our group!

I'm also hoping that we can find a way to agree to group like things together among us - kids books, adult books, coffee table books, and basic used clothing items (kids, adults) from all families in one area instead of spread out between 4 areas...but we'll need a good plan for this as well as an agreement on what we are going to do with the items afterwards I think!

 

[findmewdw]

We have a four family yard sale on the first weekend that school is out each year. Each family puts price stickers on everything that is in the sale, either with a color code or on masking tape with their initials. We try to group things, too. We have housewares on a big wagon, baby clothes, young kids clothes, etc, on tables. We record everything in a notebook that is divided into columns for each family and as people are paying, one person either attaches the stickers or just writes it down. Then we add the columns up and each family knows how much they earned. We are all close friends and luckily we have a math teacher that handles all the money for us, but it takes all of us at times to work. We are so busy! I can't imagine one person doing a yard sale by themselves. I guess we have just too much junk! We have people in the community that start asking about our yardsale a month in advance!
We've always had an ideal location and unfortunately, my friend has gotten a divorce this year. We're trying to decide where to have it now. We all have our basements loaded with items that are priced!
We donate all of our unsold items to a community sponsored agency on the same afternoon. Although our sales are always exhausting, we enjoy the time with friends and all my earnings go straight to my vacation fund

 

[micheleq]

My neighbors and I did a tag sale together last year, and my mom and her friends on her street do one every few years as well. Everyone sets up their own tables/items and collects money only from their items. The only thing that we have done is all chip in for newspaper ads, but that is a minimal cost.

We didn't find that it was a hinderance to not group like items together, people seemed to enjoy going from one "station" to another. Multi-family tag sales in our area seem to draw more customers because they know there will be a larger selection of items.

We did list some key items (like furniture, a wine fridge) in our ad. Also, we took everything that was left over to Goodwill and a local consignment store. It was easier to do that at the end of the tag sale vs. the next day.

Good luck! I'm already gathering items for the tag sale on my mom's street this spring as we are anticipating a move.