How to find garage sales and yard sales near you this weekend

Where to find garage sales this weekend

In most towns, the quickest way to find this weekend’s sales is now Facebook, not a cardboard sign on a lamp post. The directory sites that top Google for “garage sales near me” only hold what someone posted to them, and plenty of sellers never do. Check a few of these, roughly in this order:

Two habits matter more than the source. Look on Thursday or Friday night, when most sellers have posted. And read the date in every post: sale listings rarely get deleted afterwards, so last month’s sale can sit right next to this Saturday’s.

How to find garage sales on Facebook Marketplace

Marketplace has a category for exactly this, and few people know it is there. On a computer, the Classifieds category (Facebook titles the page “Classified Items For Sale”) has two subcategories: Garage Sale and Miscellaneous. Even in the off-season it holds yard sale posts from sellers nearby.

Most sellers post one listing for the whole sale, with the day and hours in the title or first line and photos of the driveway. Not every seller files it under Garage Sale, so search as well. These terms catch most of what the category misses:

• garage sale, yard sale, moving sale
• estate sale, downsizing
• multi-family (also try “multi family”), community sale, street sale
• barn sale, if you live somewhere rural
• “everything must go”

On a computer

1. Go to facebook.com/marketplace. In the left column, under Categories, click Classifieds, then Garage Sale. Or type “garage sale” in the Marketplace search box.
2. Click your location, enter your postal or ZIP code and choose a radius you would really drive.
3. Set Sort by to Date listed: Newest first, so this week’s posts come first.
4. Set Date listed to Last 7 days. Anything older is almost always over.
5. Repeat for “yard sale” and “moving sale”, and bookmark each search so next week takes seconds.

Sorting Marketplace by newest explains both filters and why they reset.

In the Facebook app

1. Open Marketplace and tap the search icon. Type “garage sale”.
2. Tap Filters. Set Sort by to Date listed: Newest first and Date listed to the last 7 days.
3. Tap your location, enter your postal or ZIP code and pick a small radius.
4. Save the search so Facebook notifies you of new matches. Those alerts can be slow; see Marketplace notifications.

Read a sale post before you drive

“Listed 3 days ago” tells you when the post went up. Look for the sale day in the title or description, and message the seller if there isn’t one. The map on a listing shows only a rough area, so ask for the address if the post leaves it out. If your radius lets in towns that are clearly farther away, the circle is drawn from a rough point for your area: see Marketplace distance problems and changing your Marketplace location.

If one item in the photos is the reason you’d go, ask the night before whether it has gone.

Facebook groups, Events and Nextdoor

Groups are where smaller and older sellers post. Search Facebook for your town’s name with “garage sale”, “yard sale” or “buy and sell”, join the two or three with posts from this week, and turn their notifications up for the season.

Community-wide sales, street sales, and church or school sales often go up as Facebook Events, because an event has a date and a Marketplace listing doesn’t. Search Facebook for “garage sale” or “yard sale” plus your town, switch the results to Events and check the dates. Marking one as Interested keeps it in your events list.

Nextdoor is the short-radius option. It asks you to confirm your address, then shows posts from your neighbourhood and the ones around it: good for the sale three streets over that never reached Marketplace.

Garage sale apps and sites, compared

Sale apps do one thing Facebook doesn’t: they put every sale on a map. The catch is coverage. An app holds only the sales posted to it or collected from other sites, so it can be busy in one city and nearly empty in the next. Check yours against Marketplace on a Thursday before relying on it.

gsalr calls itself “the largest garage and yard sale network on the web”. Search by city, ZIP or postal code, then add keywords to the free daily email so sales that mention what you want stand out. Its Garage Sale Map app also pulls in sales from YardSaleSearch.com, GarageSaleFinder.com and others, according to its App Store listing.

Yard Sale Treasure Map is the one for planning a morning: pick the sales and it plans the route. On the US App Store, Menu Access costs $4.99 and Premium and Advanced $7.99 each, and it is rated 4.7 from tens of thousands of ratings.

EstateSales.net covers estate sales, which rarely reach Facebook in the same detail. It says it has been around since 2002 and has served over 9,000 estate sale companies across the US.

Craigslist keeps garage & moving sales under for sale, in US cities and plenty of Canadian ones. Most sellers put the date in the title (“Garage Sale - Sat 10/10”), so trust that over the posting date. For the wider comparison, see Facebook Marketplace vs Craigslist.

Garage sales in Canada

Kijiji has its own category, and it is the next stop after Marketplace. Even late in the season, it holds thousands of garage sale ads across Canada.

1. Go to kijiji.ca, then Buy & Sell, then Garage Sales.
2. Set your location to your city and choose a distance.
3. Sort by Most Recent. Scroll past the Top Ads block: Kijiji’s help says those paid ads ignore your sort.
4. Click Notify me to get new garage sale ads by email. Kijiji sends them once a day, so check the sorted search yourself on Thursday and Friday too. See our Kijiji alerts guide.

Marketplace works the same way in Canada, and gsalr.ca maps Canadian sales. Many towns also hold giveaway weekends, when people leave free things at the curb; our curb alert guide covers those, and free stuff on Marketplace and Kijiji the rest of the year. In Quebec, the weeks around 1 July, Moving Day, bring a run of moving sales.

In the UK, the weekend equivalent is the car boot sale, usually found through Facebook groups. Our UK Marketplace guide covers buying there.

Garage, yard, estate, moving or community sale: what’s different

The name on the post tells you what kind of morning to expect.

Moving sales are the best value for furniture and appliances: the seller has a deadline. Estate sales turn up older tools, vinyl and solid wood furniture, but they draw dealers, so the first hour moves fast.

Plan your route the night before

1. Run your searches on Thursday or Friday night: Marketplace, your groups, Kijiji or Craigslist and one sale map.
2. Note each address, the hours and what you’d go for. Drop posts with no date unless the seller confirms it by message.
3. Put the stops on a map. Google Maps lets you add several stops to one route, or let Yard Sale Treasure Map plan it.
4. Start where the thing you want most is, at opening time. Do multi-family sales early, as they draw crowds.
5. Leave the afternoon for second passes. If the overpriced dresser is still there at 1 p.m., the seller is usually ready to talk.

Respect “no early birds”. Sellers still setting up at 6:45 remember who knocked.

What to bring

Cash first, in small bills. A seller can’t break a fifty at 7 a.m., and fives and coins (loonies and toonies in Canada, ones in the US) let you pay exactly what you offered. A payment app is a backup, only for an item already in your hands; see Marketplace payment methods for which to use with strangers.

The rest fits in a tote bag:

• a tape measure, plus the size of the space, your doorways and your car’s trunk
• bags, a box and newspaper for anything breakable
• straps and an old blanket if you might buy furniture, with the back seats folded
• AA and AAA batteries to test toys and electronics
• a charged phone, for recall checks and what the same item has sold for (fair price on Marketplace shows how)
• a second person, if anything bigger than a chair is on your list

Buy safely: recalls, baby gear and anything that plugs in

A garage sale comes with no receipt, no return and no warranty. In the US, the Consumer Product Safety Commission says its rules cover anyone selling consumer products, yard sales and flea markets included, and its resellers guide says selling a recalled product is against the law. Recalled things still turn up on driveway tables, so photograph the model label and check it on the spot at CPSC.gov or SaferProducts.gov, or recalls-rappels.canada.ca in Canada.

Baby gear needs the most care. Health Canada says traditional drop-side cribs and baby walkers are banned in Canada, so leave both, whatever the price. It also warns that a car seat that has been in a collision may not protect a child, and Transport Canada says seats carry an expiry date on their label. You can’t know a seat’s history at a garage sale, so skip it. The CPSC tells sellers not to sell broken or wobbly nursery furniture even if it was never recalled, a good test for buyers too. Our guide to buying used baby gear goes item by item.

Anything that plugs in should be plugged in. Ask to try it at the garage outlet, listen for grinding or sparking, and look along the cord for cracks and taped repairs. Our guides to used appliances, power tools and lawn mowers have quick driveway tests. Check upholstered furniture and mattresses for bed bugs with your phone’s torch along the seams; see used furniture and used mattresses.

One scam crosses over from Marketplace: a “garage sale” post that asks for a deposit to hold something before you visit. A real garage sale seller wants you to turn up with cash. Never pay ahead for something you haven’t seen; see deposit scams.

How to haggle at a garage sale

Haggling is expected at garage and yard sales, and most sellers price with that in mind. Be friendly, be quick, and offer what you’d be happy to have accepted.

Bundle. “Would you take $20 for the lamp, the side table and the box of books?” moves a seller more than knocking $2 off each, because it clears their table. For one item, ask “What’s the best you can do on this?” and let them name the first lower number, with the cash in your hand. The seller who was firm at 8 a.m. is often flexible at noon, and on the last afternoon some will take almost anything rather than carry it back inside.

Don’t haggle over a 50-cent paperback. Estate sales are different: first-day prices are usually firm, and the discounts come later. For online listings, see negotiating on Marketplace and lowball offers.

Big sale weekends worth planning for

The biggest is the 127 Yard Sale, which bills itself as “The World’s Longest Yardsale”: “4 Days. 6 States. 690 Miles.” It runs from Addison, Michigan to Gadsden, Alabama (about 1,110 km), largely along US Highway 127, each August; its site lists the dates for the coming year. Pick a stretch of a day or two rather than the whole route, and book somewhere to stay well ahead.

Closer to home, many towns and neighbourhoods hold a community-wide sale day, usually in spring, when dozens of households sell on the same morning. Watch your city’s website and local groups from March, then park once and walk.

Catch sales posted midweek, with Sift

The real work is checking the same searches every evening. On a computer, Sift, a free browser extension for Facebook Marketplace, takes most of that off your hands. There is no account to make, it works right in Chrome (and Edge and Brave), and it takes about a minute to set up.

Open the Garage Sale category or a “garage sale” search on Facebook, or Kijiji’s Garage Sales once you switch on Kijiji in Sift, and set up three things in Sift:

• Newest first, so every search opens on this week’s posts.
• Recent listings only, hiding anything older than an age you choose, such as a week, so last month’s sales stop cluttering the page.
• A distance limit, measured from the home you set rather than a point downtown. Each card shows its distance in km or miles.

On a broad category such as Home Goods or Furniture, tell Sift to keep only listings that mention “garage sale”, “yard sale”, “moving sale” or “estate sale”. On Kijiji, leave listings with no price in view, since a garage sale ad can show “Please contact” instead of a price. And hide shipped and partner listings, so “Ships to you” items leave every search.

Then press Watch in Sift on the sorted search. Sift checks it in the background and sends a desktop notification when a new sale is posted, or an alert to your phone with Sift Pro, so Thursday night’s moving sale reaches you on Thursday night. See new listing alerts and every filter Sift has.