Garage sales in HOA communities

A board member is complaining about garagee sales. He believes that a garage is "vending" What are the views of other association members? I would really appreciate your input.

I wouldn't call it vending, however the signs for a garage sale would probably violate most HOA sign restrictions. It also may violate the home business section if they allow home businesses as long as they don't have significant traffic. But in reality if your CC&R's are like most; if Homeowner A puts up signs and holds a garage sale and the BOD sends them a typical violation letter giving them X number of days to cure the violation before a fine is assessed and they don't hold another one until after a year has passed, you really can't do anything to them. Better IMO to come up with some reasonable rules i.e signs may go up the day of the sale and must be removed by the day after. We (condos) used to have an annual community wide garage sale but stopped a few years ago due to lack of interest from the homeowners.

Here is what our CCRs state: "no part of the Properties shall ever be used or caused to be used or allowed or authorized to be used in any way, directly or indirectly, for vending or other nonresidential purposes." This section is where someone is saying that the vending clause would include garage sales. I think vending would be more of a business conducted on a regular time table. Would you give your opinion?

I don't believe a HOA should have a garage/yard sale to raise funds for the HOA or for a special project. That may fall under income and be taxable. Check with your account first on that one...

However, for individual homeowners in the HOA to have a group or individual yard/garage sale to raise money for their own personal benefit is okay. As long as it falls under the city/county laws of having such sales. Our county/city does have an ordinace on the number of yard/garage sale a person can have at their home. No yard/garage sales on Sunday.

Yes, there are rules for limiting types of signs but these signs are only TEMPORARY. They should only stay up as long as the sale is going on. If it isn't removed, then the HOA can remove the signs within the propert time frame.

This wouldn't be considered "Vending". Vending would be more along the lines of selling a repeat item at your home like maybe earthworms for fishing...Bootlegging...drug dealing...Something sold for repeat customers. A yard/garage sales is only a 2 day event at best a few times a year. If the owner is doing more than that, then the HOA should evaluate if this is a business violation or something else...

Great input; THANKS!

Parking and Traffic become problematic whenever individuals have yard sales (at least in our townhome area where there is no parking and all the visitors are parking in the fire lanes). Before the board enacted a new rule that allows yard sales in only one area where there is ample parking, it was terrible. One morning my entire street was lined with cars, every driveway was blocked in and the visitors were cranky about moving their cars in order to let people out of their own driveways. In order to wet (satisfy) the communities need for yard sales, the HOA now sponsors one big one in the spring and one in the fall. That seems to work fine. Seeing yard sale signs every weekend around the neighborhood isn't what I'd like to see. Good luck.

Brad - I know that you probably were not referring to my community when you referenced barring yard sales. We don't bar them, we just ask that the homeowners request the use of the Pool house/parking lot and register in advance so that there is plenty of parking and there are no cleanup issues. Parking in our townhome development is awful and if 10-12 cars were all parked in the fire lanes, our fire marshall (who lives in the community) would go nuts. Usually most resident enjoy the fact that the HOA sponsors two large sales per year to coincide with a very large neighborhood yard sale. Like you said - they all feed on each other. Regards.