Fremont Garage Sale Tip or Two

Whether your purpose for a Fremont garage sale or moving sale is to clear out stuff (junk) from your house or to recap some cash on items not used anymore--or both, you should do the garage sale. Moving sale, tag sale, estate sale, and garage sale all bear the same rules for success. My family and I, in Fremont, just did a block sale last weekend, and here is what I want to share with you on how we got things done. Some things we did well, and others okay.

My goal was two fold. First, being a Fremont real estate agent, I wanted to get the immediate Fremont community involved in order to glean a little name branding for my Fremont real estate office http://www.tricityhome.com from the event. Second, was for me to get some things cleared out of the house and garage. I needed my space back.

You should opt for the block sale first, even if you are not a Fremont real estate agent. Block sales build your event from one driveway of attractive garage sale items to perhaps twenty or so driveways of attractive garage sale items. Once, I had the pleasure of attending a city-wide garage sale in Burlingame. The idea is to build demand by way of building traffic. People are much more likely to attend a block sale than visit a single, isolated garage sale or tag sale.

Naturally, someone has to step up to the plate to get the garage sale or block sale going by way of a little resource mobilization. Flyers, board meetings and the like are a great start. Craigslist now has a garage sale category as well. Real Simple Magazine did an article on the tag sale and provided many tips and tricks of the trade. http://www.realsimple.com/tagsale.

I believe I had a little edge in the way of signs due to the fact that I am a Fremont real estate agent. I had a good deal of open house signs I converted to block sale signs. With some bright construction paper, a fat felt-tipped pen and some double sided tape, I was in business. With 10 signs in prominent areas leading visitors to our garage sale, we ended up having to actually direct traffic from 10:30am to around 12:00 noon (these were the busiest times) for some of our visitors.

In a nutshell, here is what I learned:

• Get at least $200 in change first from your bank--$50 in ones, $30 in fives, $50 in tens, $60 in twenties, and $10 in quarters (one roll). Do not let the smug guy hand you a $100 bill when buying a $5 item in hopes that you will not have change and then you end up giving the item to him.
• Use lots of signs
• Do not do Sunday unless you have to--Saturday had four times the visitors.
• Stop at around 2:00pm--seriously drops off after that.
• Use a large umbrella for shade and use sunscreen
• Drink lots of water
• Hot items asked for at our garage sale are: (were in our case) bicycles, video games, tools, cell phones (did not understand that one), jewelry and clothing.
• Cold, hard to move items at the garage sale were: dolls, plastic toys and our previous tv that weighed near 100 lbs
• Have bags
• Have fun

Feel free to call me at my Fremont real estate office at 510 742 3212 or visit my Fremont real estate website at http://www.tricityhome.com. By Jeff Pereyda