James City County, VA Garage & Yard Sales: Frequency, Duration & Permits (2026)

The Code of the County of James City handles garage sales through two short provisions rather than a stand-alone permit scheme. Sec. 24-2 defines a garage sale as the sale of goods by a property owner and his neighbors at the property owner's residence occurring not more than twice a year, building the twice-a-year frequency cap directly into what qualifies as a garage sale at all; a sale hosted more often than that is not a garage sale under the ordinance's own terms. Sec. 24-36, titled Special provisions for garage sales, then states plainly that garage sales shall be permitted in all districts, overriding the use tables that would otherwise restrict a residential-only activity like a temporary sale of household goods in agricultural, business or industrial zones.

Because the definition ties the two-per-year cap to the property owner's residence, the sales counted against that limit are the ones held at a given address, and neighbors who join in at that address share the same twice-a-year allowance for that location rather than each accumulating a separate count of their own. The ordinance does not require advance notice, a permit application, or a fee for a garage sale that stays within the two-per-year limit, which is unusual among the county's use-specific provisions and reflects the informal, residential character the definition assumes throughout chapter 24.