Lakewood, WA Garage & Yard Sales: Frequency, Duration & Permits (2026)

Lakewood's general business-license chapter, LMC 5.02.050(A), lists activities exempt from the citywide business license requirement, and subsection (6) covers "residential sales such as garage or yard sales of a typical size and duration as well as want-ad, online marketplace or similar sales of an isolated and infrequent nature." The code does not attach a specific number of sale days or a maximum number of sales per calendar year to that exemption; instead it relies on the sale being of ordinary residential scale and occurring only occasionally, not as a recurring commercial operation.

Separately, Lakewood's Land Use and Development Code lists "yard sales" among the residential accessory uses permitted outright on a single-family or multifamily lot at LMC 18A.40.110(B)(11)(o), grouped with other secondary, subordinate uses like hobby gardens and decks that require no separate land use permit. Because a garage sale run with enough frequency or scale to look like ongoing retail activity would fall outside the "typical size and duration" and "isolated and infrequent" language of LMC 5.02.050(A)(6), the City retains authority to treat a chronic or oversized sale operation as an unlicensed business subject to Chapter 5.02's general licensing and enforcement provisions, including its nuisance-abatement language in LMC 5.02.025.