San Luis Obispo County, CA Garage & Yard Sales: Frequency, Duration & Permits (2026)

Garage sales are addressed inside the County's Home Occupations ordinance rather than as a stand-alone permit category. Sec. A exempts garage sales from the land use permit otherwise required for home occupations under the Table 2-2 land use matrix, though the County Tax Collector can still require a Business License Clearance. Subsection G opens by banning on-site retail sales of home-occupation products, then carves out three exceptions: garage sales, home distributor supply sales, and animal sales tied to an approved animal-keeping operation. The garage-sale exception itself, Sec.

1, caps the activity at two sales per calendar year and two consecutive days per sale, covering both true garage sales and the sale of handcrafted items or artwork actually produced on the property. The same twice-a-year, two-day ceiling is cross-referenced in the county's separate Outdoor Retail Sales chapter, Sec. D, which folds "home sales" back into Sec. 1 rather than setting its own limit. Traffic generated by the sale also escapes the home-occupation parking standard: Sec. 1 from that cap, along with the requirement that all parking be met off the street. A longer or more frequent sale loses the exemption and becomes an unpermitted home-occupation retail sale in violation of Sec. G.