Manatee County, FL Garage & Yard Sales: Frequency, Duration & Permits (2026)

Sec. 2-9-105(n), part of the Property Maintenance and Structural Standards article added by Ordinance No. 15-10 and amended through Ordinance No. ' The code defines the activity itself in Sec. 2-9-103(22): a garage sale is 'the sale of used household or personal articles, such as furniture, tools or clothing, held on residential property for a limited time,' so the frequency cap applies to yard sales, garage sales, moving sales and similar occasional resale events, not to a home-based retail business selling new merchandise. The limit runs per lot rather than per household, so a property changing hands or hosting a different resident mid-quarter does not reset the three-month clock separately for each occupant.

Because the rule sits in the general property maintenance article, it applies uniformly to every residential lot in the unincorporated county, and it operates independently of the outdoor-sales and display restrictions in Sec. 2-9-105(o), which instead govern nonresidential commercial outdoor sales and bar them from required yards, fire lanes, driveways, parking areas and rights-of-way. A resident planning a sale does not need a permit under this section, but exceeding one sale in a rolling three-month window, or running a sale longer than three consecutive days, converts the event into a Sec. 2-9-105 violation enforced the same way as any other property maintenance breach.