Union, NY Garage & Yard Sales: Frequency, Duration & Permits (2026)

Section 300-40.21 was added 8-8-2012 by L.L. No. 7-2012 and is a single paragraph with three working parts. First, the definition: the sale or offering for sale to the general public of over five items of personal property on any portion of a lot in any zoning district, whether within or outside any residential building, is a garage sale for purposes of the zoning chapter. Five items or fewer falls outside that definition, so the threshold is a count of items offered, not dollars or tables. Second, duration: a garage sale is limited to a period not exceeding three consecutive days. Third, frequency: residential dwellings or lots are allowed no more than three garage sales in any one calendar year, and each sale must be at least one week apart.

The section itself sets no fee and names no permit, application, or sign rule, and it prints no hours of the day. The enforcement tool is the zoning penalty in § 300-60.7. Because the definition reaches any portion of a lot and every zoning district, a sale in a driveway, yard, garage, or porch counts the same way, and a sale on a commercial lot is covered along with a residential one.

Separate rules apply to a business run from a dwelling. The home occupation section, § 300-40.9, prohibits selling merchandise not produced by the home occupation in subsection H and prohibits using the property as a drop-off point for such merchandise in subsection G. Those provisions are written for home occupations. A resident planning a sale in the Town of Union outside the Villages of Endicott and Johnson City therefore counts the days of the sale, counts the sales already held in the calendar year, and leaves at least a week between them.