Anderson County, SC Sign Regulations: Garage Sale Signs (2026)

Section 24-243 lists 16 categories of signs exempt from the county's sign permitting article, and item (5) covers open house, garage sale and yard sale signs. To qualify for the exemption a sign must be erected, displayed or placed on private property outside of any defined public right-of-way, and it must sit no closer than five feet from any property line, or, where the right-of-way is undefined, no closer than 15 feet from the edge of the paved or unpaved roadway. The subsection requires the sign to note the address of the property where the sale or open house is taking place, and it sets a hard removal deadline: the sign must come down within five days following the date of the event.

The exemption sits in the same list as real estate signs (item 4), capped at six or 32 square feet depending on zoning, institutional signs (item 6), capped at 20 square feet, and one-time auction signs (item 11), which carry their own placement windows and size caps, so the county treats a garage sale sign the same way it treats other short-lived, address-specific advertising: no permit, no fee, but a fixed setback and a fixed removal clock. A garage sale sign that ignores the setback, omits the address, or stays up past the fifth day after the sale loses its exempt status and becomes an unpermitted sign subject to the enforcement provisions of the sign article beginning at § 24-241. The rule applies to the unincorporated county; Anderson, Belton, Honea Path, Williamston and Pendleton each enforce their own separate sign codes inside city limits.