Hendersonville, TN Sign Regulations: Garage Sale Signs (2026)

Section 13.5.4.3 of the Zoning Ordinance treats a garage sale sign as a temporary sign displaying a residential message, the same category as baby announcements and lost-pet signs. That category needs no sign permit, provided the sign carries no commercial message. One temporary ground sign is allowed per lot, capped at nine square feet in size and four feet in height, the same size and height ceiling that applies to a paid commercial temporary sign in a residential zone under the same section.

Contrast that with subsection D: a commercial temporary ground sign displayed in a residential zone, for example a home-based business sign, does need a permit and can stay up only 45 days a year, split into as many as three periods of no more than 15 days each. Garage sale, lost-pet and similar residential-message signs sit outside that 45-day/permit system entirely because subsection E carves them out by name; a resident can put one up whenever a sale happens, not just during a permitted window.

Chapter 13.6 backs up the placement limit with a removal power: any temporary sign the Planning Department or other authorized City staff finds in violation of the Ordinance, including one left up too long, oversized, or planted in the right-of-way, can be removed, discarded or destroyed outright rather than just cited. Table 19 in the same chapter lists the nine-square-foot, four-foot-height cap for the residential temporary sign side by side with the commercial sign's identical dimensions, confirming garage sale signs share the smaller residential size class, not the larger 12-square-foot commercial/industrial ground sign allowed elsewhere in the Ordinance.