Tuscaloosa, AL Sign Regulations: Garage Sale Signs (2026)

The zoning ordinance treats garage and yard sale signs as 'temporary yard signs,' governed by Sec. 25-183(d) rather than a sale-specific rule. A residential lot may display up to three of these signs at once, but each one is capped at six square feet of display area, about the size of a large poster board, and the exception does not extend to multifamily or multifamily student dwelling lots at all. Placement is restricted too: every sign must sit at least five feet back from the curb or street edge, and it cannot go inside a public right-of-way or on city-owned property, which rules out taping a sign to a utility pole or planting one in a road median.

That placement ban lines up with the ordinance's general prohibited-sign list in Sec. 25-179(i), which separately bars signs on public utility poles unless erected by a public authority, and bars any sign within the right-of-way that creates a sight or safety hazard. That general list also forbids signs made of paper, cloth, or other nondurable materials outright, so a cardboard sign is legal only because Sec. 25-183 carves out temporary yard signs as one of the ordinance's specifically authorized exceptions; without that carve-out the nondurable-materials ban in Sec.

25-179(i)(4) would apply. The ordinance does not set a fixed number of days a yard sale sign can stay up the way it does for banners (14 days) or real estate signs, but the sign still loses its authorization once the sale is over, since Sec. ' The director of planning and the director of codes and development services enforce these placement and quantity limits citywide.