Garage Sales

If you're willing to wade through the remnants of another person's life, you can find bargains at an estate sale. You just may have to knock a dealer out of the way to get to them. Antique sellers, book collectors and EBay users show up to these events early. Often they're armed, with magnifying loupes to scrutinize figurines, research books on vintage furniture or an iPhone to check price comparisons. The professionals are looking for the same things you are: deals.

Want to make a few bucks and get rid of your household clutter at the same time? It may be time for a garage sale. Aaron LaPedis, author of "The Garage Sale Millionaire," has hosted some 50 garage sales of his own and frequents them in search of artwork and antiques. Done right, a garage sale not only can generate some cash but also land you a tax deduction. Here's what you need to do to get the most cash from your clutter. Gather widely: The key to getting lots of customers is having lots of stuff to sell, LaPedis said.

Joining about a dozen small Southland cities in an attempt to combat neighborhood blight, the Los Angeles City Council moved Tuesday to restrict yard sales in residential areas, limiting them to daytime hours and prohibiting the sale of new merchandise.

Since moving into his sleek contemporary home in the Hollywood Hills a few years ago, Alexis Hadjopulos hasn't entertained much. Hardly anyone has seen the place. But all that may change. A TV crew has been filming Hadjopulos at the house and at his L.A. store, the vintage home décor emporium This Is Not IKEA, better known as TINI. "It's crazy," Hadjopulos says of the reality show in development. "I wake up in the morning, and then they tell me to get back into my bed to film me waking up again.

No longer able to take out a second mortgage, many Americans are finding another way to squeeze equity out of their home: selling the junk in it. Garage sales, yard sales, tag sales -- no matter what you call them, such exercises in do-it-yourself retailing have long been a popular way for people to clear out unwanted items around the house.

Garage sales spoil the look of our city. Why do we allow people to dump their stuff all over their lawns and clutter our sidewalks with their unwanted junk? Messy, dilapidated signs are tacked to trees, telephone poles and buildings. Flags and banners fly across streets and add to the ugly scene. A quiet residential area becomes a nightmare. Children out playing are confronted by strangers. Parents feel uneasy. Parking is impossible. Selling on other than a commercial lot should be prohibited.

A favorite weekend pastime has been preserved in Culver City for those who enjoy strolling through yard and garage sales looking for bargains. On Monday, the Culver City City Council voted against a proposal by one council member to prohibit garage sales within the city's borders. But the council also directed staff to enforce ordinances that prohibit sales in driveways or in front yards and sale signs hanging in neighborhoods.

In an effort to limit garage sales which Lakewood officials said were being turned into weekend businesses by some residents, the City Council last week unanimously approved an ordinance limiting such sales. The council limited garage sales to two a year per residence, with no sale to last more than two days.

Residents who want to hold garage sales must now obtain a permit from City Hall under a new ordinance. The law is an attempt to curb the number of garage sales residents hold in a year. Tony Vieira, revenue supervisor for the city, said some residents were renting out their yards or holding several sales each year, which he said is unfair to the licensed businesses in the city. The permit for a garage sale is $6.50 and is valid for two days.

The kind of used household goods typically sold at garage sales for rock-bottom prices went for up to $800 a box Saturday because the castoffs carried the Rockefeller cachet. Items tagged from the Rockefeller family's Overhills Estate, which was sold to the Army, included hula hoops, chipped pottery, odd pieces of furniture.

Molly and Stan Hyman are hitting the road and they've put their garage up for sale. And by the way, their six-car garage comes with a house. The Burbank couple are automobile enthusiasts and restorers who in 1995 custom-built their garage/house to give themselves room to rebuild and showcase vehicles. The building replaced a home destroyed in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, said Stan Hyman, a 76-year-old retired hospital administrator and real estate developer. "Molly wanted a new 1930s-style Mediterranean place, and we both wanted good garage space.

State and local governments need money to get through the economic slump, so they're turning to, well, garage sales. The city of Los Angeles is doing so literally, negotiating the long-term lease of parking garages to private operators. And California officials reported Oct. 11 that they had reached a deal to sell the Ronald Reagan State Building and the Junipero Serra Building in downtown Los Angeles, plus nine other buildings in four other cities, to a private real estate partnership.

Robert De Niro slept there. So did Elizabeth Taylor and Cary Grant. But the crowd that gathered Thursday morning to buy up a piece of the Hotel Bel-Air, a longtime playground of the rich and famous, was hunting for bargains, not souvenirs. Closed Oct. 1, the Los Angeles landmark is getting a two-year, multimillion-dollar face-lift. Its owners are selling off beds, rugs, lamps and other furnishings. About 100 people lined up outside a Santa Monica storefront where the items are on display, hoping to get a little stardust on the cheap.

It was a November Saturday in Minneapolis and it wasn't snowing. What else did local sports fans have to do with their time than line up by the thousands for a Metrodome garage sale? With the Twins moving to an outdoor stadium in 2010, lots of merchandise at the Metrodome was priced to move. There were autographed baseballs, banners celebrating Kirby Puckett's entrance into the baseball Hall of Fame, life-sized cardboard cutouts of Kent Hrbek. Some fans arrived at dawn for an event scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. By the time the gates opened, the line of fans nearly ringed the stadium.

The California State and Consumer Services Agency announced Saturday that what officials had dubbed the Great California Garage Sale made more than $1.6 million for the general fund. More than 7,000 people attended the sale of surplus state property in a Sacramento-area warehouse Friday and Saturday, officials said. Thousands of unneeded and unclaimed items were offered for sale, including computers, desks, jewelry and a dental chair. More than 600 used state cars were also offered -- 447 of them online, some signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Unemployment in California is high, which could partly explain why thousands of people had time to line up on a Friday morning to go shopping. Another possibility was the allure of a bargain, as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration launched the Great California Garage Sale to unload some unneeded items, cheap. The governor toured the site Friday morning before flying east for the funeral of his wife's uncle, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). The shoppers had waited in the pre-dawn outside the Sacramento-area warehouse.

Garage sales are not just a job for Jim Cloar. They are a way of life. On the Saturday before Christmas, Cloar, 74, sat in his garage, on W. 139th Street near Hawthorne, amid rusted tools and other odds and ends taken on consignment from neighbors. Red signs announcing his sale hung from the opened garage door, flapping in the biting morning breeze.

Responding to a complaint about garage sales at multi-unit buildings, Los Angeles Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky recommended this week that the city draft an ordinance limiting the number of garage sales in residential areas. Under Yaroslavsky's proposal, no more than three days of sales would be allowed within a six-month period at each property and no more than two per seven-day period. A resident holding a garage sale would only be allowed to sell used items owned by that resident.

Does Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have a deal for you. His plans to cut up the state's credit cards didn't go so well, and voters gave the thumbs-down to his bid to shackle government spending. No matter. In his latest effort to balance the budget, the governor is cleaning out the state's storage sheds and holding a garage sale on Craigslist and EBay. Need a 2001 Ford Focus wagon with 110,059 miles and Schwarzenegger's autograph on the visor? Someone did, offering the high bid of $1,625.

The paean to Huell Howser ["The Awe of Huell Howser," July 26] seems heartfelt but is laughable when confronted with what he actually presents. I confess I've never been able to watch much of his shows, since I find his manner insufferably homespun and his subjects generally boring as dirt. There's a place for celebrating the wonders of the simple and the local, finding a kind of Zen epiphany in the everyday. I have no doubt there are many fascinating stories out there, and the right personality or style in an inquiring mind could present them effectively.