This brings us to the problem of yard sales, estate sales, garage sales, or tag sales. While anyone of these would normally be one-time events at a person’s residence and are not an on-going business, they do have the attributes of attracting increased traffic, and thus create a disturbance for neighbors for several hours on the day they occur. On the other hand, they are the type of event that at one time or another many of us might find ourselves wishing to engage in, particularly when it comes time to move from Fearrington. The Fearrington Homeowners Association has sought, over time, to find a way to compromise between maintaining the tranquility of neighborhoods and yet permitting residents to avail themselves of an activity that conveniently allows them to downsize their households. To effect this compromise the practice has been to allow such sales when they occur entirely inside a residence, on a single day, and with adequate plans to handle traffic and parking while at the same time seeking to discourage any “marketplace” appearance such as signs and display of items in driveways and yards. The latter, discouraged practices rule out what are normally meant by “yard sales” or “garage sales,” if the garage door is left open to attract buyers.

Finding a harmonious path between the conflicting interests of most of us most of the time and interests of many of us occasionally requires a decent respect and tolerance for each other’s particular situations. When it comes to household sales this means a willingness of neighbors for a day to tolerate a possibly small disturbance and for those holding the sales to minimize it’s impact on the neighborhood by complying with the standards and requirements for such sales.

Recently, in one neighborhood a group of households conducted a combined yard sale. While one can understand the logic of their individual interests to maximize the potential for disposing of household items, such an event created an unwanted disruption of the neighborhood and clearly went beyond the accepted standards for such sales. Items were set out in driveways and signs were put up with balloons attached. What was particularly disturbing about this incident is that, prior to the sale, a member of the local covenants committee spoke with members of two of these households and believed that he had obtain their agreement that the sale would be conducted entirely indoors. This, it turned out, was not to be the case.

In the interests of maintaining a harmonious and civil community a compromise must be reached when the needs of individual households and the interests of the neighborhood are in conflict. When it comes to sales of household property, the compromise that has been reached over time is to limit such sales to a single day by a single household, conducted entirely inside the residence and with proper provision for traffic and parking. The Fearrington Homeowners Association urges each member to adopt and abide by these practices in order to preserve the features of the Village that attracted us here in the first place.