The 5 Cities With the Most Garage Sale Fanatics

Although Oklahoma is far from the top state for the number of garage sales per capita—that honor goes to Oregon—a lot of residents of Oklahoma City, OK, must be gaga over garage sales.

Oklahoma City grabs the No. 1 spot in LawnStarter’s new ranking. This is based on Google Trends data of the 5 Cities With the Most Garage Sale Fanatics.

via Flickr

How We Compiled The Data

For our ranking, we reviewed Google search activity from June 2013 to June 2018 for the term “garage sale.” Picking up a perfect Google Trends score of 100, Oklahoma City came out on top as the U.S. city with the most “garage sale” search activity on Google.

Google Trends analyzes a percentage of all searches for a term such as “garage sale” within the same time and location parameters. Then, Google assigns a search score (1 through 100) to a geographic area. For 2013 to 2018, Oklahoma City posted the highest score on the Google Trends scale — 100 — for the term “garage sale.” On the Google scale, a score of 100 signifies the most search interest for a particular period and place.

Kristi Kirk Trent, the brains behind OKC Craigslist Garage Sales, the Garage Sale Blog, and the City Wide & Neighborhood Garage Sale Calendar, says garage sales in Oklahoma City aren’t just popular — they’re “part of the fabric of life.”

“It’s like taking the kids to school or buying groceries – if there’s a garage sale nearby, you go,” Trent says.

Despite Oklahoma City’s limit of two garage sales per year for each household, more than a dozen community-wide sales take place in the metro area every weekend during the garage-sale season, she says. Some of them have as many as 100 households participating.

Trent says her husband and brother-in-law are avid “curb surfers,” hitting up at least one or two garage sales practically every weekend.

“I get my garage sale fix online because diabetic neuropathy keeps me from getting out. But I’d say the three of us are equally addicted [to garage sales],” she says.

Full List of Garage Sale Fanatics

With Oklahoma City in the lead, here’s our ranking of the 5 Cities With the Most Garage Sale Fanatics.

1. Oklahoma City, OK

Google Trends score: 100

2. Fort Worth, TX

Google Trends score: 80

3. Minneapolis, MN

Google Trends score: 78

4. Austin, TX

Google Trends score: 73

5. Portland, OR

Google Trends score: 67

Feature image source: Flickr

John Egan

John Egan is the former editor in chief of LawnStarter.com. Now, he is a freelance writer extraordinaire. He lives in Austin, Texas.

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