Harding Street Garage Sale Listed for 16th Year in Wichita Falls

By GvilleTX Newsroom

First-party sale posts identified the 16th Annual Harding Street Community Garage Sale as a multi-house event held Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at or around 1500 Harding Street in Wichita Falls, not Gainesville or Cooke County. For local readers, the event offers a North Texas look at how neighborhood selling, food service and city rules meet around a familiar kind of weekend sale.

One first-party post told shoppers to go to 1500 Harding Street for maps to participating houses. Other first-party postings advertised furniture, clothes, toys, home goods and other merchandise, along with food, music and barbecue plates. One post described the day as including "shopping, good food and fun."

The event records reviewed for this report placed the Harding Street sale in Wichita Falls. Wichita Falls' official garage-sale FAQ says the city does not require a garage-sale permit, but it limits residents to four sales per calendar year, with each sale capped at three straight days. Wichita Falls Code Enforcement also lists garage sales among the ordinance areas it enforces under Appendix B, Section 5130.4.

Food sales can involve a separate local process. The Wichita Falls-Wichita County temporary food-event page says applicants for advertised public food events are limited to seven temporary event permits per year, with applications expected by 4:30 p.m. on the last business day before the event. The page lists fees of $30 for nonprofit events and $50 for for-profit events. The first-party Harding Street posts advertised food and barbecue plates; the records provided for this report do not show whether a temporary food-event application was filed.

Gainesville has its own garage-sale limits. City Council records say Gainesville adopted Ordinance 1388-05-2016 after complaints that continuous residential sales were becoming store-like operations. The ordinance limited garage sales to four per year, required at least 30 days between sales, capped each sale at 72 hours and did not require a permit.

Nearby cities handle the same kind of activity differently, according to their posted rules. Sherman changed its garage-sale ordinance on Nov. 3, 2025, and now requires online permits, charges no garage-sale fee, limits each sale to three consecutive days and allows no more than three permits for a location in a 12-month period. Little Elm requires an $11 online permit by address, allows three sales per calendar year per address and requires 30 days between sales.

The budget backdrop also differs by county. Census QuickFacts reports 2020-2024 median household income at about $60,000 in Wichita Falls, about $64,000 in Wichita County and about $74,000 in Cooke County.

Federal waste data show why common garage-sale goods also turn up in discussions about disposal. The Environmental Protection Agency estimated that U.S. furniture and furnishings waste totaled 12.1 million tons in 2018, with 80.1% of that product sector landfilled. The EPA also estimated 17 million tons of textile generation in 2018, including 11.3 million tons landfilled.

State tax rules are separate from local garage-sale ordinances. Texas Comptroller guidance says people holding garage sales may need a sales-tax permit because taxable personal property includes clothing, books, furniture, bicycles and toys. The Comptroller says individuals can qualify for the occasional-sales exemption if they sell only one or two taxable items in a 12-month period, or if sales of personal-use items total no more than $3,000 in a calendar year.