It’s as simple as a click of a button for some living in Howard County; suddenly they’re connected to a world of clothes, accessories, furniture and more waiting to be purchased and picked up locally.
It’s not Craigslist or the local classifieds bringing the traditional “yard sale” online for this group.
Instead, it’s Facebook.
The Howard County Online Yard Sale group on the popular social network boasts more than 7,100 members as of press time. And that number is growing.
But the difference is that there’s no group of administrators taking on the burden of answering questions and moderating transactions.
It’s just one volunteer Columbia resident with a passion for yard sales.
“I hear it and see it all,” says Brenda Hook, the group’s sole administrator. She joined the group at the beginning of the year after hearing about Facebook “yard sales” — groups that facilitate local, person-to-person commerce — from a friend and thought she’d look online and see if there was one in Howard County.
At that time the group had around 2,000 members and a panel of administrators.
A former administrator of the group passed the baton to Hook about five months ago. When she gets home from her position as a long-term-care planner at a nursing home in Elkridge, Hook spends her evenings making sure the group stays localized and spam-free, approving close to 100 requests to join each day.
“I have to go in and approve everyone because there are a lot of people who spam on Facebook who aren’t real people,” Hook says.
And she has a trick to making sure the group stays local when it comes to bringing new people into the group.
“I look for people who have anything about the Orioles or Ravens because that’s usually in the early part of their profile,” Hook says. “One of the problems I saw when I first joined was that people advertise and they don’t live in Howard County. We’re not doing that. We want something local,” she says.
One of the requirements of the group is that sellers and buyers must be willing to meet in Howard County to exchange goods.
“Selling on this site is half the work of a yard sale in my yard,” says Scaggsville resident Wanda Clark. “I find that all of my items sell on here, and I don’t have to set up or take down. I have them pick up at my home.”
When it comes to attracting buyers, online yard sale sellers say they like the idea because they aren’t limited to the crowds able to get out of their houses for a few hours on a Saturday morning.
“I don’t feel rushed to sell an item,” says member Megan Vissary. “I don’t feel like I need to get everything cleared out of my front yard in two days, since I know in a week when I repost I will have a new set of people asking about it and get my asking price for it.”