Anyone Ever Do an Estate Sale

Before we put our parents’ house/farm up for sale, we’d like to sell of items none of us want to keep but other people may be able to use. Anything to watch out for with companies that do estate sales?

Is there some reason why you couldn’t do the sale yourself and save the commission charges? Think of it as a high-end (presumably) garage sale. You could do it over a week or a long weekend. The companies that do these can market your sale better than you can, but they will charge you for that.

We had to do it long distance when my mom sold her house in AZ and moved closer to us in CA. We got almost nothing. I don’t know if we were ripped off, or they were selling things for something like a quarter… The only good thing was they took what wasn’t sold away.

Unless there’s a lot of valuable or collectible items, there’s probably not a whole lot of profit to be had. One reason is that younger generations aren’t as into collecting or having lots of stuff, so they’re not buying household bric-a-brac. And regular furniture doesn’t have a lot of demand. Perhaps if there’s some stuff that’s cool and vintage they might get a good price for that. But it takes a lot of time and effort to find the right buyers. The estate sale people know how to price and promote, but they also need to get paid. You can either have them do it and make a little bit of money or do it yourself and make a bit more, although with more effort. If there are items that you know are valuable, you might want to try to sell those yourself. Take them to dealers. The estate liquidation companies will be trying to move out lots of stuff and won’t be concerned about trying to get top dollar for each and every item.

Look up the social media sites of estate sales companies in your area and read what people say about them. Google and Yelp reviews may also have some info.

We don’t care at all for making money off it. We certainly don’t want to deal with selling it ourselves, since three out of the four of us live hours away. The main goal is to get the property ready to show and get things into hands of people who can use them, if possible.

Do you even know if they had a sale?

Well, unless they just gave us some cash so they wouldn’t have to do any work? Actually, my mom’s old neighbors were still around (and the sale was at the house), so we do know it at least happened.

I did an estate sale when my father died; fortunately, a family friend was willing to have it in her garage (my father lived in an apartment) and combine it with her own garage sale. We agreed that she would get 20% of the gross for my father’s stuff, if I remember rightly. I don’t remember if there was anything left, nor what was done with it.

The situation was, both my sister and I spent a week clearing up, and then I stayed another week to help set up the sale with the family friend, and left as soon as it was over because I had to get back to my job.

When my mother died a few years before that, they had been living in a house, and my father called in an estate sale outfit to deal with all the stuff that he wanted to down-size out of. He was very disappointed in the results, because I think he vastly over-rated the monetary value of their well-cared-for but still second-hand furniture and other belongings. It’s not that he needed the money, just that he felt a little insulted.

I inherited a fully furnished house (plus garden with shed and garden tools.)

A prospective buyer wanted the house cleared of all contents (furniture, ornaments etc.)

I found a local auctioneer who had a great service - his firm would empty the house, auction the contents and lower their removal fee out of profits they made at auction. :smiley:
Well the house contents were in good condition, so eventually the auctioneer charged me nothing :sunglasses:

As for the buyer, he was pleased to keep the ‘white goods’ in the house (e.g. cooker, washing machine), plus all the garden tools … and paid me cash for them. :wink:

I hope things work out as well for you.

There are estate liquidators who will buy everything rather than have a sale. They typically have other distribution channels like booths and shops where they can sell the stuff. I’m not sure you’ll get a ton of money, but it may be preferable to have it all gone in a simple transaction rather than dealing with an actual estate sale. And if you really don’t care about making any money, there are people who will take everything off your hands for free. Craigslist or Freecycle would probably be a good place to look for someone to haul it all off.

That’s an idea I’m relaying to my siblings. It looks like a couple of companies I’ve researched do both sales and liquidation. Our biggest concern is that anything a family member would like gets into their hands. My oldest brother said "I don’t care if we get $100 dollars). The farm is 50 acres with easy access to an Interstate, hospital, and shopping. It also offers privacy, which apparently a lot of folks are looking for. Compared to what it will probably bring (not enough to make us not have to worry about money for the rest of our lives, but enough to make our retirements a little more comfortable) it’s really a pittance.

Another option if you’re not worried about money is to contact organizations in your area which provide housing for people in need, such as victims of domestic violence. They may be able to place the household items with various people who have recently moved into new living situations. Stuff like old silverware which would sell for almost nothing could be very useful to someone with nothing.

To avoid any hard feelings, make sure the heirs have all had ample time to pick out what they want.

My husband is his parents’ executor, so he’ll be facing a similar situation perhaps within a year (his folks are in their 90s and not in great health.) Compounding the difficulty, they live 800 miles from us. There are very few things that any of the 3 brothers or the 2 grandkids would want or need, as everyone already has a full household of stuff.

I suggested selling the house as is - furnished right down to the sheets and tupperware. We’ll talk with a realtor and see if that’s even realistic. The house is in a Florida retirement community, and I suppose such a sale would be attractive to someone looking for a second home. I don’t know that an estate sale would even attract attention, as Ocala is a retirement destination, and the consignment stores are overflowing with the furniture of the recently deceased. I do like the idea of donating to someone who lost their possessions to fire or fled domestic violence. I’m hoping we can just sell the house furnished.

We are living in a fifth-wheel trailer and traveling around the country, so we needed to downsize from a 1,400-square-foot house to a 350-square foot space. I sold a bunch of items like vinyl records and collectible books on eBay for about five months and made out pretty well, but there was still a lot of household items like furniture and dishware and the like that I didn’t want to deal with so we used an estate sale service that had handled my wife’s parents’ house downsizing. The service came in and arranged everything in the house and garage, and then conducted the sale while we were away for a couple of weeks (the sale itself was over three days). They took a pretty good commission, but it was very nice to come back to a nearly empty house and a surprisingly large chunk of change. After a couple of trips to Goodwill and filling up a dumpster, the house was ready to be put on the market very quickly.

We think this particular seller has a group of regular buyers who have their own second-hand shops and/or eBay businesses. As I’ve grown older, I’ve discovered that my time has a price as well – I’d definitely do it again.