I recently lost a relative, and we’ve been left with a whole house full of stuff. We’ll want some things, be we have to get rid of most of it. What is the best way, in this day and age? It was a good-sized middle-class household, so there’s lots of good stuff but not a lot of priceless antiques.
There are companies that do estate sales, and I’ve heard they can really move stuff, but of course they take a substantial commission. Selling some individual items on Ebay or Craigslist would get the best price, but of course that’s a lot of work. An addition to large items, there are hundreds, really thousands of items that might be worth 50 cents or a dollar. If we did a big sale and advertised on Craigslist, I’m not sure if we’d sell as much as if an estate liquidator would, with better advertising.
There’s also the question of determining the value of some items, if there is anything that might be rare or valuable. I don’t want to get ripped off on anything.
Does anyone have experience with this?
I’ve been to a lot of estate auctions, and those are the items that add up, especially if they’re presented correctly. Collections/collector’s items can be sold separately, for example. You’d be surprised what people collect. Even if your relative only has one of an item, maybe it’s the one that someone’s been searching for to fill their collection.
In my experience, it’s the large, ordinary items that go cheap – appliances, couches, recliner chairs, dining room sets, etc. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because people coming to auctions already have those things, or they don’t have a way to carry them home, or they’re worried about bugs (who knows?).
My husband’s mother was a widow who lived in a tiny (not stuffed) one-bedroom house. You’d look around and think she didn’t have much but her auction raised $3,000 after the auctioneer’s cut. The auctioneer and his staff did most of the work too, and that counts for a lot.
We had that problem last year. It was long distance to boot. We called a couple of antique/collectible people to look over the bric a brac for any unexpected treasures. There were a couple which went for $50/ea.
The rest we ended up selling en masse to an auction company. Didn’t get much for it, but it was gone. Trying to get best dollar for all the rest of the stuff would have required dozens to hundreds of hours work invested for maybe $2-3000 in gain. Didn’t make sense to us, especially being long distance.
Most condo complexes and many HOAs have restrictions on holding garage / tag sales. So that avenue was closed to us too. You should check that for your situation. Trying to eBay/craigslist would have been a multi-year project.
For most people, most of their stuff is fully depreciated well before they die. It might all still be 100% functional, but what it’ll sell for at Goodwill will barely pay the gas & labor for them to come pick it up.