Don't give everything away!
I've recently received calls from people interested in hiring us to do estate sales for them and they have already donated all of the small stuff. They "got it out of the way"....My response is " Great, have charity come and pick up the furniture because the small stuff is critical to have at a sale, if you want to pay your costs and make a profit!"
People are shocked to learn that the stuff they donated to charity would sell at an estate sale...I am flummoxed by this lack of common sense. I have been doing this job for 27 years, have written miles of blog posts on it, and aided by AI, even more, and people still don't investigate the how and why of what they are doing, before they do it. Hey, it sells at Goodwill why wouldn't it sell at the estate sale? They have done unnecessary work that was counterproductive to their desired result.
We set up, sell and clean out after the sale. We do not want our clients to do the decision making for us, or telling us how to do our job. We are here to do that for them.
The philopsophy is "Take out what you love and leave the rest behind". We at EstateMAX are the ones to say what is trash and what is treasure. I have salvaged countless numbers of salable and in fact, some very valuable items from homes, that otherwise would have ended up in the dumpster or at Goodwill, if the family or friends had handled the project.
We do not come into a home at an interview and tell the prospective client what items are "worth". We evaluate and assign pricing in the context of setting up the estate sale, after we have the contract. And what items are "worth" is relative. That is the meat of another blog post.
On the other hand, EstateMax appreciates holding sales in "clean" homes. A clean home to me, is one in which the food cupboards have been cleaned out, dirty closets packed up of duplicate clothing, clothes washed, basements swept, old cardboard removed, old non working appliances picked up, personal papers and photos extracted, mouse excrement swept up, vermin eaten items have been taken away, etc.
If it's not done, we will do that for the estate or the downsizing client, in preparation for the estate sale, and after the sale is over. What is needed depends on the layout of the home, how much stuff there is, where the problem lies, how much of a problem it is, from a health and safety perspective. Of course there is a cost to it. There is a cost to everything in life. Getting the house emptied one way or the other is the goal. Making money from the contents is the variable. In most cases we do both. Either way, holding an estate sale is the way to offset the cost of clean out.
So, leave it all there if you don't want to deal with it and call us. Don't try and become an expert on what is and what is not salable or valuable. Save your time and effort, focus on what you do in life and leave it to the people with the expertise. 27 years later, we are still at it, and have learned how to separate the wheat from the chaff efficiently.
Call us for your complimentary consultation today.
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