When Is An Estate Sale Not Worth The Trouble?

[Moemg]

I would have a garage sale for the tools .That way it would only be in the garage and would attract a lot of men who love to buy tools . Since you know ebay I would sell the valuable small stuff that way . The clock I would list on craig's list .
When my mother passed we gave away tons to her friends in the Independent living facility .We took some small items . The rest we gave to Goodwill .The Furniture we paid to get rid of . It was not worth anything .The most valuable thing was her lift chair which was brand new . Her friend was thrilled to get it .

[bingybear]

We moved DMIL into aging housing and sold off most stuff we had 6 auctions in 6 months. The auctioneers did spend a lot of time on things that had little return.

A lot of stuff DMIL thought was work a lot... wasn't worth much. People's desires change over time. Expensive to purchase furniture may not be in style and may bring little.

Fine china may not be any more. My parents and grandparents likely got a set at marriage. Now there is less formal meals and not everyone needs/want formal dishes. So selling a nice set for good money may be difficult.

Now my MIL's auctions did net a good amount, but a small amount compared to what they paid for all the stuff. The did have a pretty complete machine shop.

Looking back I would wonder if the tag sales may be better.

[daylatedollarshort]

I have never held an estate sale but have gone to quite a few and haven't been impressed by too many of the estate sale companies. Some seemed clueless and priced everything way too low, like they could not be bothered to look the prices up on eBay. Others priced everything suspiciously high and nothing was selling. Of course neither type of company would want the owners on site.

I asked the high priced people what they did with items that did not sell. They had junk dealers come in and buy what was left for one price for the entire house contents. It was pretty clear that some were in cahoots with the junk dealers by marking up everything too high to sell to the estate sale shoppers then selling the junk dealers the entire household contents for $1K or so and getting a cut of the proceeds or some kind of kickback.

If you use an estate sales company I would go to some of their sales and look up a sampling of items they have priced on eBay or Craigslist to verify if their pricing is reasonable, and maybe even try to negotiate on an item or two and see how they do. Pricing way too high or too low might be a clue something is off. The thrift stores in our area use eBay as a general guide for pricing, or a starting price of about 30% of retail for items in good condition.


Specialty items like astronomy telescopes or a kayak are probably going to get a better prices on Craigslist or eBay with targeted shoppers than they are on in a generic estate sale.

[bingybear]

Our estate auction was an online auction, but pick up was at the property.

[Katsmeow]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Midpack We just wanted to get something for all the stuff, don't really care how much - just figured it was better than throwing everything away. I have no illusions of getting anywhere near what I might think everything is worth. And the estate sale websites I've looked at in parents home town all say they will sell everything to the walls and leave the place broom clean. They donate or dispose of everything else. That was some of the appeal, so if that's not part of the deal that alone might make us skip an estate sale.

This is a very timely topic for me. I am planning to call an estate sale company (recommended by my realtor) tomorrow about my mom's stuff.

I honestly don't understand why anyone would throw out or donate stuff if they could sell it in a timely way with an estate sale. Something is better than nothing. That is -- pennies on the dollar are better than no pennies at all.

Now the one thing that would stop me doing it would be if it was going to cause an inordinate delay as we want to list the house for sale. So if they tell us it will be 2 months before this can happen then I won't do it.

I did spend quite a bit of time going through my mom's house and removing sentimental items that I wanted to keep. That has been done.

Most of my mom's stuff is typical garage sale stuff and I am sure would be sold as such. It is worth the estate company's fee just to have them do it.

She does have a doll collection but it is not super valuable. I could sell it on eBay if I wanted to and would clear more money. But, there would be my time and effort involved.

There are a few other things that we might sell on eBay.

But, the main draw of an estate sale is that they do the work and I am willing to pay them to do it.

However, in her case, there is no way what she had is worth $50k. It probably isn't worth a tenth of that. So it is very possible that an estate company won't want to do a sale. If so, then I probably will take the most valuable stuff and sell it on eBay. I might do a 1 day garage sale for the household stuff. Whatever sold would be something and would help clear out the house. The house is on a busy street so should get a fair amount of traffic.

If I did that then, I would probably call 1-80-got-junk to dispose of anything else that I didn't want to take to sell on Ebay.

If the estate sale company will do it, I don't see that it will require work for me. So, I will do it IF the timing works out OK. I think an auction might be good for houses that have some real valuables but hers really doesn't.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jcretire77 My issue is what to do with the condo which needs major upgrades to make is sellable. Carpet, Kitchen remodel. Has anyone used a "We Buy Houses" type business that buys it for lower then market value, does the fixes and then sells it?

The problem is most of the discount stuff so much that it is not worthwhile. In most cases I think you could sell it as is for more through traditional means.

My mom's house is very outdated. She never updated her kitchen in 70 years (she replaced her oven as needed -- house does not have a dishwasher). I am not doing anything on cosmetic stuff. I am only doing a couple of major functional things. I am getting a new roof and a foundation repair. I will need to replace some vinyl flooring when I do the foundation repair.

I am not going to update her kitchen or get new carpet, etc. My real estate agent feels that buyers will want to do those things themselves and it isn't worth doing. However, they will want to have a repaired foundation and a good roof. I think doing it this way I will net more money than my other options. The only negative is I have to be willing to front the money for the roof and foundation work. However, I think I will net more money doing it this way because a buyer will take off more for the repairs than what it will cost me to just do them.

[Teacher Terry]

Kat, yes people want to pick the finishes in a house. For instance we hate carpet so even if new we rip it out before moving in. Structural fixes are another story.

[Katsmeow]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Teacher Terry Kat, yes people want to pick the finishes in a house. For instance we hate carpet so even if new we rip it out before moving in. Structural fixes are another story.

That is what my agent said. My mom's house is not a high value house and is over 70 years old and is very small. But it is a good entry level house for people who work downtown (less than 10 minutes away) and houses usually sell very quickly. I want to make it where someone could just move in and then remodel later on.

[audreyh1]

Dad has several sets of china - his mother's heirloom, my parent's wedding china. I have no idea what we will ever do with that stuff......

[davebarnes]

Quote:

Originally Posted by audreyh1 Dad has several sets of china - his mother's heirloom, my parent's wedding china. I have no idea what we will ever do with that stuff......

https://www.thebagster.com

[Katsmeow]

Quote:

Originally Posted by davebarnes https://www.thebagster.com

That seems really expensive as compared to 1-800-Got-Junk. And, they do all the work.

As far as the china question I think there probably are places to sell it although not at high value for most. I did a little eBay research on my mom's stuff. Some of it has no value. But, she has the original Desert Rose set which tends to be more valuable than later sets. Also, the place settings are the least valuable part. She had a lot of the serving pieces which have more value. If we don't end up doing an estate sale I will probably find a way to sell this.

[RobbieB]

Quote:

Originally Posted by HNL Bill Yes, and even 150-year old china from Europe typically isn't worth anything, nor is silver plated flatware. Pretty sad when you consider the cost. Electronics when near-new are maybe worth 20-30% of original value, if you're lucky.

If it can't go in the dishwasher, I ain't buyin' it.

Silverware? Yeah, after I hire a maid to clean and polish it. Real silver? Melt value.

[Mr._Graybeard]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Katsmeow That seems really expensive as compared to 1-800-Got-Junk. And, they do all the work. As far as the china question I think there probably are places to sell it although not at high value for most. I did a little eBay research on my mom's stuff. Some of it has no value. But, she has the original Desert Rose set which tends to be more valuable than later sets. Also, the place settings are the least valuable part. She had a lot of the serving pieces which have more value. If we don't end up doing an estate sale I will probably find a way to sell this.

Replacements Ltd. buys some china -- you might contact them. https://www.replacements.com/services.htm

[Jerry1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by audreyh1 Dad has several sets of china - his mother's heirloom, my parent's wedding china. I have no idea what we will ever do with that stuff......

Greek wedding supplier?

[mountainsoft]

My mom had a stroke in 2017 and moved to an assisted living. So we had to clear out her stuff so we could sell her house. She lived in a very rural area hours away from us, so arranging any kind of estate or garage sale was out of the question.

A large portion of the house contents was just garbage, not even worth taking to Goodwill. The county dump was just a mile from her house and had really cheap rates so we just carted several trailer loads to the dump ourselves.

We hauled her better pieces of furniture back to our house and stored them in our garage. I sold a few items on Craigslist, and got maybe $500 total. We took the items that didn't sell to Goodwill.

She had a nice upright piano that was too big for us to move. My wife would have enjoyed it, but we didn't have room for it. I didn't have any luck selling it, and even had a difficult time finding someone to take it for free.

About the only other item we sold was her nearly new riding mower. Got a few hundred for that. I kept a few of the smaller tools she had, everything else went to Goodwill.

Locating the sentimental items like photos and documents was more important than any of the physical belongings.

The process was really complicated by the distance, and it was lot of work, but eventually we got the house emptied and cleaned up so we could sell it.

[Katsmeow]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainsoft Locating the sentimental items like photos and documents was more important than any of the physical belongings.

Going back to Midpack's original question -- When is an Estate Sale Not Worth The Trouble? -- this is one reason why I think in most cases the estate sale is worth the trouble.

That is, the main work is going through the property in the house and you have to do that whether you have the estate sale or not. We went through everything in my mom's house because we didn't know where we might find something valuable or important. A couple of months before she died while she was in the hospital my mom told us about where she had hidden cash in her house. If she hadn't told me that was the kind of thing I would have found only if I went through everything.

I also found some important/sentimental things in places where I wouldn't have expected to find them if I hadn't gone through everything.

That took a long time. But -- even if we decided to discard everything in the house we would have needed to do that.

I don't think that doing an estate sale will add much work for me beyond what I have already done. (Although it in my case there may not be enough valuable to make it possible or it may take too long to make it practical).

[Sunset]

I used to work in social services, and can recommend you phone a few places to see if they are interested in a donation.
I used to set up residences for folks, so we would happily collect kitchen type stuff (pots, utensils, dishes, etc).
If you can find the phone numbers for local services for mentally retarded, mentally ill, women's shelters, etc, they may be happy to help empty part of a house.

[Just_Steve]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunset I used to work in social services, and can recommend you phone a few places to see if they are interested in a donation. I used to set up residences for folks, so we would happily collect kitchen type stuff (pots, utensils, dishes, etc). If you can find the phone numbers for local services for mentally retarded, mentally ill, women's shelters, etc, they may be happy to help empty part of a house.

Close this thread.........We have a winner.

[Midpack]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunset If you can find the phone numbers for local services for mentally retarded, mentally ill, women's shelters, etc, they may be happy to help empty part of a house.

+1. When we did our kitchen remodel, all 4 of our kitchen appliances were in good working order and condition, and they all went to local group homes. I put them in the garage and they picked them up, easy peasy.

[John Galt III]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunset Folks are often surprised at the low value things will fetch. I know I was when we had an auction company come. They cherry picked the absolute best things to auction, leaving behind lots of china, silverware, etc. The website had the auction, and the selling price was often 10% of the "value" at best, often just 5%. Literally, it works out to pennies on the dollar in the end.

My Dad paid a local craftsman to hand-make a beautiful coffee table out of a cherry tree that had been cut down in his neighborhood. Paid the craftsman $2,500 for one stupid (but exquisite, I admit) wooden coffee table. But I can't imagine a price tag of more than $95 on it in a Goodwill store. Maybe $495 in a real furniture store.

[Car-Guy]

I was the executor of an estate that included a house that none of the heirs wanted. It was in a modest neighborhood (home values ~$125 to $150k) but this house need a lot of work. It was also a ~3 hour drive for me to get there so it was not really close by. I've sold homes before and really didn't want to mess with that again for so little money. I thought of donating or even "abandoning it". I finally called the Salvation army and they took all the clothing and most of the furniture and household goods. That took me one phone call and two trips for that to happen. Next I called "ugly houses". That was another trip to meet the appraiser. After looking over the house for about an hour, he offered me about 1/2 of the average home value in the area "on the spot". I couldn't sign fast enough since I was willing to take far less than that. (He didn't know that) Plus, they came to me for the closing about a month later.