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Monday, July 29, 2019

Why did I get turned down from an Estate Sale Company?

Busy Bee Moving Sales - https://www.busybeemovingsales.com 615-864-8991 - Estate Sales Professionals in Nashville, Tn.

After 7 years of being in the business we have learned a few tips on what not to do before calling an estate sale company.  You have just gotten a contract on your home and desperately need to purge, give, sell and downsize before moving to your new home.  It is difficult to restrain yourself from hauling everything in the garage, attic and cluttered areas of the home to charities so you can get down to the furniture and big stuff and you're thinking of calling in an expert to do it only to find they will not take your sale. 

I just now returned from a potential client that was saddened by my confirmation that indeed she had gotten rid of too much for us to devote a week to liquidating her leftovers.  People are often surprised when I tell them that furniture is the hardest item to sell.  My observation is that the resources for reselling furniture has become so easy on social networking sites such as Face Book Marketplace, Letgo, and others have now made it the first place buyers look for used furniture, making it very difficult for those of us that resell even more difficult. 

So how do we avoid sabotaging our sale in order to liquidate those larger hard to sell items?  Estate and moving sale companies will come out and do a walk through and look for 3 things: Value, Volume and Variety. 
Value: We went to preview a sale last week in a great area.  The home was large and clean as a pin and filled in every room with furniture and furnishings.  As we were given the tour, I noted the furniture being the difficult era to sell, glassware that had been leftover after the family had removed the best pieces and overall an appearance of picked over items in every room.  I commented on a few nicer pieces and was told that one was earmarked for the maid or friend.  I spotted 3 signed Salvadore Dali prints on the wall and felt a sigh of relief only to be told those were not part of the sale.  As we continued our tour I mentioned the jewelry on the table and told again, that was going to be sold elsewhere as well as the coin collection piled up in the garage.  I had to tell her the truth.  I could have looked at my calendar and simply said, "It looks as though we can't fit you in on that date."  But I felt she needed to hear the truth, after all, they were expecting to have a company pay a crew for a week to set up, advertise, park, and conduct a sale on items that are notoriously leftover after a garage sale.  They had variety and volume but no value left.  The result would be that buyers would preview the pictures, not see any interesting items and choose one of the other 20 estate sales or 100 garage sales that day to go to rather than ours.  Without attracting the foot traffic, those hard to sell items wouldn't have a chance.