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

Busy Bee Moving and Estate Sales -

 https://www.busybeemovingsales.com 615-569-4734 - Estate Sales Professionals in Nashville, Tn.

What do estate sales companies look for?

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. 

What do I do before the Estate Sale Company arrives?

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. 

What Does the Estate Sale Company do in the Walk Through?

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:

Estate and Moving Sale Companies will look for 3 things before agreeing to conduct you sale:

1. Value  
2. Volume 
3. Variety

 1. Value:

 Even if you have a great amount of items to liquidate there may not be enough value in the items to merit an estate sale company to devote an entire staff and week to clean, organize and conduct your estate sale. Honest and trained estate sale staff is expensive so estate sale businesses must be selective when choosing commission only liquidation jobs. You may negotiate the average 35% commission with the company if value is a concern or the trash and junk removal is a factor in the labor cost.

2. Volume:

If the family has taken too much, given away or purged too much in the liquidating of the estate, an estate sale company will not be able to conduct your sale.  Shoppers will often preview the vast amount of moving and estate sales nearby and only go to the ones with more volume.  Families often throw away garage sale type items they think are too inexpensive for an estate sale when those items will accumulate a good amount of the revenue of the sale.

3. Variety:

Another thing Estate Sale Companies will look for in a walkthrough is variety. An example of the variety they look for are books, clothing, nick-nacks, furniture, kitchenware, cookware, jewelry, tools, collectibles, clothing, decor, antiques and everyday household items such as cleaning, linens, gardening and even unopened pantry and toiletry items. Wait until the estate or moving sale is over until you donate these items as a variety will attract more buyers to your sale and save you time and effort in hauling things away.

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.