Just wanted to see any experience forum members could share with me...
My mom just passed away after a fairly long couple years of slowly failing health and onset of dementia. Had managed to keep her at home, and well taken care of, and I am the only survivor of the family. I am now the inheritor of her home, debt free, and all her possessions, 99% of which I really don’t have room for, or need. Some of her things are very nice, she was fond of crystal, brass, and lots of knickknacks.
I will be going thru her home, and choosing things I want to keep, but there are so many items, I don’t have the energy or time to spend selling them one or two at a time.
I have been told that an auction is one choice, and an estate sale another. Anybody have any experience with either? Which would be in my best interest, and easier for me? I think some of her things could be fairly valuable, but I am not an expert. I plan on selling the home too, as I don’t care for the location or layout either. Would an estate sale also be able to sell the house, or would that have to be done separately? Thanks in advance!

At an estate sale the person running the sale prices the goods. There is a risk that they will not know the value of something and price it too low, or know it's value but price it low for one of their buddies to buy. At the end of the sale you may have stuff left over to deal with.

At an auction the buyers price the goods. This can work in your favor or against, but it is in the best interest if the auctioneer to sell items for the highest price they will bring. People also tend to pay more than they may ordinarily due to the competition. Good thing about an auction is that they will generally sell everything, even if it's for $1.00. Very little clean up afterwords.

Here in the St. Louis area there are both estate sale companies and auctioneers that also have their real estate license. I would likely use an independent agent instead.

There is a couple of women here who will hold a garage sale/estate sale. They take care of every detail. They want freedom to sell items not be tightly bound by your minimums. They are very thorough and apparently very good at getting rid of everything, for a fee.

They had done a couple of sales that my mom knew about and strongly suggested that we do that for her stuff. We went through everything, took what we wanted, family heirlooms stuff, etc., and they did the rest. We trusted them, and they were trustworthy.

Maybe you can find something like that. Painless, effective, trouble free.

One of my friends had great success with ebth.com

Adios,

Pizza Bob

I am weighing the same options right now. I’ve already been told some of the furniture is either antique or collectible(?)....something about being post-modern. Anyway, I am going to try to sell the ‘desirable’ stuff off to individuals then the rest gets auctioned/donated/estate saled.

And you have my condolences.

Problem is the huge commission that will be charged. You get 40 to 60 percent of gross if you farm it out.

When I handled my uncles estate I let it all go, house and contents, at auction. Easiest way by far but they kept 40% of the content sales IIRC.

When doing my dads we had a two weekend estate yard sale, done by my Sister and I mostly. Anything left was trashed or donated. Much more time and work involved but I had plenty of help, we got all the proceeds.

3 day "Estate" sales have gotten popular here. You hire a company to handle it all. The one I researched priced and sold the stuff in place. They discount it progressively as time goes by, roughly like 100% of marked price Friday, 75% Sat morning, 50% off Sat afternoon. Make an offer Sunday... They got 60% of sales. They dispose of any leftovers. You probably have some input on pricing.

Also see some companies now do the personal property sales completely online and also keep ~60%.

There is an outfit here that has a deal where they do a Saturday estate sale (where the prices are kind of high IMO), then anything left is half-price on Sunday morning and then Sunday afternoon whatever is left goes up for auction. After the auction there's nothing left but hair and feathers. From what I have observed the system works pretty well. Maybe there's someone in your area that offers a similar service.

In my area I believe estate auction comissions range from 25% to 35%. A lot of it depends on if it is general house stuff, which brings lower crowds. Antiques mixed in with good quality auctions draw larger crowds. Big equipment draws a lot of people. General household stuff can be sold as box lots and brings less money.

If you are thinking about trying to handle it yourself, it will take a LOT of time.

quote:

Originally posted by cparktd:
Problem is the huge commission that will be charged. You get 40 to 60 percent of gross if you farm it out.

The other problem is how much is your time and effort worth to squeeze out the "full value" (whatever that is) for each item in the house?

We're facing the need to unload my in-laws house after my FIL passes away so we're also looking at the various options. So far my cost-benefit analysis consistently indicates that giving somebody 40% or even 60% to make it all go away is a bargain in our case. And getting 40-60% of the value of the items and not do any work? That's more money than my wife had the previous weekend, the house is empty and our time still belongs to us. Winning x 3.

Not trying to be callous, but my time is more valuable than trying to squeeze a few extra dollars out of dusty knick-knacks and used furniture over weeks and months.

I have settled the estates for my father and a cousin. In both cases I used an auction company to sell the things the family didn’t want. I would suggest consulting with several such companies to see what their commission is and pick the one that you feel will do the best for you. Their reputation will also draw buyers to the sale, which increases the final numbers.

The Auction companies also know what current values are, so their experience is a plus. “Estate sales” are glorified yard sales IMO, and are not likely to get the best return when compared to an auction. Having the auction at the house, if the location isn’t too far out, is also good for the bottom line. If everything must be moved to the auction house there are costs involved.

As far as selling the house, it can be sold by the auctioneer or it can go through a realtor. Again, it depends on condition and location.

Pay attention to details in the contract.

My brother offloaded all thought on this topic to his vendor, and he ended up owing the vendor for 'expenses' after the auction of my dad's effects, and netted negative. That's right - a house full of stuff got sold, and the estate got less than zero.

Yes, he was an idiot. But the main point is that there are situations/vendors out there that bear close examination.

Be especially careful about outfits that sell larger stuff on consignment. Furniture, refrigerators, washing machines.

They take in your stuff, sell it and pay you the agreed split, unless they don’t. You never know when they sell something, and unless you can see it every week or so on display, it can be gone without you knowing it, and no money.

When my Dad passed away I needed to dispose of his household, everything from tools to antiques. I started by going to antique shops and asking ??. I got references and interviewed some Estate Sale folks.

The couple we hired said that it wasn't going to net much but that they would take it on. They took items to experts to help pricing and had knowledgeable people help on sales day. The end result amazed them, much more than they thought. I attributed it to their skills and having chosen the right folks to help.

The best part was it was over in two days. On Sunday they came to settle up and brought along a young lady that bought the last remaining set of older dishes. We had little of value lest, donated most of it.

eBay the obviously valuable stuff like crystal, silver, and mid century modern furniture. You'll get the highest return and lowest selling cost for these things.

Then hire someone to sort out the rest.

quote:

Originally posted by a1abdj:
At an estate sale the person running the sale prices the goods. There is a risk that they will not know the value of something and price it too low, or know it's value but price it low for one of their buddies to buy. At the end of the sale you may have stuff left over to deal with.

At an auction the buyers price the goods. This can work in your favor or against, but it is in the best interest if the auctioneer to sell items for the highest price they will bring. People also tend to pay more than they may ordinarily due to the competition. Good thing about an auction is that they will generally sell everything, even if it's for $1.00. Very little clean up afterwords.

I totally agree. You will probably do better on price on some items by selling them beforehand on ebay or craigslist, although that obviously requires some extra time, and you want to be careful because making a few extra dollars this way might mean that you're removing an item that would otherwise entice people to an auction or estate sale. I don't have any idea what the value of something like this might be, but say you had a Victorola, so you do some research and find it's worth X number of dollars and sell it separately. You're happy, but when it comes time to advertise the main event, how many people would that Victorola inspire to attend, and even if they didn't buy that in particular you'll never know how many other items they may have bid on. There's really no way of knowing how things will go, so you might want to talk with a local estate sale house and a local auction house and see who you'd prefer to deal with. It could be that easy to make a decision. And they all have their own "clientele" who follow them, so I'm sure they will tell you what kind of buyer's to expect.

I used Everything But The House to online auction my mother's estate and was very satisfied. Realized considerably more than an onsite auction would bring and they handled everything. Google ebth and see if they are in your area if you aren't familiar with them.

when my Father passed, we did a combo,

every thing my brother and I wanted to keep we put in the (detached) garage or in a room in the house,

we then did an estate sale on a Saturday,
good stuff inside (some rooms were sealed off, ) and nick nack yard sale stuff outside on tables,

had to have help, besides the 4 of us (wives helped out) )we had 3 others there, one running a till, and 2 to keep an eye out and help folks,

it was a long day,

we took what was left and hit the local flea market,
2 Saturdays about a month apart and only stayed till 11am or so, whatever junk was left over that day went to good will,


Brother divorced and is now living in the house, we use the shop for our business

X auction for the good stuff
X yard sale for the balance

do not! hire an estate sale company

if you do not want to have a yard sale ,on your own.

give the stuff to a small local charity , they will have the yard sale and get the benifit

Is there anyone you trust that can help you determine values? Perhaps there is an antique market near you who you could pay a marginal fee to help you select and price some items.

Everything else could just be auctioned/estate sold. For me it would come down to commissions/fees.

We found a middle way, when we had our estate sale for my Dad's house.
We first contacted an estate sale person, my sister knew. He was a little out of his normal territory, and he didn't see a large enough value for him and his people to drive further than normal. He would have charged 35%. He did offer up for a fee($350), to help us price the larger value items, and give us guidance on pricing the smaller stuff, and other details about otherwise administering an estate sale. We had a time constraint that precluded us from using another estate sale service at a later date.

We had enough manpower available to go ahead and go the alternative route and hold the sale ourselves. It was a ton of work, but we did have a very successful sale, approximately 20% better than the estate sales guy's original estimate. We were able to complete the sale on our time schedule, and a church related mission we support was having their annual sale and was able to pickup the leftovers at the end.

If you have the time and manpower, I'll bet you can find someone who could help you price for a do it yourself effort. It was a big effort for our family, we were able-lucky to make it happen. Otherwise we would probably go the pro route and let them deal with the headaches for their 35%.