If you need to clear out many of your belongings due to downsizing your home, a divorce, moving to another country or if you’re clearing out the belongings of a loved one who has passed away, you need to hold an estate sale. An estate sale is different than a garage sale, where fewer items are cleared out for very low prices. You can hold a traditional estate sale or an online estate sale to liquidate many items at once. Learn more about what’s involved with each kind of sale to decide which is right for you.
Traditional Estate Sale
Traditional estate sales are time consuming and often require the help of a professional company. When you work with an estate sale company, they take a portion of the proceeds as payment for handling the sale for you. They often charge up to 35 percent. The sale will typically take place over the course of several days. Some companies price your items at a flat fee and others auction them off. Make sure to ask what tasks they do and do not handle prior to hiring a company, so you have an idea of the work that may be left for you to do.
You can hold an estate sale on your own but be prepared to do a lot of research and work. You will have to go through every item, research the fair market value and price it all. If you are hiring people to work the sale, you will need to coordinate their schedules and train them on what you would like them to do during the sale. Advertise your estate sale online everywhere you can. Some good places to advertise are through social media, Craig’s list, estatesales.net and estatesales.org.
Online Estate Sale
Online estate sales are gaining popularity because of the popularity of online shopping and the convenience of handing your items over to a company and having them handle all the pricing, marketing and shipping.
A popular online estate sale site is Everything But The House. To hold an estate sale with them, you first have a phone consultation with one of their customer service reps. They offer services from select pick-up to complete home clean outs. They handle the assessment, marketing, photographing and shipping of all your items and send the proceeds to you.
They hold your items up for auction online. They promise more revenue than traditional alternatives, because their reach extends further than a traditional estate sale and the auctions last longer. Online estate sales also charge commissions. Everything But The House has a sliding scale of commissions based on the price of each item, from 15 to 50 percent of the final bid on each item.
Which Sale Is Right for You?
You must decide how much work you want to put into your estate sale and what your comfort level is with either a traditional or online estate sale. You may feel it’s worth it to pay a company to come in and liquidate everything. Maybe you like the control and savings of doing everything yourself. Though online sales are new and shiny, there are still many devoted estate sale lovers out there looking for traditional sales.
Looking for real estate services or an estate sale referral in Gainesville, Haymarket or Bristow? Contact your local real estate expert Belinda Jacobson-Loehle of Jacobson Realty and Home Staging today. Also be sure to sign up now for a FREE copy of my eBook, “The Real Estate Key – What You Need to Know!”
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