Tomorrow, you might be the one that is chosen to handle doing an Estate Sale for someone that either passed or they need to downsize.
This could be anyone, friend, parent, relative or even as an Estate Administrator. What if the house is in Florida and you live in Illinois?
Even if you are local to the house, can you afford to take the time off of work to handle all the details?
This is why we get calls to do sales for other poeple.
The DIY approach can have problems, the following article will point out pros and cons.
Underpricing:
We read stories all the time where someone buys an item either at a garage sale or an estate sale and they pick it up for a few dollars and then later find out that is a highly valued piece of art, or china. It happens all the time. Even items like record albums, some carry tremendous prices in the open market and then get resold for ten times the value when they purchased it.
Without the proper knowledge of some things, this can lead to a loss of revenue. Professionals can have the expertise you need in appraising items correctly to ensure fair prices.
Personal Story: The picture below was an item in an estate we were setting up. This carving was set to be sold at $25.00. It was in a corner of the lanai, behind a chair. It was covered in artificial greenery, and it had a set of the battery operated LED lights around it. You could barely see the carving.
After checking and cleaning it up, we had it appraised. The story behind this piece was that it was from the Black Forest in Germany, and was hand carved from wood there before the war. After the war it was banned from people taking wood from there to preserve the forest.
It was appraised for $2,000.00!
Nobody purchased it, so it sits untouched.
That’s some serious underpricing.
Overpricing:
Just the opposite. Some items may be priced much higher than the item has value. This many times comes from sentimental value or lack of market value. With the amount of different people that come to sales, some may walk right past what you might feel has value, but they shop these sales and mostly know what prices should range in.
Marketing:
If you just came from out of town, who do you advertise to? If you don’t have the ability to correctly advertise a sale so that estate buyers and the general public knows about it, you could end up with a very limited number of buyers.
There are buyers that look at many different online sites for sales near them, but how do you know which ones work? You don’t.
Many sale companies have an email list that they send out leads to about their upcoming sales, and they also may know right where to advertise online so that they won’t need to rely on just their signs that they put out in the neighborhood.
Sale companies also have social media followings in the area they hold sales in, which also helps their traffic, but if you don’t have a following, who is going to know about your sale?
Organization:
Estate Sale companies usually have the time to organize the complete house to appear as if it invites people to come in and look around. I have seen too many to mention that are being held that the proper care wasn’t used to organize whatever is in the house.
Maybe this doesn’t sound like a big deal as you are just selling everything you can, but difficult and disorganized or cluttered spaces turn people away from looking for something to purchase. If you had to go through a bunch of boxes stacked against the wall to see what’s in them, how long before you get tired of looking at Christmas decorations? Many of the possible buyers won’t do it either.
This leads to decreased buyer interest and lower sales.
Professional sale companies have the experience to stage and display items attractively which enhances their shopping experience.
Security:
Managing an estate sale involves handling large crowds of people at different times of the day. Some buyers show up even before the sale starts, I can’t tell you why, but they seems to want to be the first one in. And then after about an hour the crowd slows down, and then sometimes fifteen to twenty people show up all at once.
While you can’t figure out the buyer timing, if you don’t have enough people to staff the sale, there is a risk of theft or damage. If you get distracted to one room, someone might just walk out with that watch you have for sale that is expensive. We have even seen people pocket a small item thinking it won’t harm the sale.
Having enough staff around to monitor the sale can help eliminate items getting stolen or broken.
Emotional Stress:
If you are the one who has to handle a loved one’s passing, and then need to clear their possessions from their house, this can be a very emotional time for you.
This induces stress and sometimes emotional burnout. It also may lead to taking way too much time to set the sale up. As you are going through the persons personal collections and all of the other things that they needed to just live, you might have memories of too many things, and your time is valuable.
Which is why we advertise, “Take what you cherish and leave the rest to us”.
Not that we are unemotional about this. We are. But, you hired us to get the contents cleared out, and while we are working to set the sale up, we are also getting to know the person in how they lived and what they liked, we just have the job to do of arranging it so that the potential buyers that come through may also care enough about these items to continue enjoying them also.
You have the personal matters to worry about, let us handles the aspects of the sale of the contents, so you can get back to your life.
Time Consuming:
Planning, organizing, and running the sale requires a significant investment of time.
This can take you away from the legal responsibilities of settling the estate.
We do our job with the end in mind. We usually have a set timeframe and date by which the sale will occur, and we have seen too many times where people will slowly organize some of the items they would like to sell. Going through boxes of personal items for someone can also bring you down the road of, where did the time go?
If you haven’t ever had to clear out someone’s estate, think of the things you might need to do. If items need to be displayed, wouldn’t a table be a good thing to display it on. We bring tables and organize them in an attractive manner, clean the items that will go on them, and then we price them accordingly.
An investment in tables, tablecloths and pricing stickers may not be a large burden to you, but why have to buy them if we can already bring them?
CALL US TO SCHEDULE YOUR SALE, 727-487-1753
Limited Buyers:
I mentioned before that professional sale companies already have an email list, plus they have their “regular” buyers, and many times resellers. They also are familiar with current happenings in the area the sale will be in. What happens if you try to do a sale on Super Bowl weekend? Plus local community sales can take buyers away from your estate sale.
We work within these time frames, and make the best out of what is happening around us.
I also mentioned social media, in the area where the sale will be held, sale companies will know which social media many buyers are likely to see, look for the sales.
Organization and End of Sale:
The flow of a sale and how well it is organized attracts many browsing people to buy something anyway. We have been told that our sales are set up well, and our prices are good, but the main thing is that these items need to be sold for you to end up with a profit at the end of the sale.
What are you going to do with items that may not sell?
Again, this will take your time away from other responsibilities, and can cost some serious money if you have to hire someone to dispose or donate the not sold items. When we do your sale, this is arranged up front.
We donate useable items to many different helpful organizations. Some items they won’t want, so we do have to dispose of some things. Not very often we have too much left and we might do a “flash sale” and deeply discount items so they don’t end up being thrown away.
One last thing:
Many times the DIY person holding a sale is persistent about a price on an item. They either will not or don’t know how to negotiate with buyers. While we can be that way sometimes, to get something sold, talking through discounting something may end up with a sale.
Plus, sale companies have certain buyers that they know, which you may not have that luxury if you are from out of town, and many times their buyers are lookin for a good deal, so a little bit of negotiation can go a long way.
CALL US TODAY TO HOLD YOUR ESTATE SALE. 727-487-1753