My mom has agreed that it's time to move into AL and will be moving next week. She has A LOT of stuff in her home that I will need to liquidate in the coming months. We have already divided what family wants to keep. Since I live out of state and will have to manage all of this on my own I was considering an estate sale.
Does anyone have experience with that? I know it's not the most economical but perhaps the most convenient. The money will go towards her AL.
We hired a woman who specialized in my parents' area. She brought in her people five days before the sale and they staged everything, priced it, and had everything ready to go, including garden and garage items. She also has an email list of 1,500 people, didn't dicker on pricing, and had the whole thing running like a top.
We ended up with 500 people going through the sale in one day and made $17,000 before her 32% commission (which was worth every penny). She also had a hauler come in who cleared out what didn't sell (a lot of it, sadly) for $1600.
Two days after that, the Realtor's contractors came in and started sprucing up the house. It sold about three days after it went on the market, and we walked away having made a tidy profit.
Did you pay that or did the hauler pay you? I know there are some who will pay for items in bulk.
I don't think I would pay someone to haul the leftovers. In our area there are charities who will pick up leftovers free as a donation to them. Goodwill, Habitat for Humanity - Restore, His House, etc.
I think it's good plan. Make sure ALL the stuff family might want pulled out and actually moved off the premises before the sale. We lost a lot of stuff when we moved mom & dad. And the yard sale we staged? Garnered us less than $500 and this was 3000 sf home, packed to the gills with stuff. It just wasn't valuable stuff.
We found an estate guy who sold all contents and hauled the rest off. I believe he took 35% of the sales. Ask around, different companies will have different policies.