How to pick an estate sale company when you need to do an estate sale? We are going to explain how to pick an estate sale company to help when you need to do an estate sale.

Since we specialize in working with probate and trust sales, oftentimes we have families that have either inherited a house full of stuff they need to sell. Oh my gosh, it can be so overwhelming. Or couples that have raised their family lived in the house for years, and now it’s time to downsize so they need to get rid of a lot of stuff.

What we’ve definitely found is that there’s no one size fits all, so we have options. There are typically four options that we think most people utilize. 

Option #1: is if you have a lot of things you want to sell and you think there’s some value, but you really don’t want people coming in your house and doing an actual estate sale on the site, so we recommend two antique dealers. One has a store downtown San Jose. You can bring your items there and he’ll give you a price, buy them from you and you’re done. The other guy will actually come to your house and assess the items. Both will also consider looking at pictures first to see if the items are worth everyone’s time to consider selling. 

Now, if you need to do a full estate sale, we have a couple of recommendations. 

Option #2: Let’s say you still live in the house and you’re fine with doing a lot of the legwork but you just don’t know where to start. You need some structure around how to make this happen. We recommend bringing in a professional organizer. They’re Fantastic. Cut Down your workload so much you won’t even believe it.

They’ll come in, view rooms, look at closets and they’ll just know how to start categorizing, organizing and help you prep for the estate sale. The pro about this is that you pay an hourly fee to this person, so you can control how much you spend. The con is that you still have a lot of work to do.

Here’s a good article about the kind of work professional organizers do on a regular basis: Professional Organizers Productivity

You have to do all the advertising for the actual sale date, meaning putting ads on Craigslist, Facebook and putting up sandwich board, poster signs on corners in your neighborhood. You’re welcome to use our open house signs and put a poster on it.

Then you have to be there for the actual day of the estate sale, get everything out in the driveway or have it organized in your house, so it’s a lot of legwork. But the other pro is that you keep most of the profit. You just pay an hourly fee to the professional organizer.

Option #3: Let’s say, you live out of state, you’re like, “Annie, I’m not taking any vacation time to do all this. Can you just bring in an actual estate sale company that will handle from A to Z?” We’ve got a company that we like to work with. They’re great. This is all they do.

They’ll come in, organize it all, price things, label things. They’ll have it ready for the actual sale date, then they do all the advertising for you. They have their own website that they have a big following. They will do the Facebook ads, Craigslist, all that stuff. They’ll put up signs. On the day of the sale, they’re there, they’re haggling trying to get you the highest price.

The pro is that they handle it all. It’s fantastic. The con is that their fees can be high, somewhere in upwards of $3,000 to set it all up, do all the advertising, and then they take a percentage of the profits too, so typically around 30%. The cost can be high, so you need to make sure you have a lot of stuff that needs to go and it’s going to be worth everyone’s while.

One company we recommend in the Silicon Valley Area is www.CaringTransitions.com

Option #4 is having an online auction. This has quickly become one of our favorites and our clients’ favorites. They’re all around North America, but what they do is they send you videos telling you, explaining to you how to kind of set it up before they get on site.

The online company has people the day to take pictures and descriptions, and then on the day of the pickup. They also send a crew back. They facilitate everything and they’re so well organized. It’s great. What’s the benefit of this? They do a lot of leg work. Most of the leg work I would even say, and they do all the advertising.

They charge on average around $700 to do all of this. All the advertising, the online website that people coming in and taking all the pictures and descriptions and paying for the people to be back on the day of pickup. It’s typically around $700, and then they take 30% of the profit.

When you work with us. And you’re having us sell the house, we cover their fee, so you get 70% of all profit. That can be a win-win for a lot of people. The company we use is https://maxsold.com

We are here to help you and we know it’s an overwhelming time. Whether you’re the one living in the house and it’s time to do this estate sale and find the right company to help you with your estate sale. Or if you have inherited the property or not living in it. And you just need to get things out, we would love to help you.

We hope that the information has helped make it a little bit easier.