After talking to several estate sale companies, we decided the traditional route wouldn't work for us, not enough antiques (can you say none?  our tastes lend to comtemporary furniture and decor styles), finding one who was willing but after their "minimum" we might only make 1-2K in total and would need to be out of our house for 2 weeks, we finally found a company that offers online estate sales through an auction process.  Our consultant will do 2 auctions for us, one to empty the house of items we need to get rid of to "stage" the house to sell and then another after we have a contract but before closing to get rid of the rest of the furniture.

Has anyone tried the online estate auctions?  Any advice, feedback, "gotchas" to watch for?  We're thinking that this is a better way to go for us but just thought we'd see if anyone else had experience with this.

Thanks

The only comment I have is in this economy it's tough to sell anything online. Take a look at Ebay and other auction sites, note how many items similar to yours are listed and have zero bids. Even collectibles sit for the entire auction period with no bids.

In our area which hasn't been hit as hard as others, we have furniture, gift and antique stores going out of business. One building on a main street has had 3 separate furniture stores go in and out with in the last 2 years.

I would go the traditional estate sale route using a local professional. There is a new show on cable called Cash & Cari... Cari is a professional auctioneer with her own auction and re-purposing business. On the show she conducts estate sales. I have watched three separate sales all had antiques and collectibles (lots of them) plus modern/contemporary items. Those sales she was able to net an average of $6500 for each family during the 3 day estate sale. If she gets a typical commission that means the family pocketed about $5000. Without antiques your 1 to 2K might be all you can expect.

Alternative....donate the items. Check with your tax person, you may be able to get a write off to reduce your taxes by 1-2K or more.

We tried something a little different and it worked well for us.  We had a friend who has a business assisting folks with their garage/house/rummage/moving sales.  She came in and organized and priced everything, turning our entire house into a showroom.  She knew what items to put in what rooms so they wouldn't be stolen by the dishonest folks and organized the collection of the money.  Her pricing was accurate - she knew what prices would attract buyers.  We hired one person and had other friends stationed in each room as "salespeople". We wound up cleaning out the house and even selling one of our cars in just 2 days.  We donated what was left to the Salvation Army.

teaberryeagle,

To make things simpler for you, in the upper right corner of each post ares some buttons, one of which is labeled as "More."  When that button is clicked upon, a drop-down menu appears with "Edit Post" being an option.

If you want to add things to a post, one can click on edit and be taken back into the "window" where one enters one's information.  Then when done "editing," one can click on "Submit Post" and your new data will be added to the previous entry.  I'm not sure how long after a post has been done that one can still edit, so if it doesn't show up with the edit option, then you would need to do a subsequent post.

With regards to two of your previous posts, as a moderator, I deleted them as they were exact duplicated information as is in your later posts.

Terry