We are considering selling our house and the majority of our possessions to start our full time RV lifestyle. Curious to hear from those that have done the same and how you sold most of your items? Piecemeal or through an estate sale company? Looks like they charge hefty commissions but if they can get more money, maybe it’s worth it?
LarryW21 said
07:22 PM Aug 22, 2019
Some are good, others stink. Ask their recent customers...ask for a list. Ask the tuff questions.
Julie and Ray said
05:59 PM Aug 23, 2019
We sold all our "stuff" via Ebay. It took about 2 years and was a LOT of work. But Ebay and PayPal only took about 13%, much lower than estate sale outfits.
Second Chance said
01:45 PM Aug 24, 2019
We had less than six weeks to accomplish "the purge" (house sold in five months less than predicted). We used a multi-faceted approach:
1) Called all the kids and said, "Come get what you want." 2) Had two garage sales (moderate success). 3) Gave several furniture items to Hispanic friends from the mission point where we were involved. 4) Donated leftovers to Goodwill and other charities. 5) Left a "starter kit" in climate controlled storage in case we have to come off the road unexpectedly. Some full-timers are against this and say you can repurchase the stored items for what you pay in storage fees.
We didn't consider an estate sale business as they take a significant cut and we didn't have that much that was worth selling.
Rob
-- Edited by Second Chance on Saturday 24th of August 2019 01:45:35 PM
Barb and Frank said
03:03 PM Aug 24, 2019
We lived in our home for more than 25 years and we worked for two years on downsizing. Over the two years we had multiple garage sales which were a lot of work, gave things to our children, threw out a lot of “stuff”, and donated the rest. We also sold some things online. We saved only our bedroom furniture and some personal things which are stored in our daughter’s basement. We never considered an estate sale - most things of value were passed on to our children.
Good luck as you work toward becoming a full timer!
Barb
Rickl said
05:27 PM Aug 24, 2019
We had 3 weeks to get rid of a 2800 sq ft house full of furniture and other items. We had two estate sales (which we did ourselves using only advertisement in Craig’s List and signs) in the beginning of December. It took only two weeks to clear out everything.
After researching actual Estate Sale companies listening to their spiel we decided to do it ourselves. First day they stated everything was full price (with the exception of The estate sale company’s employees - they got 30% off), the second day was 50% off the 1st day pricing (again the estate sale employees received 30% off), the final day was 20-25% off the original pricing. (Same discount for employees) Anything remaining was carted off to whomever they wanted.
We talked to 4 different companies and this was the same between all of them. PLUS, (this was the kicker for me) we could not be anywhere around our home during or after the sale. Didn’t give me a warm fuzzy feeling to say the least.
How did we move a 4 bedroom, 4 bath home full of items so quick - I inventoried each room, took us 6 pages, then the wife and myself sat down and priced each item. As people came into the house I handed them the inventory sheets which had them walk around the house clockwise. We sold 80% of our inventoried items the first day. With zero negotiations required. The price was the price. We sold the remaining items off the inventory sheets the second day.
The second weekend was all of the garage items. We only priced the large items and set up different tables that stated everything on the table was $XX. We used color dots to identify the specific $xx items.
Hopefully this will provide you some ideas to use. I wouldn’t use an Estate Sale company after listening to them. But then that’s just my opinion.
RonC said
11:29 AM Aug 25, 2019
Second Chance wrote:
We had less than six weeks to accomplish "the purge" (house sold in five months less than predicted). We used a multi-faceted approach:
1) Called all the kids and said, "Come get what you want." 2) Had two garage sales (moderate success). 3) Gave several furniture items to Hispanic friends from the mission point where we were involved. 4) Donated leftovers to Goodwill and other charities. 5) Left a "starter kit" in climate controlled storage in case we have to come off the road unexpectedly. Some full-timers are against this and say you can repurchase the stored items for what you pay in storage fees.
We didn't consider an estate sale business as they take a significant cut and we didn't have that much that was worth selling.
Rob
-- Edited by Second Chance on Saturday 24th of August 2019 01:45:35 PM
We did almost the same as Second Chance. Kids took nearly all the furniture, Goodwill got almost everthing else. Buyer of our house (very nice couple) said we could leave anything we wanted to leave because they loved it all ... so we did. We also have a small climate controlled storage cubical ... for those things that we just couldn't part with and were of no value to anyone else.
Ron
Neil and Connie said
04:54 PM Aug 25, 2019
Sold a few items on Craigslist, gave kid what they wanted, kept the stuff Connie wanted to keep and donated the vast majority of what is left. Unless money is tight...garage and other sales is a pretty low hourly rate of return.
We had less than six weeks to accomplish "the purge" (house sold in five months less than predicted). We used a multi-faceted approach:
1) Called all the kids and said, "Come get what you want."
2) Had two garage sales (moderate success).
3) Gave several furniture items to Hispanic friends from the mission point where we were involved.
4) Donated leftovers to Goodwill and other charities.
5) Left a "starter kit" in climate controlled storage in case we have to come off the road unexpectedly. Some full-timers are against this and say you can repurchase the stored items for what you pay in storage fees.
We didn't consider an estate sale business as they take a significant cut and we didn't have that much that was worth selling.
Rob
-- Edited by Second Chance on Saturday 24th of August 2019 01:45:35 PM
We lived in our home for more than 25 years and we worked for two years on downsizing. Over the two years we had multiple garage sales which were a lot of work, gave things to our children, threw out a lot of “stuff”, and donated the rest. We also sold some things online. We saved only our bedroom furniture and some personal things which are stored in our daughter’s basement. We never considered an estate sale - most things of value were passed on to our children.
Good luck as you work toward becoming a full timer!
Barb
After researching actual Estate Sale companies listening to their spiel we decided to do it ourselves. First day they stated everything was full price (with the exception of The estate sale company’s employees - they got 30% off), the second day was 50% off the 1st day pricing (again the estate sale employees received 30% off), the final day was 20-25% off the original pricing. (Same discount for employees) Anything remaining was carted off to whomever they wanted.
We talked to 4 different companies and this was the same between all of them. PLUS, (this was the kicker for me) we could not be anywhere around our home during or after the sale. Didn’t give me a warm fuzzy feeling to say the least.
How did we move a 4 bedroom, 4 bath home full of items so quick - I inventoried each room, took us 6 pages, then the wife and myself sat down and priced each item. As people came into the house I handed them the inventory sheets which had them walk around the house clockwise. We sold 80% of our inventoried items the first day. With zero negotiations required. The price was the price. We sold the remaining items off the inventory sheets the second day.
The second weekend was all of the garage items. We only priced the large items and set up different tables that stated everything on the table was $XX. We used color dots to identify the specific $xx items.
Hopefully this will provide you some ideas to use. I wouldn’t use an Estate Sale company after listening to them. But then that’s just my opinion.
We did almost the same as Second Chance. Kids took nearly all the furniture, Goodwill got almost everthing else. Buyer of our house (very nice couple) said we could leave anything we wanted to leave because they loved it all ... so we did. We also have a small climate controlled storage cubical ... for those things that we just couldn't part with and were of no value to anyone else.
Ron
Sold a few items on Craigslist, gave kid what they wanted, kept the stuff Connie wanted to keep and donated the vast majority of what is left. Unless money is tight...garage and other sales is a pretty low hourly rate of return.