A Primer For Transition Through An Estate Sale
When the task of transition for you, a loved one or as the executor of an estate, many questions arise concerning the disposal of personal property. Too often this becomes a time fraught with emotional feelings, quick and regrettable decisions.
Recent clients took nearly a year to decide on selling the family home and personal property of a loved one that had moved into an assisted living home. More common are the frantic calls for an estate sale after a home has already been sold, and needing to be cleared for the new owners. This presents logistic problems for any estate service. The time for setting up, researching, pricing and advertising is often many weeks of advance work, before the actual sale begins.
Our first piece of advice is that family items are identified and distributed to the family. That eliminates regrets after the sale is over and the object is long gone.
When several members of a family are involved in the decision process of who wants what, we suggest all involved identify or remove items before we make our decision to conduct the sale.
One solution used before; if two or more parties are interested in the same piece, a blind bid is placed with the executor of the estate or the estate sale company, to halt any argument, with the high bid receiving the item and the price is deducted from that person’s share of the proceeds.
That said, we also recommend nothing should be disposed of until it is reviewed by our estate company. That is part of our service, and we are the best judge of what is sellable and at what price and what has no perceived value. One person’s junk is another’s collecting passion.
Collectibles and slightly used items are sellable, there is a collector for almost everything, and often items are repurposed for other than their original function.
Items of a utilitarian nature are also sold, when the normal tendency would be to discard them. If the items don’t sell by the end of the estate sale, that is the time to dispose of them, normally to a charity of you’re choosing.
Advertising is important for success, but to insure effective placement of advertising, No Egrets will pay one half of all advertising costs. Road signage is part of our service at no cost to the estate. Permits required in some communities may be at owner’s expense.
Research is conducted on items that are not within the normal scope of our expertise, and requires extra time for research, and included in our setup expenses as listed in our contract.
All items are priced and staged for easy viewing. Items of higher value are kept at the checkout area with small items placed in locked cases. One of our employees has staged homes for realtors and our local builders, annual show of homes.
Our employees are there to help customers and prevent items from disappearing. All customers receive a written receipt, and state sales tax is collected on all sales, which we pay to the state.
Disposal of left-over items are the trustee’s decision, and should be discussed and added as part of the contract. That includes disposal to a charity, or a removal service.
We welcome the opportunity to further discuss your need for our service.
No Egrets Estate Sales
Dean and Valerie
email: noegrets@asapnet.net dean-ferber@sbcglobal.net
