Monday, 13 June 2011

Estate Sales: DIY or Hire a Professional?

By James Masters


Before we look into the estate sale market it is best to understand when one would be arranged. Who uses an estate sale service? Basically anyone looking to sell most of their homes contents, usually as a result of a death in the family or a sudden need to move interstate or overseas.

What kinds of things do you sell? Virtually anything that is legal and safe to be sold; antique, contemporary and used furniture and furnishings, fine antiques, collectibles and just plain junk, costume jewelry fine jewelry, tools and appliances, and garden equipment, you name it and it can be sold.

Holding an estate sale however is no easy feat, with the emotional attachment sometimes making things hard for the family. Thre is a lifetime of possessions to go through and these usually carry memories. This of course means you need to sort through and decide what should be sold and kept. How much are these items even worth? What is the market value?

Staging a sale is also difficult. If the sale is held in a private home, there are security issues to consider. What about crowd control? Who will stay with the money? How do you protect yourself?

This can be a time of real family stress as disputes arise over the distribution of items not specifically listed in the will. A degree of gentle firmness on the part of the executor will be needed as family tensions come to a head.

Something of note is that it is the executor of the estate who is legally responsible for handling the sale. If the executor happens to be a family member then this can only help to increase tensions and can be the cause of even more problems later on. Hiring a professional service to handle your estate sale means you can remove this unwanted tension and focus on getting as much return for your items as possible.

An estate sale is an excellent way to convert personal property into cash quickly, and in a fair and equitable way, but it is only with the help of a professional service that you can guarantee it will actually be fair and equitable for all members of the family who are involved.

So how are they handled then? Estate sales are normally handled either as auctions, or on a first come first served basis, like a yard sale or garage sale. If an auction format is used, and the estate sale is held in the home, buyers can walk from room to room inspecting the items for sale, and deciding what to bid on. This is the most common format for estate sales, especially when most of the home contents are up for sale or auction.

This is yet another reason to hire a professional estate sale expert to handle your estate. The auction format is frequently conducted by a professional auctioneer or estate liquidator, who will take responsibility for appraising and cataloging the items for sale, handling advertising, and providing tables, chairs, display cases, signs and staff. Do you really want the added burden and stress of worrying about all of this on top of what you are already dealing with?

Another big advantage of hiring a professional estate sale service over doing it yourself is the potential for profits. Professionals often attract a following of private collectors and dealers who will pay top dollar for your items. Sometimes they may even hold an invitation only sale preceding the public one to bring in even more money. Remember that the professional services command a percentage of the total sales, so the better you do, the better it is for them too.

Summary and closing points: A professional estate service will leave the property empty, cleaned out and ready to sell, making the entire process that much easier for the family to deal with. With the emotion of losing a loved one, and the importance of keeping business and family seperate, it is always advisable to seek professional help in these times. add to this the fact that you will nearly always get more money for your items, the costs of using these services nearly always pay for themselves anyway.




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