You can’t wait to move into one of our homes for sale in the Central Valley. You’re eager to start anew in your modern home. You’ve already sold your current house and need to start packing. Do you really want to keep all the furniture, clothes, household goods and children’s toys you’ve collected along the way?

You could hold countless garage sales, sell through eBay auctions, and donate the remainder to charity. But you don’t have the time and energy to go through these efforts. A more convenient option that could potentially net you more income is to hold an estate sale.

Estate Sales
You may associate estate sales with mansions full of outdated period furniture and ungainly artwork once owned by rich celebrities, now deceased, whose heirs are trying to maximize their inheritance. In fact, many regular people turn to this process while they’re still alive to try to pare down the clutter. They’re no longer interested in acquiring things and want to simplify their lives by focusing on experiences and relationships.

An estate sale may also be the easiest way to get rid of most of what you no long want in the shortest possible time. It’s typically run over three or four days by a professional company that specializes in such transactions. For a specified commission, they handle everything from advertising and pricing your goods to running the sale and collecting payment. At the end of the experience, you get a fat check and an empty home. Depending on your contract, the company carts whatever didn’t sell to your favorite charity, so you never have to deal with your unwanted items again.

Where’s the Money?
You may have visions of that heirloom painting above the mantel being hailed as valuable or your prized collection of antique doilies bringing in a small fortune. And certainly, if anything you have is valuable, the estate sale agents will know and sell it for the maximum price, since their profit is based off how much they sell.
In most cases, however, the bulk of your profit comes from the quantity rather than the quality of what you own, which are used goods. What does or does not sell may surprise you. For example, old clothes tend to fly off the hangers. Collectible sets of anything generally end up in the thrift shop because nobody else is interested in collecting them.

Tips
Here are a few tips for holding a successful estate sale:
•  Do your due diligence in selecting an estate sale company. The industry is unregulated, so get recommendations from friends, look up reviews, and interview two or more companies before settling on one.
•  Get a professional for your valuables.
Estate sales offer you convenience and not necessarily the highest prices. If you have truly valuable antiques or collectibles, consider selling them through a professional auction company that handles such items.
•  Remove sentimental items.
Before allowing the company to go through your home, remove any mementos, important documents, or items with sentimental value that you want to hang onto. You don’t want your family album full of grandma’s pictures to be sold for $1.
•  Get out of the way.


Once you hire the estate sale company, let them do their job by getting out of their way. If you can, take a vacation or stay with relatives during the sale period. Any advice you may offer will be superfluous because these companies know more about selling than you ever will.