Traditional Estate sales: A thing of the past
After doing estate sales in the traditional way for about 8 years me and my partner Alex decided it was time for a change. This was our Old routine:
Research and pricing: Researching the price on every item can be VERY tedious and depending on the work load can take weeks. This is the most time consuming and labourious part. Actually going through and putting tags on every item afterwards also adds another layer of time.
Staging: Clearing the house and setting up all tables and displays in a nice and tidy manner to appease incoming patrons. This is always a stressful moment for the estate representative especially if they are still living there.
Advertising / Marketing: Marketing for an estate sale should be done for at LEAST 2 weeks prior to the sale and costs the estate representative more money on top of their commission they have to pay
The Sale itself: Droves of strangers come trampling through your estate, touching, eyeing, breathing on everything. Its always a liability having that many strangers in your house. These days the obvious threat is covid-19. Having that many people enclosed in your home is not a good idea! The sale lasts around 3 days and prices are cut in half day , by day , until you get to the very last day and at this point stuff is priced so cheap someone could come in with a couple hundred dollars and buy half the estate that hasn’t sold!
Photography – We have a handful of professional photographers on staff that will come out to your estate, all wearing proper covid -19 protection for both of your safety. Our photographers will take photos of all items deemed sellable by the estate representative. We will group items together and sell the seperately depending on each items value. This process can take 1-2 days depending on the amount of stuff needed to sell.
The auction – After photographing all of the items we list them on an our online auction house. Each item then gains visibility from our 350,000 subscribed users. They will be bidding on your items raising the price with each bid they make. We run the auction for a 7-10 day window depending on how much exposure the estate representative would like your items to get and how much time you have before you want to wrap things up.
The Pick up – we schedule a one day pick up window were all bid winners can come and pick up their items. They are all required to wear masks upon entering the estate premises. We will be onsite facilitating the process in which we hand off the items to their respective owners.
The clean up – It is very rare that there are items left over after the auction but we will come to an agreement of how to dispose or sell the remaining items if it comes to that.
Collect your money! We will pay you out within 1 week of the pick up.
With 15 years combined experience in the estate sale business. We’ve seen it all! Our combined knowledge and experience gives us the ability to identify almost any item and determine its value on the spot. No matter how big, small, funky, or eloquent your estate; We know how to capture it in the perfect light to portray to our customer base.
%99 of our estate sales can be done within two weeks from photography to the last pick up day. Our business model allows us to conduct several estate sales simultaneously so our turn around time is also speedy. We do not have to schedule you 2 – 3 months out like many traditional estate sale companies. We can usually fit you into our schedule and get the ball moving within a week of signing a contract with us!
Due to our enormous online user base of 350,000 and counting. Your items will have a tremendous amount of visibility. Instead of the handful of hagglers that come to find thrifty deals, you will be exposed to hundreds and thousands of users that will bid and compete for your items. Many times bidding wars will ensue that drive the prices up to crazy levels!
The obvious Covid Saftey factor is minimizing contact with the buyer. The fact that %90 of this process is done virtually minimizes your exposure to strangers and large groups of people congregating in your house. All of our staff that will be on site will ALWAYS be wearing proper Covid-19 PPE. We also require that all of the bid winners coming to pick up their items wear a mask. Additionaly, you will not be interacting with the customers as our staff will be facilitating the pick-up process with the bid winners themselves!
You can continue to live in your estate during the whole process! Apart from slightly adjusting some items to get better angles for photos, your life will essentially be undisturbed. You can choose to stay on or off of the property while we conduct the estate sale process.the bid winners themselves!
Many Estate sale companies will heavily scrutinize what inventory you have to sell, and only if it checks all the boxes on their list will they consider you as a client. They typically have a lot of overhead and can only take either “big estates” or “estates with valuable things”. Our doors are open to everyone! No matter how big or small we will work our hardest to find a spot for you.