Estate sale before or after listing?
 

We're moving to TV at the end of the summer and will be taking very little furniture with us (our bedroom and personal items and cookware, dishes, etc.) Our realtor suggests a complete estate sale before putting our current house on the market. We had assumed we would get a contract to sell our present house and then arrange an estate sale. Does anyone here have any experience doing either one of these things? If so, please share...our heads are spinning madly!
As always, thanks in advance for your responses! (We have relatives in TV, so we're pretty familiar with the different villages and where we wish to live. We would like to avoid renting for a month or more, if possible.)

Speaking from personal experience. The house I bought was listed 20% higher than what I bought it for, and it was worth every penny of the listing price. Listing photos showed beautiful furniture throughout which I would have bought if given a chance. When I actually saw the house it was empty, unclean, neglected looking. Even given its location etc not many people were interested.

Personally, I prefer to see an empty house, but most people don't. So, I think you should make sure the house is nicely furnished, but not cluttered. So, I guess I disagree with your Realtor. Also, the buyer may agree to buy a lot of items from you.

Less furniture and counter clutter the better. Everyone has different furniture tastes and different smells.

I admit some rooms are weird, and without furniture you just don’t know how it will look. But that saying when we finally sell our homes up north our real estate agent said remove clutter, and show with furniture. Estate people will have already Priced, and ready for sale, soon as offer is excepted furniture is gone.

I think I would try and get rid of any clutter. Maybe take 30 to 50% of what is in your closets out so they look bigger. Same goes for kitchen pantry. If you have wood floors I would remove the area carpets and shine the floor. Get the garage as empty as you can and maybe park your cars outside when the house is being shown.

I would also find someone to do the sale now if you are not going to do it. That way you will be ready to move forward as soon as the contract is signed. Also consider the use of pods for moving incase you get a quick sale you can load the pods and store them for a few weeks if need be. I would not ship anything to TV (unless in pods you can store) until you close on the home.

This is great advice! Thank you!

I think I should call some Estate Sale Agents on Monday for quotes and logistics. Thanks for this advice!

Wow! I hadn't thought of that!

Thanks, everyone, for taking the time to respond. Great advice from all!

Our estate/house sale will be prior to closing. We only brought clothing and some household items to our house in TV. We were able to build in TV last fall. We used this opportunity to move clothing and some household items to our home in TV, freeing up space in the closets.

We are using a POD currently to move our remaking item to TV.

We only moved two chairs, several box spring & mattresses as the furniture items we moved to TV.


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We're in the process of clearing out our house up north so that we can list it. Right now, we just have way too much STUFF and would have to pack it all away, just to sell it anyway. Most of it won't be coming down with us when we're done (we already own and have started moving stuff into our house in the Villages).

We'll be having yard sales every weekend that it doesn't look like rain, until the house is sold, or until we run out of stuff to sell. Whichever comes first. After that, we'll donate what we can, and throw away whatever we can't donate.

A furnished house will usually sell faster than one without anything.
It gives a potential buyer the advantage of seeing where a couch can go, where the best place for their TV would be, which wall is best to place their bed, etc.

A definite yes is to get rid of clutter.
Take all the junk off the refrigerator.
Remove religious items from anywhere in the house.
Pack up all the family photos.

The object you are trying to create is to make the buyer comfortable when they look at your house.
They want to imagine their own items in the house, not yours.

I've learned over the years with my own yard/estate sales, to never underestimate the power of putting a 'FREE' sign on those items that don't sell...and that would otherwise have to be thrown/taken away.


It is a powerful psychological tool...that works on a lot of people. :D

Excellent points. :thumbup: