The Road Map to a Successful Estate Sale: Part 2

There are many reasons you might be planning an estate sale. The most common reasons include a family death, retiring, downsizing, relocating for work, and, finally, divorce. But regardless of the reason, it is important that you have a proper understanding of how to organize a successful estate sale.

In this two part series, we are examining the important milestones that must be reached in order for your estate sale to be a success. In the previous post, we discussed how organization, estate appraisal, and advertising can help.

In the second half, we will examine the remaining three steps: displaying, hosting, and cleaning.

Displaying
In order to get the best results for your estate sale, it is important that you organize the items for sale in a well thought out manner. There are two main components to improving the display. First, you should group similar items together as much as possible. Doing so will allow you to more easily direct your potential buyers to the right areas. Secondly, you should do your best to create a visually pleasing arrangement. Clutter is overwhelming. You should seek to put your buyers at ease with a neat and attractive presentation.

Hosting
This is the moment you have been waiting for: the sale itself. You should host the sale over a weekend. Typically, you want to have three days for an estate sale, Friday through Sunday. That way more people will have the option to view your sale.

But just because you have had the estate appraisal services completed and have moved onto the sale doesn’t mean you are finished. You should be dedicated over the course of the sale to keeping your space organized, respacing items to avoid obvious gaps, and keeping notes about what sold and for how much.

Cleaning
The final stage of any estate sale is cleaning, but not in the way you might think. Of course, there may be some mess as the result of your sale, but the cleaning stage is more than sweeping. This is where you get rid of any unsold items.

Typically the best way to go about this is to schedule a visit from a local nonprofit or thrift store for Monday morning. You can then donate the items that you weren’t able to sell, allowing them to find a new home.

Estate sale planning can be tricky, but following the roadmap laid out in this series can help you do so successfully.