The Best Way To Sell Your Stuff When Downsizing
Keep, Sell, Or Trash?
Whether you’re selling your own home and moving to a smaller place or are taking care of the contents of a family member’s home, it can seem like an insurmountable task to go through an entire house worth of furniture, décor, and clothing. Sometimes, it might seem like it’s easier to just call up a full-service junk removal company to haul it away—but there may be items in your possession that are worth far more than you think.
The Venues
Depending on what you’re dealing with, there are many avenues you can take to sell off a large amount of items at once or piecemeal. There’s estate sales, selling items on consignment through an auction house, using a platform like Facebook Marketplace or craigslist, consignment stores, or simply donating the items—to name a few.
We’ll get into the pros and cons of these, but there are some general rules to tackle first.
Adjust Your Expectations
When I worked at an auction house, we often had people approach after a family member died, hoping we could sell the contents of their home. We’d often look through pictures and have to break it to them that we could only accept a handful of things for consignment, and at a value much lower than they anticipated.
Although you may think you have a good idea of what something is worth—there might not be anyone out there who wants to buy it at that price.
Put Your Trust In The Experts
Auction houses employ certified appraisers who can give you an estimate of what an item will sell for before you decide to put it on consignment (more on that process later). They may seem choosy. Though there are companies that do content sales where they accept every item from a home, many auction houses have established clientele—and they try to only accept items for consignment that they know they can sell.
Forget What You Know About Value
While vintage and antique furniture and décor were once a solid bet—and a profitable industry—the market has changed a lot in the past two decades. Prices for many items, especially furniture, took a huge dive during the 2008 recession and never recovered. Think of how many thriving antique stores there were in the 1990s—so many are gone now.
But that doesn’t mean everything lost its value.
