How to Choose the Best Estate Sale Company

Many clients wonder how to choose the best estate sale company. This is not an easy task especially because in the last five years I have seen the number of companies conducting estate sales grow from 5 to 50 where I live. Most of these companies have fancy, or not, websites but many, if not most, are untrained, misrepresent their credentials and do not protect their clients.

I encourage clients to ask for the following when interviewing an estate sale company:

• References (and by this I mean the real names, numbers and addresses of sales conducted)
• Copy of liability insurance
• Name and number of the police officer they use.
• Credentials (resume)
• Attend a sale conducted by that company incognito.

Then, based on whether they can supply what I consider to be necessary (i.e. the list above) and whether you were scared based on watching them in action, have them meet you at the potential sale site and do an on-site interview.

The bottom line is that you must hire both a smart and honest person and this is not an easy task. If you do not hire a smart company–and hyped up credentials and driving a fancy car does not make them competent estate sale liquidators — and an honest company you will not be able to protect the estate financially no matter how closely you watch the process. I am 100% straightforward with my clients because there is no way to prevent fraud and theft if you hire the wrong person.

An untrained person will over price and under price the estate because they have no idea what they are doing and are too lazy to do the research and many times don’t even know what they are looking at. A client will lose easily 60-80% of the value of the estate with the wrong pricing. An unethical estate liquidator will just steal outright either by just taking something and not paying for it or under pricing it and having a friend buy it. In either case the family just lost a lot of money.

Something new being touted in my neighborhood is a ‘coding’ system that is supposed to prevent fraud. This is simply a ridiculous proposal. Once again if you hire a thief they will just not code the valuable items, and many times it is the smallest item that is the most valuable in an estate, and pocket it or they will code it and under price it and once again a friend will buy it. In either case stupidity or unethical behavior just bankrupted that estate.

No client knows everything in an estate and you cannot prevent fraud by under pricing because you don’t know the value of most of the items that is why you hired the professional. Furthermore, the time it takes to code and provide an inventory list of each fork and wash cloth in the house is time being taken away from the important job of good display, proper research and pricing, and advertising and selling. Thus, once again you must always make sure that the person is trained, has many years of experience, has insurance, uses professional (i.e. not a fat man in a black t-shirt) security, provides real references that you call, and is honest and smart.