4 Ways to Clear the Clutter for a Faster Home Sale

Have you been dreading preparing your property for sale? You’re not alone! Our customers call us to have their property cleared of clutter, or, completely emptied in a short time, as in the case of an estate. And we don’t mean just dumping it all in a bin as in the local DUMP IT Service, or, donating the entire contents to charity – if there are items of value, we assess what’s there to sell, then, disperse items to family, donation, and finally, removal.

Do you take on this work yourself, or, hire a company to do it for you? How can you accomplish this monumental task on your own?

How do you choose the best method to downsize your property?

ESTATE SALES
There are companies that manage estate sales directly from the property over a period of days with an estate sale open house. The potential disadvantage of this type of estate clearing is the intrusion of strangers walking through the property, and the time and preparation needed to set up an auction. Estate sales can often bring out dealers, and curiosity seekers, rather than real buyers. The estate sale representative handles all the transactions. and often takes a generous percentage of proceeds, once the sales period ends, and they will not remove extra items that didn’t sell.

ESTATE AUCTIONS

Auction houses will only take items for clearout if they expect them to be easily saleable, meaning they are in tip top condition and have some real value. The days of selling off an entire home’s contents with a traditional auction are coming to an end, being replaced by more practical online auctions, with buyers bidding at their convenience over a period of days online. It is always surprising to realize that auction houses prefer to take so little out of a property to add to a sale.

THE ONLINE MARKETPLACE

Can you sell your items on Facebook? Sure, one at a time, though.

You might be disappointed by the process of selling off your extra furnishings, collectibles, and household goods yourself on sales sites or Facebook Marketplace. Time consuming. and again, strangers will be coming to your door, and contacting you all hours of the day and night. Haggling and negotiating can be expected, and you may not sell the items quickly. Buy and sell Groups on Facebook have a lot of traffic, yet we often hear that people don’t actually show up at the appointed time to purchase their items. This type of sale is fine if you don’t have a great deal to get rid of, and plenty of time to set up all those visits from potential buyers.

DOWNSIZING, ESTATE CLEANOUT, CLEAROUT AND LIQUIDATION

Kelowna Estate Liquidations provides a full-service cleanout of all items you want to unload, sseparates the saleable items and what is best for donation, sets up an online auction, handles all the auction advertising, and is present for the pickup date.

Once the downsizing process is complete, our team can complete empty a property, and prepare it for a faster sale. Our customers rely on us to manage the entire process, or any part of it, within a specific time frame and on-budget.

We can arrange for appraisers of fine collectibles and antiques, and will work with homeowners, family members, an executor, realtor, or lawyer as needed. We are bonded and insured, and professional downsizing and estate liquidation experts with a great record of projects, contact us for a quote today.

OVERWHELMED TO SOLD: A Senior Downsizing Journey

When a home has been lived in for decades, and it comes time for downsizing or moving to a retirement residence, many families are overwhelmed with the massive scale of work required, of completely emptying a home and getting it ready for the market. Moving and downsizing can cause a great strain on siblings, who have jobs and time-consuming lives of their own, to help Mom and Dad move forward. Senior Downsizing Services can genuinely help families to tackle this arduous job.

How does our team at Kelowna Estate Liquidation assist this family? During an initial consultation, we describe the full range of services available for organizing, decluttering, packing, helping manage the full move, selling items of value at auction, separating items for donation and giving to family, and we then provide an estimate.

Senior Downsizing:

Once our customers hear of all the available services, it is time to choose which we can assist with. In this move management project, we not only helped with all of the above, but we were also able to see this client all the way through the process, and transition to a retirement residence, having all of her treasured and needed items in place when she arrived to start enjoying the new space immediately.

This is truly a full senior transition, and we’re happy to share the process with you. Here is what the family shared with us after this project:

Judy Sutherland Review:

‘We cannot recommend Delores and her team highly enough! As executors of our aunt’s estate, we were tasked with moving our cousin, now bereaved of her mother, into appropriate housing, clearing the family home & preparing it for sale. Watching Delores interact with our cousin with kindness & gentleness convinced us that she was the perfect match! The sorting, packing & resettlement was a challenge but it was carried out with skill and tender loving care. Delores’s team worked tirelessly to prepare the house for market – cleaning, painting, re-flooring and staging. The house looked amazing! Offers were received in less than a week! Thank you, Delores, for your professionalism and attention to detail. You took a personal interest and were wonderful to work with!’

What needed to be done?

Over the years, our elderly customer had accumulated quite a collection of antique dolls and accessories, and they had grown from one room, to the next, to the next, along with extra seasonal belongings stored in spare rooms. To meet the demands of the impending winter market, the executors reached out to look at what we could do to take this space from overwhelmed to sale-ready in a short time.

An overwhelming collection of items needing to be dispersed before the sale of the property.

All three floors of this property required sorting, and separation of items for donation, dispersal to family members, disposal, and items that were ready for sale. From the basement, to every cabinet, cupboard, bedroom, and space, we organized and decluttered to prepare for the next step.

We worked with our client one on one, to decide which of the furnishings, artwork, and collectibles were to be taken to the retirement residence, for us to set up and have it ready to move in quickly when the time was right. Saleable items were organized and separated for delivery to a local auction hall.

Clearing a property for the new Renovations

As is often the case, a home that has been occupied for several decades will need basic décor and design updates to help with the appeal to new buyers. We leave a property completely empty, and available for any work that must be completed before the sale or rental of a home.

Once we had decided which items were to be taken to the new retirement residence with the family, our team packed up and managed the move to the new space, setting up our client for a move in, quickly. Everything was set in place, from furnishings, to artwork, collectibles, and the bed made, living room ready, and bathroom, and kitchenette ready to live in right away.

Ask us about our full services, available through Kelowna Estate Liquidations. Serving Kelowna BC & Surrounding Areas.

Request a quote or meeting, 250 575 6783. Read more about our services: https://kelownaestateliquidation.ca/downsizing-and-move-management-2/

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