Category: Client Anecdotes

The Witch of Pikesville… She Can Turn $6000 into $20000 of Used Stuff!

We met with a woman this week, after a lengthy phone consultation, after I had qualified her and she had qualified Estatemax as the likely company to hire.

Later, upon looking at her address on Google, after agreeing to go to her home to sign an agreement and set a date for a sale, I discovered she lived in a townhome community where NO PARKING was written on every curb, meaning there was no place for estate sale shoppers to park.  I called her and her phone was not taking calls so I emailed her canceling the appointment until she could work it out with the HOA to allow parking, or not.

She called me really demanding that we come because she had changed her entire day of plans to meet us. And, of course she is on the board of the HOA and they don’t pay any attention to those NO PARKING signs. Her estate sale would work. There would be ample parking. So we went.

We met her. She showed us around the house, in detail, and with great neurosis. It was normal, clean, brown furniture, nothing “valuable” and not a lot of items. Pretty but dated furniture and no kitchen or significant small items. No basement or garage or shed. It was a small inventory, mostly furniture, Waterford, Lenox. Ad nauseum.

I should have stopped it there, sat down and signed the deal. It would have saved me the next hour of B.S.  (It frankly doesn’t matter what she had to sell. We sell it all, whatever is left in the home.) We have a minimum fee to cover that, in case a customer removes more than they said they would at our consultation.

I asked her if she had educated herself, as I had asked her to do by reading my website, She admitted she had not- nor read our reviews. My website is a bible of how to and how not to do a downsizing, an estate sale, etc. It is packed full of information. She could have saved herself and us a lot of grief.  And she said my Angie’s List Reviews don’t matter to her. She doesn’t “believe” in Angie’s List. ( Tell Angie Hicks that who has made millions…)

I told her it matters to me and we work very hard for the clients that leave reviews of our services there. She said she “heard she could be sued for leaving a negative review there” and had hired someone off it before and he did a lousy job for her. I told her that was not me and she can’t judge everyone by one jerk. ETC. I told her she had not done her due diligence and asked her what criteria she was using to hire us? She had found me on ASEL. American Society of Estate Liquidators. EstateMAX is an accredited member. That does matter, but not as much as reviews.  ASEL is a marketing venue. I am vetted through them, but I am also vetted on A.L, the State of MD, and have advertised on many sites for 10 years.

She said “Well now that you have looked around what do you think you could get for all of this?” I told her I don’t know and I don’t promise a number. We had only done a quick walk thru -but it was definitely a sale and she would make money.  She pressed me. I said,” between $6000 and $8000 for a house of this size.” That is what I always say for a house of that size, regardless of contents. And the silver and crystal, etc was hidden.  She shrieked ” NO! I would expect between $20,000 and $30,000! I told her there was no way the sales would get anywhere close to those numbers…( where were the 200$1000 resale items in that townhome? Or the 10) $2000 items, or the 40) $500 items. or the 20,000) $1 items?  OYVEY!)

She had already talked to an auction company, she had been set straight on what she should expect from them ( $1 to $10 an item) and the cost of removal would be more than my fee. We were her best bet to get the job done.

Anyhow, we read through the contract together, in detail, which most clients don’t bother doing, they just go for it, which upsets me, so I was happy she was doing that. We made some adjustments and got to the money part and she started: Well, I’ll pay you this and not that and this much and that. I will not pay you a fee but will give you a 60/40 split of the sale. I said “No, that won’t happen, I don’t work that way, and it’s not worth my time.” You don’t have enough here to make it worth my committing myself to advertising, setup, pricing for 2 days and conducting a 3 day sale. And a 3 day sale is what you need to get this stuff out of here. I can get the people here but I can’t make them buy if they don’t want what you have”.  “I am not taking a risk for you. It’s your stuff, you have used it, lived with it, and it’s your burden, not mine.”

So, we walked without a deal. The first time in my career that happened. But some deals aren’t worth the trouble and she was trouble through and through. Unrealistic, over expecting, demanding and a manipulator. Glad I have the experience to know the difference.

 

The Stuff Left After the Stuff That Sold!

There is always that person at an estate sale who asks ” What do you do with the stuff that’s left after the sale is over?!” (Because there always IS stuff left over, regardless of how large or small the inventory.) Sarcasm, my closest friend, overwhelms my good manners, and I retort” I burn it all in the back yard!”. All the stuff never sells.

We are just completing clean up of an estate sale that we held last weekend. The sale setup included removal of 20 cubic yards of trash, just to get to the stuff that was salable and accommodate it’s setup and shop-ability…And this household had record mounds of stuff to begin with.

We sold an unprecedented volume of stuff over 3 days which left the dregs of unsold stuff behind, in piles.  Piles- because estate sale shoppers are not concerned with neatness, when sifting and picking through inventory, looking for the next “great find”. It looked like a cyclone had gone through the house.

This leftover stuff includes empty cardboard boxes from a myriad of items, including a closet of dust and cardboard scraps left from the sale of  vintage board games, a lawn mower,  old, out of style furniture, Xmas decor, Easter decor, Halloween decor, etc., cleaning supplies, a seashell collection, scraps of stained glass, jars, dried stuff, craft supplies, fabrics, sewing magazines, books, books, books, framed artwork, a daisy art collection, personal care items, shoes, clothes, a bed, a deep freeze full of old food, a Wurlitzer piano, weight bench, scraps of vintage toys, burnt out power tools, dusty fake floral arrangements, an unexplored attic full of who knows what…kitchen stuff, laundry stuff, Tupper ware, old food, and a hundred other items I can’t define.

Yesterday a 26 foot truck load went to charity. Today a 30 cubic yard dumpster or two is being filled with the leftover trash. The estate will pay for removal of the stuff, out of the estate sale proceeds and will still see a profit over and above all expenses.

This is the stuff of someones lives. And those someones left it all there for someone else to deal with-someday. Someday is here. I am the one who is dealing with it. This someone’s son was wise. He hired EstateMAX to handle the details of his parent’s stuff. The house will be sold and life will go on.

Advice to you pack rats and hoarders. You people with OCD, and shopping addictions: STOP now! Don’t leave this for your children to fix later. Take a pill, go to the beach, start running. Do something else while you are alive!

 

EstateMAX is Fully Vetted and Accountable!

At EstateMAX we know that an estate sale company ( or any) is only as good as their word and their persistence, as well as their business practices.

During the 22 years in the transitions and estate liquidation industry our team has pushed through situations for our clients where others might have folded, thrown in the towel, wept and walked out of the sale process: all before, during or after the estate sale!

We at EstateMAX have persisted-through securing contracts, handling set up, selling, clean up afterward and continuing to sell for our clients, on specialty items, to make our estate and downsizing sales success stories!

Some Estate Sale Anecdotes

Real life stories surrounding our real life client experiences include: selling through the aftermath and clean up of broken water pipes that flooded our client’s basement on sale day, working through the beginning of a ( suprise!) snowstorm only to leave the home 3 hours later and drive home in 8 inches of newly fallen snow, a precarious two hour trip;  holding a sale in Ashburn VA, the property, down a quarter mile one lane road in the forest which demanded de-snaking, de-spidering and de-mousing then selling on a rainy weekend directing ( bad drivers?!) traffic in and out of the muddy property. We’ve moved an (almost unmovable) 1958 Silver Cloud Rolls Royce out of it’s garage to our property by flat bed, then sent a courier to meet the buyer at the airport who flew in with an attache full of hundred dollar bills, then return him safely to the airport. A week later we met the car transport and sent the Rolls to Iowa.  We have sold 400 Christmas Village buildings and their accessories, and matched them to their boxes in one sale, while selling the rest of the contents of the home. In another sale, on the coldest days of the year, we set up and sold over 400 die-cast model tractors in the detached garage, built a fire in the wood burning stove ( thank goodness it was there!) and reaped over $7000 in sales in two days just from that…  We have sold the contents of 8000 square foot home packed full of vintage and new decor, including a huge garage full of unopened bags of NEW stuff from Homegoods and other box stores. That was a 6 day sale and the client purchased a new car with the proceeds! The USPS lost a Priority Mail Envelope-within which was a Cashier’s Check made out to a client in dire financial need. We worked ( pleaded) with our bank to cancel the typically non-cancel able check and then client personally with a new one. (BTW the original showed up a month later at their home.)

We have found ourselves ( too many times- but it’s the job-) purging multitudes of stuff, and then again de-cluttering the home,  just in order to set up to photograph then price it all to do a sale. We spend what it takes to advertise, whether pre-sale for large items, photograph, video and cover the market with information, organize and price and during the sale, keep the ball rolling with yet more on line videos, on going merchandising and surveying of the property for customer activity, field questions, “put fires out”, meet buyers of specialty goods, sign Bills of Sale, turn in vehicle tags, manage removal and payment of everything, secure the doors and windows at the end of every day and go back after the sale is over to pack and organize, if contracted, and meet charity for pick up of unsold goods.

If it can happen, it probably will happen in the course of an estate sale. EstateMax knows how to handle the pack rats, the hoarders, the unprepared homeowner, the poor maintenance issues and unlikely events that occur.

EstateMAX under Re-Flea LLC, is vetted by Angie’s List, Inc. where you can find our reviews by at least 70+ actual clients. We do business with a black and white agreement, (no smoke and mirrors.) We are FBI finger printed, hold Montgomery County Second Hand Personal Property Dealers Licensing and State of Maryland Precious Metals Licensing.

 – Dale Wallace

We don’t know how this could have gone better. EstateMax was very punctual in the initial meeting
and review. Everything was spelled out for us beforehand. The best part was we did not have to lift a
finger…EstateMax handled every aspect of the estate sale. Throughout this whole process EstateMax was extremely professional and did all they said they would. We highly recommend them for this type of service.

  • Category: Appraisals – Antiques/Jewelry/Items, Furniture – Sales, Auction Services
  • Services Performed: Yes
  • Cost: $4000
19817 Belmont Ridge Rd
Ashburn, VA 20147