Just for Marketing- Our URL’s

Why do we have so many URL’s? Because we direct them all to this website. And we have fun making them up.

dcmetroestatesales.com

estateliquidatormaryland.com

estatemaxauction.com

estatemaxonlineauction.com

estatemaxops.com

estatemaxopsauctions.com

estatesaledc.com

estatesalemaryland.com

haggledicker.com

lauriezook.com

marylandestateliquidation.com

marylandestateliquidation.info

marylandestateliquidation.net

marylandestateliquidation.org

marylandestatesellers.com

maxestatesale.com

missiontransition.net 

EstateMAX Professional Real Estate and Moving Resources

This page is edited frequently. Please call Laurie Zook if you are a real estate or moving pro who would like to partner with us.

Over the past 20 years  EstateMAX has worked with many professionals in the areas of Real Estate, Moving, Finance, and others specialties that make our client’s transitions a richer, easier experience. With each of our client contracts, we make many resources available upon request.

Please ask us for our qualified referrals when listing your property, planning your move and expediting an estate settlement.

Listed here are only a few of the professionals we have and continue to work with. If you are a professional, please call me today to talk about how we can collaborate!

If you find this list and call from it, please tell the referred pro that you got their name from the EstateMAX website! Thank you!

Realtors: 

Darren Ahearn, REALTOR, Remax Results, Frederick MD, Licensed in Maryland and Pennsylvania 240-344-1713

Kris Alcorn, REALTOR Remax Results, Frederick, Carroll Counties MD- Senior’s Specialist 301-748-5886

Dawn Matzen, REALTOR,  Bob Lucito/Keller Williams, Howard and Montgomery Counties, MD. 301-442-3236

Diane Derr and Nancy Bowlus- Associate Brokers, Remax Results, 301-624-5454 ( direct) 301-471-5550 (bus. Cell). Montgomery, Carroll, Howard, Washington, and Frederick Counties. Nancy is an State wide sales of Equestrian Properties in RE as well as residential.

W.A. Read Knox, REALTOR,The One Group of Keller Williams Legacy Central, Baltimore County MD, 443-847-9534

Marjorie Dick Stuart- Broker, http://www.MarjorieDickStuart.com, 240-731-8079,  Washington DC

Karen Briscoe Associate Broker, HBC Realty Group 703-734-0192, Northern VA

Moving Company Resources:

Heart2Heart Moving and Delivery Company- Kevin Brown- Local, Regional, East Coast Moves -301-676-0457

JK Moving Company- Rich Stewart- Commercial and Residential, Local, Regional, National Moves- 240-405-7027

Specialty Moving

Pianos:MOVE IT Piano- Regional and National Piano Moving, Tuning, Purchasing and Sales- Daniel Paulsen 973-568-6827

Jermaine Reed Jandrmovingcompany-Small Moves, Local and Regional,  240-422-9042

RC Moving Services-Francisco Oviedo- Deliveries, Clean Outs, Donations- 301-442-9283

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!

 

How EstateMAX Does It!

How Do We Do It

20200103_121236
An estate sale floor

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After you hire us-we have a very straight forward contract for on-site and online auctions, that offers additional services, too, like transitions services, packing, property clean out, updating and staging. We get to work.

We are a personalized company. You communicate what you need and we design your project to accommodate your needs.

For On-Site EstateMAX tag Sales, we organize, merchandise, price and set up our props, tables, the cashier station to conduct the sale on-site. (For on-site sales, typically our clients have already moved out with the things they are keeping. If not, we purge and organize before our set up.)

For Online OPS auctions we set up from your pre selected inventory, tag with a bar code  and photograph in your home. These items stay in place until after the auction, when we come in to meet the buyers for pickup at a predetermined time, done in typically one day. (The Client is not part of the photography or delivery process.)

On-line auctions are appropriate for liquidating personal property in a situation where there is difficulty accessing the property, for a smaller property, where the owner is not selling and leaving the home and, where it’s OK for the auction house can “cherry pick” the inventory to sell only the best of the goods.

Typically, after the sale is over, we  clean out the property, leave it empty and swept and ready for the next step-


What’s the difference in the results between onsite and online? All jobs are unique and they all have their similarities.

It’s all about the audience. An estate sale, regardless of the sales strategy- is NOT a retail setting. A fictitious example: Your Aunt Edna’s Grandmother’s vase, supposedly found buried in Latvia in the 17th century, (your prized possession)… It needs to be authenticated and appraised and if an antiquity, sold online, where it will be exposed to the largest audience. If we can’t do that, we shop for the best auction venue for you.

On the contrary, your Ethan Allen sofa purchased in the 90’s, and still barely touched, as lovely as new, is worth what we can get for it, regardless of the price paid. Why? Because of capricious tastes in furniture.

Your expectations should be in check. https://estatemaxops.com/2019/09/11/downsizing-selling-your-stuff-minimize-your-expectations-maximize-your-planning/


An onsite sale attracts hundreds of buyers in person who are responding to our professional marketing and advertising, who might have shopped with EstateMAX before, and also those who are “driving by” and reacting to street-side advertising. They want to come into the home and “experience the goods in the setting”.

Price points for on-site sales start, as it makes sense,-considering all circumstances: item’s condition, rarity, demand, setting. We set the price on a price tag and discount over the course of the sale, remaining open to negotiation based on the buyer’s volume purchases.

In contrast but not to the detriment, online auctions are 1-dimensional. They attract an online viewership comfortable with buying used goods without testing, poking and touching.  The items are photographed either on site or on a stark, white background.  From a thousand to a hundred thousand viewers and more…that all depends on the auction and the depth of advertising dollars spent.

All items are sold “AS IS”, Electronics and equipment are not tested, but sold “AS IS” with that caveat. All sales are final for both sales strategies. You, the client is paid within 5 days of the end of the sale by secure bank wire transfer. 

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.

  • CategoryAppraisals – Antiques/Jewelry/Items, Furniture – Sales, Auction Services
  • Services PerformedYes
  • Cost$4000
19817 Belmont Ridge Rd
Ashburn, VA 20147

Amateur Estate Sale Newcomers Spoil the Results for Senior Clients!

In the course of several recent estate sale client interviews, it has become apparant that there are now many “newcomers” to our business (of 21 years) that are confusing the market with sub-par performances.

The problem is that there is no licensing requirements  in MD, VA, DC, to be in the estate sale business, so that basically anybody that has ever had a yard sale thinks they can join the business! Caveat emptor!

This is an art and a science that can only be honed by YEARS of trials of technique. Since most clients only hold and conduct ONE in-home estate sale in their lifetime, the newcomers with half-baked methods are never “outted”, and continue to take advantage of new clients with minimal results and perhaps no payment at the end20190515_094204What was once chaos becomes order and assets with EstateMAX estate sales systems.

We at www.EstateMAXops.com have 72 client reviews you can read on this link from Angie’s List, and we hold their highest honor, the coveted AAAAA Super Service Award earned by real client experiences over the past 9 of our 21 years in the industry.

If you want experience and integrity with solid business practices, call Steve or Laurie at EstateMAX for your no cost consultation to get started.

Check us out and call us! We get more for your good stuff.