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How to get ready for an estate sale

How to Get Ready for an Estate Sale

by Mercedes

Wondering about how to get ready for an estate sale? An estate sale is essentially a more professional garage sale. But, the goal is to sell much more of your estate. It can be a stressful process if you’ve never done one before. Here is a guide for how to get ready for one, so everything can run smoothly.

Get in Contact with an Estate Liquidator

The first thing you should do is get in contact with an estate liquidator. They’re a professional that can help you estimate the true value of your items and figure out how to best price them, so your items sell, and you can make a profit.. They can also help you with the other aspects of an estate sale, like advertising and cleanup afterwards. Picking the right professional can make the entire process easy and greatly reduce your stress.

Remove Items That Aren’t in your Estate Sale

If you have any items that you want to keep, make sure to put it away, where no one will think it’s for sale. It can be a little awkward to have someone come up and ask for the price of an item you actually want to keep. This will also keep the sale area clean and make it easier for people to find items they’ll actually want to buy.

Organize Your Items

Clear organization can make it easier for people to find the items that interest them. So, by grouping items together that are similar, can make your sale run a lot smoother. Let’s say you have some clothing items you want to sell. Don’t have them spread out in different areas of the sale, have them all grouped together. But, make sure they’re put together nicely. Don’t have them all together in a messy pile. Hang them up or fold them and place them on a table, organized so that it’s easy for people to look through all the clothes.

If you have jewelry, it would be wise to have it all laid out so people can see it at a glance. It may also be smart to clean the jewelry ahead of time, so they really shine and catch people’s eyes.

Price Labels

Clearly label the prices for all your items so there is no question what you want for your items. People might try to haggle the price down, so if you aren’t willing to decrease the prices, make that known ahead of time. If you’re going with an auction instead of a sale, you can label the items with what their value is, which can encourage people to bid higher.

Advertise (Local newspaper, facebook, websites)

If you want people to show up to your estate sale, you need to advertise. A good Estate Liquidator can help you out with this or even do this for you. But you can also put out some ads yourself in your local newspaper. Facebook is also a great place to advertise sales and reach a lot of people. Some websites have even been built to specifically advertise estate sales.

Pickup or Shipping

After the estate sale is over, you’ll need to organize a time for people to pick up their items. Sometimes you may need to ship an item to the buyer.

Estate Sales require a lot of effort, time and patience. Hiring an Estate Liquidator can make the entire process easier for you so you don’t have to worry about it. If you don’t feel like doing that, here is a guide for how to get ready for an estate sale today.

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Historic Buildings in Santa Barbara

by Mercedes

Santa Barbara has a lot to offer those who live there or those just on a vacation. Some of what we love about the area are the historical buildings and landmarks. Just a few of those historical buildings will be highlighted here.

Santa Barbara Historical Museum

The Santa Barbara Historical Museum contains several beautiful and educational exhibits. You can view some of their collection online or explore their virtual exhibits until they’re open for in-person visits again. This museum also has a variety of educational programs for students in the area. It’s a wonderful place to go if you want to learn more about the local area.

The building itself was finished in 1964 and is one of the oldest cultural institutions in Santa Barbara, California.

Santa Barbara County Courthouse

The Santa Barbara County Courthouse is arguably one of the most beautiful buildings in the city. This Spanish-Colonial style courthouse finished construction in 1929. You can take a self-guided tour to get an interesting visual history lesson about the area. The tours are free.

You can also take a virtual tour of the mural room to see large, detailed paintings about the early history of the city, starting before the Spanish even arrived. The mural room used to be the Supervisors’ Assembly room, but now it’s used for weddings and various social events.

One of the more notable parts of the courthouse, the clocktower, was installed in 1929, and is still ticking to this day.

Old Mission Santa Barbara

The Old Mission Santa Barbara is a stunning, active parish church. It was first founded in 1786 by the Spanish Franciscans. The present church was constructed in 1820, with three different churches being present before that. The Old Mission also has an Archive-Library, which collects historical and cultural resources about Franciscan history, Missions, and the communities they interacted with. 

You can go to the Old Mission for daily self-guided tours, any day of the week. You can also schedule a private tour in advance, with a group of at least 10. If you’re lucky enough to visit on Memorial Day Weekend, you can view beautiful artwork in the year I Madonnari Street Painting Festival. This event showcases large-scale pastel chalk masterpieces.

Granada Theatre

The Granada Theatre is a renovated theater located in downtown Santa Barbara. Originally built in 1924, and reopened to the public after renovations in 2008.  It is the home to several different types of entertainment. The Santa Barbara Symphony, State Street Ballet, Opera Santa Barbara, UCSB Arts & Lectures, and so much more. This theater is also the only one in Santa Barbara that features a 4K HD resolution cinema system with a 40’ screen for feature length films.

The theater is open year round, and with 1,553 seats, it’s a great place to go for a variety of entertainment. The Granada also offers its Founder’s room to local nonprofits for meetings, conferences, gatherings and more. Learn more about the Granada Theatre here.

There are several beautiful buildings that didn’t make this list. You can view more of them and visit this website to learn more about all the beautiful architecture of this historical area.

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Estate Liquidation

What is an Estate Liquidator?

by Mercedes

An estate liquidator can help you appraise, price, and sell the items you have in your estate for the highest price possible. Liquidating your estate on your own can be a really stressful process, hiring a professional estate liquidator can make things easier and faster for you.

There are several ways they can handle the process for you. Estate buyouts, estate sales, and buyout services are just some of the ways they can help you. They most commonly work with senior citizens who are downsizing to go into assisted living or when people die and their estate needs to be liquidated. But, there can be several reasons why you may need one.

Estate Sale

If you choose to go with an estate sale, you’ll need an estate liquidator to help ensure you’re selling your items at a good price. Before the sale, an estate liquidator can be responsible for several tasks. Sometimes it can be difficult to assess the real value of the items you’re trying to sell. That’s where an estate liquidator can come in handy, to appraise your items to ensure that they are priced low enough to sell, and high enough to make you money. 

Then they may also help you with cleaning up the location of the sale, the items in the sale, and the advertising of your estate sale. Marketing can make the difference between a successful and failed estate sale. A good estate liquidator will know how to market your sale properly to your local area.

After the sale is done, they can also assist you with packing up the items, figuring out how to deliver items to the buyers, and cleaning up what is leftover at the estate. So you don’t have to stress about the cleanup.

To Summarize

To sum it all up, an estate liquidator can help walk you through the entire process of an estate sale and make it all a ton easier for you. So you don’t have to worry about a single thing.

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Estate Sales Are Growing

by jameswyatthandley

The estate liquidation industry is rapidly growing! As more people require estate sales, the industry expands. With a lot of interested buyers, it is a great time to host an estate sale. The industry has become large enough for The New York Times to recognize the growing popularity of estate liquidations. And how could one not enjoy an estate sale? Think about how many countless treasures can be found throughout the United States. This is the beauty of this industry, you never know what you may find. For those that regularly attend estate sales, that hidden gem could be just around the corner! 

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Why Hire an Estate Liquidator?

by jameswyatthandley

Hello everybody! Thank you for reading my blog. Today we are going to go over why one would hire an estate liquidator. But first we must ask, what is an estate sale? Well an estate sale is essentially a large yard sale where every item must go! This means furniture, dishware, clothing, tools, basically every household good you can imagine. So why would a person need to hold an estate sale? Well there are many reasons why one might hold a sale, but the majority of the time a sale is held after the owner of the property passes away. In this case, families of the deceased are left with a house full of items that they must do something with. This can be a large burden for those going through the grieving process, leaving many to wonder where to even start. This is where the professionals come in! Hiring an estate liquidator can be a huge relief during this stressful time. An estate liquidator will come into the home to prepare, appraise, advertise, and conduct the sale. The inheritor of the estate doesn’t have to do anything besides meet with the company to decide what plan works best for them. This works great for most people, it clears time for families that have other things to worry about, relieving much of the stress and worry involved in estate liquidations. What is the best part about hiring an estate liquidation company? The value that company brings to your estate. Established estate liquidators have ways of advertising your sale to thousands of people! This brings in way more customers to your sale, driving up the price of all goods being sold. Hiring a professional allows you to make more profit, without having to do any of the work! If you have any questions on how the estate liquidation process works, don’t hesitate to call Handley Estate Sales today!

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