How does estate sale pricing work?
Pricing items for an estate sale is best done by a professional with subject matter expertise.
Licensed appraisers are most qualified to carry out this work and the formal appraisals they provide can be invaluable in realizing the best price possible for the sale item because they give reassurance to both the buyer and seller about the item’s worth. This may be particularly important with high value items such as fine art.
Estate liquidators will be experts in knowing what an item will sell for and pricing it at fair market value. Not only will they have many years of estate selling experience on their team but they will have access to extensive estate sale pricing resources, both online and offline. This is one of many reasons to partner with a professional estate liquidator when liquidating an estate. Read: how to have an estate sale.
Understanding how estate sale pricing works means understanding market conditions. Because sale items vary greatly from one estate to another there is no single guide or resource available to cover every kind of item. One of the attractions of estate sales to shoppers is that they can find rare and unique items that are unavailable to them elsewhere. In cases such as these, where an item is highly collectible or in demand, prices may naturally be on the higher side. However for more common household items, sellers are competing with retailers selling their brand new equivalents or potentially a multitude of online marketplace sellers offering their own secondhand alternatives, so for these items estate sale prices must be more competitive, especially because the goal is to sell them in a short time frame. The cost and time burden of moving, storing or disposing of leftover items after an estate sale typically means that an aggressive pricing strategy is usually in the best interests of the estate owner than not. Read: What happens to estate sale leftovers?
The age and condition of sale items will impact their price as will their popularity in the market at the time of the sale, factoring for changing trends. How much an item will sell for can also be affected by less obvious factors such as how well run the estate sale is, how busy it is and the presentation of the home and environment. Prices will also vary from region to region for certain categories and can even reflect changing seasonal demand. Prices at estate sales tend to be much higher than those at garage and yard sales, not least because of the often superior quality of the inventory on offer. Read about the differences between estate sales and garage sales at pros and cons of estate sales.
How does estate sale pricing work?
Ultimately pricing items for an estate sale is a balancing act.
If you are thinking of having an estate sale, it is important not to dispose of items because you think they have no value. An item may have more value than you realize. Even with items of little worth it is important to understand that everything has value to someone. The larger the estate sale inventory the more shopper interest the sale will attract, which helps the estate liquidator cross-sell and upsell to the more expensive and harder to sell items in the estate. The little things help sell the larger things.
An estate liquidator will also know when to use judgement in discounting the sale price of an item if interest looks limited. It is usual for discounts to be applied to estate sale inventory as the estate sale progresses, to ensure that the estate owner’s goal of liquidating the entire estate is met and they are not left with the hefty burden of storing, moving or disposing of unsold items.
It’s also worth estate owners noting that if they are conducting their own online price research that they should filter search results by ‘sold’ prices because asking prices are typically inflated and can be misleadingly on some popular consignment websites.
Ultimately pricing items for an estate sale is a balancing act. You want to realize a fair market value for them but you don’t want them priced too high to sell. This is where the expert judgement of a professional estate liquidator can prove invaluable.
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