Most Common Mistakes – Estate Services

The lessons in the stories above are repeated throughout the country every day. Everyone in the business faces the same problems. A local auctioneer once said ” In most cases I’d love to trade them straight across, what they threw away for what we got in the auction”. I chose the following, from a company on the other side of the country, because it is well worded (and I always think of how many more cases there are in between).

Five Common Mistakes

The following was taken from the website of Jones Estate Cleanouts and is used with their generous permission. They have done a great job of summarizing the mistakes that all of us in the estate liquidation business see far too often.

Below is a list of the top five most common mistakes people make when cleaning out an estate. Don’t say it won’t happen to you and don’t say we didn’t warn you.

The NUMBER ONE mistake and the MOST COSTLY mistake that family members and/or executors make is not letting a professional look at the contents of the estate BEFORE they throw anything away.

The best way to avoid making a costly mistake like this, is to NOT remove anything from the household before letting a professional such as us look at the items. It may look like garbage, it may be broken, it may need paint, it may be torn, unusable, moldy, have water damage, or even smell bad, but it may have value. You will never know unless you have an experienced person look at the items before throwing them into the garbage or dumpster.

The NUMBER TWO mistake is being embarrassed by the amount of junk or garbage that has collected in the household.

A real professional or a representatives from a professional company like Jones Estate Cleanouts understand situations like this. As we age, we accumulate things. Some people accumulate more things than others. Some elderly people are such that they cannot take care of themselves, or the circumstances around them and things get messy. There is nothing you can show us that we have not already seen, so please do not be embarrassed.

The NUMBER THREE mistake is either donating items, giving things away to friends, neighbors, and or strangers, or having a garage sale, pricing the items yourself, and selling items too cheaply or asking for too much money. This is another reason to have a professional such as Jones Estate Cleanouts look at the estate before it is touched.
The NUMBER FOUR mistake is discounting your own self-worth and that of your friends and relatives.

Your time is worth money, your relative’s, friend’s, spouse’s, children’s, realtor’s, lawyer’s, etc. time is also worth money. Maybe you are not being charged by your friends and relatives, but it may cost you at a later date. Most people and families quickly become overwhelmed by the amount of work it takes to clean out an entire household. We are told time and time again, “We spent the last six months (or year, or sometimes two years) going through all the items in this house and we have not even made a dent in it.” or, “We just don’t have alot of free time.” All the time it takes to clean out a house is more time that the property is not on the market. The taxes, rent, heating bill (the water pipes may freeze if its not paid), and/or maintenance fees still have to be paid during that time. These bills add up, no one will pay them for you.

The NUMBER FIVE mistake is renting a dumpster and paying extra tipping fees for items that don’t have to go into a landfill and can be resold, recycled, or donated.