The Estate Sale Diaries: Real Estate Parallels and Bravo's Million Dollar Listing

Despite all the reality shows featuring antiques, pawn shops appraisals, picking and collecting, I still find Million Dollar Listing on Bravo to be the most relatable to the estate sale business.  

Bravo's logo.  Image from Wikipedia and used to illustrate the network that shows Million Dollar Listing (LA and NY versions).

By no means am I valuing any item we broker the sale of at a million dollars, but the realtors' explanations to their clients are incredibly familiar.  

This is a good offer – the client wanted more, but the price is still fair.  We will start it lower than you want.  You paid a premium to personalize it; it is what you like, but the new owner will want something different. 

Whether buying from an individual or selling for them, the psychology of the seller is the same, whether it is the sale of the house or the items that filled it.

The seller always sees his item (whether a house or porcelain bowl) as better than anyone else's.  It is the professional’s job to objectively value the item.  Sometimes an item will be sold at a loss because the market changed.  The real estate market has taken an incredibly well-publicized and gut-wrenching hit.  Less publicity has been received by the dramatic downturn of Victorian furniture, Fostoria, depression glass and other decorating pieces associated with the typical grandmother's house in the wake of mid-century modern’s rise in demand and price.  You can either wait out the market, hope for the perfect buyer who will pay the premium for the item he's been looking everywhere for, or move it at a loss.  The market and the professional set the price, not the owner.

Image via hermanmiller.com.  Customizable and starting at $4499 (new).

This Eames chair was your father’s favorite chair and you have many fond memories of him relaxing in it with his New York Times.  It holds many memories for you, but to a professional and every potential buyer, it is a used Eames chair.  I do not mean any insult to your father’s memory and I am sure he was an incredible father and a wonderful human being.  The reality is that unless he was famous, his chair does not have an increased monetary value.  Even if he was famous, to sell it at a higher price than a comparable Eames chair (in style, condition and age) requires proof of ownership – either photographic documentation or documents signed by you or your father’s representative certifying that it was in fact part of his estate.  Ownership only matters when it is significant.  I'm sorry, but sentiment has no monetary value.

If an interested buyer makes an offer lower than what the seller is asking, that is not a personal insult.  While a seller often views the professional’s price as firm, most professionals set an item at a price that would be both ideal and fair.  The professional expects offers and negotiation.  The word negotiate should not be anathema to the seller, it is the reality of the exchange of goods.  The only time negotiation is off the table is at auction – and even then, it is only the truly exceptional pieces (as evaluated by objective professionals) that can actually command prices above their estimates.  (Consider the ultra-high-end art market, where the sale of one painting could buy several houses featured on Million Dollar Listing).  Negotiation is expected in any person-to-person sale.  You cannot negotiate at Barneys, but you can in real estate, antique stores and estate sales.  Set your expectations lower than what you are asking, not higher.

For all the stress inherent in these person-to-person sales, maybe I would get a higher return on my investment of time and energy working in real estate.  Something to consider. . .

Taking this one deep breath at a time

Some drama rattles me so much that I have to step back and allow it (and my racing heart) to settle down.  The inspiration for this blog was indeed these absolutely unbelievable tales, but I am afraid I must withhold the latest for now lest I slip from anonymous retelling to reality.  

The Estate Sale Diaries - Beware The Clingy Client

Two children are playing in a playroom.  Billy has his train and Emily is plundering the toy box in search of something entertaining.  She pulls out Billy’s old G.I. Joe from the detritus and begins running around the room playing with the toy.  Suddenly, threatened with the loss of his toy, Billy has no interest in his train and desperately wants his G.I. Joe back, never mind that he last played with it two years before. 

The above story is a basic phenomenon seen in playrooms around the country.  What most people don’t realize is that it is an aspect of human nature that never quite leaves us.  Take the case of the Clingy Client:

When we conduct estate sales, it is under the pretense that a client is ready to part with his things – whether he has inherited these things from a relative or accumulated them over his own lifetime.  Many clients are happy to see their possessions go to a new home.  However, every so often we encounter the client who, for all intents and purposes, was ready to part with his things until another potential owner comes along.  Then, and only then, does this client come up with alternative uses for the item, thus inflating the price he must now receive in order to part with it.

Sorting through the possessions accumulated over the course of a lifetime is a time-consuming and emotionally taxing process full of difficult decisions. This stressful situation is only compounded by the overwhelming clutter that seems to expand with each drawer emptied.  Of the hundreds, or thousands, of items processed for a sale, it is possible that an item or two were left in error.  It is also possible that the client forced himself to part with an item, but found himself regretting the potential loss significantly.  These are all normal issues with normal clients.  We, like any compassionate firm, will “rescue” an item from the sale when we are notified the client has just realized that he cannot find his uniform buttons, grandfather’s watch, or other small, but meaningful item.  We, like any business, must, however, draw the line when a client’s list of items to pull from the sale is longer than the list of items to be sold and only seems to increase as the sale progresses. 

The Clingy Client is why most estate sale companies prevent clients from attending their own sales.  This client is also why you may arrive at the door of an advertised estate sale only to find a Post-It note (left by the Clingy Client) declaring the sale cancelled - to the surprise of both the potential customers and the contracted professional.  


Once the Clingy Client sees someone else with his “toy,” the situation deteriorates for the estate sale agent, the sale customer interested in the “toy” and the Clingy Client himself.  In the most extreme cases, the thought of parting with an item is enough to catapult a planned sale from a profit-earning opportunity for both the estate sale company and the client into a waste of the company’s time, customer’s travel time and the client's energy convincing himself and everyone else he was ready for a sale in the first place.

Trademark Clingy Client moves:

• You, a customer who has unknowingly entered the domain of the Clingy Client, ask about an item and are not told the objective facts (it is 200 years old and in remarkable condition), but the personal history that has led to a subjective price (it was my dear mother’s favorite serving piece).

• Whether you are the estate sale company or an estate sale customer, the client segues from the sentimental value to a critique of the perceived low price it has been assigned.  Whether during a public sale or during preparations, if a client disagrees with pricing, it is best to bring the discussion of the purchase, and the sale as a whole, to a close.     

• Unless you are a Dishonest Estate Sale Company (with ridiculously low prices to empty the house with minimal expended effort or advertising expenses), a client should not have grounds to disagree with an expert’s designated prices.  If he does, and if he makes a big fuss about it, there are deeper rooted issues at play.

• No items are freed up for sale.  (Normal clients, upon seeing the types of things that do command cash in the resale market, often decide they would prefer the money to extra furniture or dishes and add items to the sale as it proceeds.)  

• Items are pulled from the sale in front of customers, or outside of public sale hours without communicating with the estate sale company.  Once a contract is signed, the client has committed to paying a percentage commission on items that sell.  If significant and expensive items are repeatedly pulled from the sale, the company is losing potential revenue.  When Trent Services commits to a sale, we consider the most significant pieces first.  Our commission and effort would be excessive for an average household.  However, we have had several Clingy Clients who have pulled the pieces that warranted our services leaving us with sub-standard collections to sell.  Naturally, these sales came to a quick and unpleasant end.

• Screaming.  In my experience, the clients who end up screaming, either for customers or estate sale companies to get out of their houses, are Clingy Clients.  They could probably be further diagnosed and described by an expert in the mental health field, but I do not have such expertise.

Beware the Clingy Client.  Even if the sale promises chests full of precious metals, you are better off staying in for the weekend.  After all, he will demand top dollar (for pieces that could not command top dollar in the best showrooms) only to decide he should never have considered parting with them in the first place.