House clear/auction advice

[sam_b]

Hi
My dad (76) has lived in the same house for 55 years and has just sold it and found another house.
His current house is huge and filled with things that he and my late mum bought and items that their parents and relatives passed on.
Dad has said he wants to start afresh in the new house and pretty much just move his clothes and himself ... I find that a little disturbing but respect his decision - my sister and I will try to remove anything sentimental (to us, he doesn’t seem to have sentimental attachment to anything). That will leave a lot of stuff - some is junk, fit for a skip, some is usable perhaps for charity, some more is possibly collectible/antique - I am no expert - things like 30s coffee set, some ornaments passed down, pictures and some old period furniture.
Does anyone have any advice as to how we help dad with this? Obviously we have Covid restrictions and limited time to resolve this ... 😯

[Cherrypie]

It sounds a bit sad but maybe he’s making things easier dealing with sentimental things while he’s still around to help you. A lot of charities are taking things but have some restrictions on timings etc

[parisdisneyfan]

When we had to clear my dads house we called a couple of house clearance companies and basically they told us what was worth selling and what wasn't. It ended up that we effectively pay them the difference between what they would charge to clear the house and what they estimated they would get at auction for the stuff that was worth selling. We had to use someone as both of us lived too far to be up and down all the time clearing it. It was a similar cost to a couple of skips or hiring vans to cart to the tip.

The house we bought a year ago was in a similar situation to your dad - 4/5 bed and they were moving to 1 bed retirement appartment. They left loads of stuff in the workshop, conservatory furniture and had had 2 skips, 1 of which was still on the drive 1/2 full! We did agree to them leaving stuff as our buyers forced them to move quicker than they had planned!

Good luck, even though your dad is moving volutarily it is still a painful process and perhaps the reason he doesn't want to go through all the stuff. xx

[Mikeandrach]

I own a house clearance company, all I’d say is be careful and thorough.
I have lost count how many times I’ve been to a job where all the good stuff was in the skip on the driveway. Things you may think have no value often do, and things you may think are valuable often aren’t.

Locality is a big factor, some things sell very well in certain areas and not so well in others. As with anything ultimately things are worth what someone’s prepared to pay, even after many years I still get the odd thing wrong, I sometimes overpay and sometimes out of caution make low offers only to then sell the item/items for several times what I expected.

If you are local and can sort stuff yourself I’d encourage you to do so, eBay/Facebook/gumtree all easy to use and eBay especially is a good barometer for pricing, always look at actual sold prices though, not asking prices

[Feebee2]

Could you ask a local auction company to come and take anything of value. I used to be in the antique business, they will do a sweep in no time at all.
Agree with pp, the things of value will the bits you completely disregard.

[sam_b]

Originally Posted by Mikeandrach

I own a house clearance company, all I’d say is be careful and thorough.
I have lost count how many times I’ve been to a job where all the good stuff was in the skip on the driveway. Things you may think have no value often do, and things you may think are valuable often aren’t.

Locality is a big factor, some things sell very well in certain areas and not so well in others. As with anything ultimately things are worth what someone’s prepared to pay, even after many years I still get the odd thing wrong, I sometimes overpay and sometimes out of caution make low offers only to then sell the item/items for several times what I expected.

If you are local and can sort stuff yourself I’d encourage you to do so, eBay/Facebook/gumtree all easy to use and eBay especially is a good barometer for pricing, always look at actual sold prices though, not asking prices

See more...

I am about an hour away, so not easy to sort ourselves as I don’t want to encourage a whole lot of strangers around to collect things from dad. He is near Manchester, so hoping that there should be a few firms to contact, but I am sceptical that they will be fair - and I mean no offence to you, I am just cynical

[Mikeandrach]

Totally agree with your cynicism. I’m a southerner with a London accent living in a rural Yorkshire village for 17+ years. I stand out like a sore thumb, so I try to be ultra fair because up here the moment I get an unhappy customer 100 others will know about it.

I probably pay slightly higher than I should, and this means taking some losses/break evens on the chin.,I’ve got unlucky and bought items genuinely believing I’d sell them overnight and still had them a year later, I’ve also had people thrust stuff at me for free that has then sold for ridiculous money.

There are a lot of cowboys/wannabes out there, I know who they are in my area but not over the Manchester way sorry.

Really must stress though that sometimes what you think is old tat is where the real money can be, I once looked at what I could see in a skip and my heart sank, I’d have paid £1000 or maybe more for the items I saw in the skip, had they been in the house, sadly a week exposed to the weather had destroyed the lot

[hvasey]

To be honest, it’s a nightmare at the moment. We had to clear my late FiL’s house in August and no one wants anything, charities that were actually open wouldn’t even take good quality furniture, the council aren’t running their scheme where they donate the good stuff and charge for taking unusable goods.
We ended up hiring a van taking the vast majority of stuff to the tip, heartbreaking to throw perfectly servicable stuff away.
It is a normal 3 bed semi but the amount of ‘stuff’ that came out of it was unbelievable, the full height wardrobes were full of stuff going back 40+ years.
It was a massive task, why keep ancient quilts and pillows or 40 years of bank statements?

[Posiesmum]

My mother died in March. She was an excessive hoarder and the house (3 bed semi) was stuffed. She also had a QVC ‘habit’ so there were boxes of quite expensive gadgets never opened. We took a few items when clearing the house and obviously any valuable things like jewellery and documents. We had planned to get British Heart Foundation to clear the rest but due to Covid this wasn’t possible. Eventually we got a local house clearance firm to do it and paid them for the service. It wasn’t cheap, but they did a great job and were able to sell on some items to reduce the cost a little.
It was quite a complicated job for them as they had to sort items into what was able to go to the tip, what was recyclable and what was re sellable.

[Leggibone]

Could you have an ‘open house’ type sale, once your dads moved the stuff he wants, and the family has grabbed the sentimental thing?
Or Prehaps on a similar tact, list the stuff on a ‘free cycle’ type page on Facebook In his local area, would just be such a shame for perfectly fine furniture to go in the bin when someone might want it/need it I don’t know if there’s any house clearance places that would take that approach over throwing it in a skip mind.