Estate Sale in a Condo, Apartment or HOA: How It Works

Can you hold an estate sale in a condo or apartment?

Often, yes, and often with conditions. Most condominium associations, apartment managers and homeowners' associations have a rule about sales held on the property, and it lands in one of three places: sales are allowed with notice; sales are allowed by permission of the board or manager, usually with limits on hours, signs and parking; or sales open to the public are prohibited outright. Which one applies to you is in the governing documents, and nobody, including this guide, can tell you without reading them.

The reason the rules exist is not spite. A public sale brings fifty strangers through a lobby, fills the visitor spaces, ties up the elevator and props open a door that is supposed to be locked. The board's concern is the other residents, and the way to get a yes is to show that you have thought about those residents before they have to.

So the first job is not staging the unit. It is finding the rule, asking in writing, and getting the answer in writing, before you book a company or a weekend. A company that has done condo sales will ask for that permission letter before it commits, because it has arrived at a building before and been turned away at the desk.

Reading the rules, and asking the right person

Where the rule lives depends on what the property is:

• A condominium. The declaration, bylaws and rules and regulations, often called the CC&Rs. Look for sections on commercial activity, garage sales, use of common elements, guests and visitors, and moving. The manager or the board secretary can send them.
• A rented apartment. The lease, and the building's house rules. The landlord or manager is the person to ask, and if the tenant has died, the executor or next of kin will be dealing with them anyway about the lease and the deposit.
• A house in an HOA. The covenants and the rules. HOAs are more likely to allow a sale, since the house has its own door and driveway, but many restrict signs, street parking and the number of sales a year, and some require a permit from the association as well as from the city. The guide to estate sale permits and local rules covers the city side.

When you ask, ask for specific things rather than a general blessing, because a general yes turns into a no on the day when nobody agreed the details. A short written request that works looks like this:

Mention the death, plainly. Boards are made of neighbors, and neighbors are kind about a bereavement in a way they are not about a resident who wants to sell furniture on a Saturday. Many will bend a rule for a family clearing a parent's home that they would enforce against anyone else.

Elevators, loading docks and moving rules

In a house, a buyer carries a dresser out the front door to a truck at the curb. In a building on the eleventh floor, that same dresser has to go down a corridor, into an elevator with pads on the walls, through a lobby and out to a loading area that may be a block away. Every large item sold at the sale makes that trip, and the building has rules about each step.

Treat the sale as a move, because to the building that is what it is. Most managed buildings require a booking for the freight or service elevator, sometimes with a deposit against damage, and limit moving to certain hours and days. Book it for the sale days and for a pickup window afterwards. If the building has only one elevator shared with residents, agree how large items will be moved without holding it for an hour on a Saturday morning; this is usually the point where the board says pickups must happen on a weekday.

A few practical consequences:

• Sell large furniture for pickup by appointment, not for carry-out during the sale. Tag it sold, take payment and a phone number, and schedule the collection for the elevator window. The guide to paying, holds and pickups explains the buyer's side of that arrangement.
• Measure the elevator and the doorways before the sale and write the measurements on the tag of anything that might not fit. A buyer who discovers on pickup day that the armoire will not go in the car is a refund and a piece back in the unit.
• Protect the common areas. Pads in the elevator, cardboard on the corridor floor, a helper holding doors. Scratches on a lobby wall are what turns a board that said yes this time into a board that says no to the next family.
• Stairs are not the answer. Buyers and helpers carrying a sofa down six flights is how someone is hurt, and the building's insurance and yours will both ask why it was allowed.

Parking, gates and getting people in the door

An estate sale's crowd is a stream of cars, and a building is designed to keep cars and strangers out. You have to build a way in for the weekend and staff it.

Parking. Find out where shoppers may legitimately park: visitor spaces, a guest lot, the street outside the gate, a nearby public garage. Put it in the listing, exactly, with the distance to the entrance. Shoppers who circle for ten minutes leave. Do not send them into residents' spaces; a towed car is a furious buyer and a complaint to the board within the hour.

The gate or the lobby. A gated community needs a code for the weekend or a family member at the gate. A building with a doorman or a desk needs the staff briefed, ideally with a written note from the manager saying the sale is authorized and shoppers are to be let up. A building with a locked lobby and a buzzer needs someone from your side at the door, all day, letting people in and, just as important, keeping the door from being propped open.

Limit the numbers. A three-bedroom house can absorb forty people. A two-bedroom unit cannot absorb ten. Most condo sales work on a strict count: a set number inside at a time, one out and one in, with the line waiting in the lobby, the corridor or their cars rather than at the unit door. Say so in the listing and at the entrance, and shoppers will accept it; what they will not accept is a rule that appears once they have climbed the stairs.

The neighbors

The neighbors are the people the board is protecting, and they are also, in a building, the people who can get a sale shut down on Saturday morning with a single phone call. Handle them before the sale rather than after.

• Tell them. A note under every door on the floor, and on the floors either side, a week ahead: what is happening, when, that it follows a death in the family, that the elevator will be busy, and a phone number for problems. People are far more patient with a thing they were warned about.
• Invite them. An hour before opening for residents of the building is a small courtesy that turns potential complainers into shoppers, and residents tend to buy the furniture, because they know it fits.
• Keep the hours civil. Not before nine in a building. Not after five. Pickups within the moving hours the building allows.
• Keep the corridor clear. Nothing staged in the hallway, no boxes stacked by the elevator, no shoppers eating on the stairs.
• Close the door of the unit when the count is full, so the line does not form against the neighbor's door. A helper stands outside it.

If a neighbor objects anyway, the person managing the door apologizes, takes their name, and passes it to whoever has the manager's number. Do not argue in a corridor. The permission letter in your pocket is what settles it, and it settles it with the manager, not with the neighbor.

Running the sale in a small space

Inside the unit, the job is the same as any estate sale, compressed. Some of what a house sale takes for granted has to be rethought:

• One way round. Set the rooms so shoppers move in a loop: in at the door, through the living room, bedrooms, kitchen, and back to a checkout table by the exit. In a small unit two people passing in a hallway is a bottleneck, and a loop prevents it.
• The checkout is by the door, and it is the only way out. With a strict entry count, the person on the door is also watching that nothing leaves unpaid. It is the same rule as any sale, but in a unit with one door it is easier to keep.
• Small items go up, large items stay put. Tables along the walls for the smalls, priced and grouped, so the floor stays open. Furniture is sold where it stands and collected later.
• Photograph everything for the listing, more than you would for a house, because many buyers of a condo sale will decide from the photographs whether the trip up is worth it. Furniture measurements in the captions save a dozen phone calls.
• Bags and wrapping at the table, not in the rooms; there is no space for it anywhere else.
• Fewer helpers than you think. One on the door, one at the checkout, one on the floor. More people in a small unit means fewer shoppers.

A short, strongly advertised sale, one or two days with limited entry, generally works better in a unit than the three-day format of a house sale. The stock is smaller, the buyers can see all of it in the photographs, and the building's tolerance is finite.

When a walk-in sale is not allowed

Sometimes the answer from the board is no, and sometimes the practicalities make a yes not worth having: a single passenger elevator, no visitor parking at all, a manager who will not brief the desk. The contents still have to go somewhere, and there are established ways to sell them that never bring a crowd into the building.

The online auction has become the standard answer to a condo estate, and for good reason: the building sees a photographer, then a few scheduled pickups, and nothing else. The guide to how online estate auctions work for families explains the costs, the timeline and the pickup day. For a small unit, read what to do when the estate is too small before calling around, because a modest apartment may be below the minimum a company will take, and knowing that early saves a week. And before you accept a single cash offer for everything, read estate buyout vs. estate sale.

Hiring a company for a condo sale

Not every estate sale company likes buildings. The work is fiddly, the crowd is capped, the elevator eats the day and the gross is smaller. The ones that do them well have a routine for it, and the way to find them is to ask about that routine:

• Have you run sales in managed buildings? Which ones, and how did you handle entry and parking?
• Will you get the permission from the board or the manager, or do you need me to?
• Can you provide a certificate of insurance naming the association, if the building asks for one? (Ask for the certificate and call the insurer named on it yourself; nothing on this site or any listing site checks it for you. The guide to estate sale company insurance shows what to ask.)
• How many people will you let in at a time, and how will the line wait?
• How do you handle large-item pickups and the elevator booking?
• Would you recommend a walk-in sale, an online auction or an appointment sale for this unit, and why?
• Is there a minimum, and does this estate meet it?

A company that answers the last question with an honest “an auction would do better here” is a company worth listening to. And if the unit is being cleared because a parent has moved rather than died, the timing and the emotional side are a little different; the guide to an estate sale when a parent moves to assisted living covers both.

What to do next

Get the rules, ask the manager in writing, and book the elevator before you do anything else; everything after that is an ordinary sale in a smaller room. Then describe the estate once, mention that it is a condo or an apartment and what the building allows, and local estate sale companies will reach out to you, free, with the format they think fits. If you would rather run it yourself and the building agrees, you can list the sale here free, with its own page and up to 200 photos, and the address stays hidden until 24 hours before the sale by default, which suits a building that does not want its name on a listing all week.

Frequently asked questions