What a pricing strategy has to achieve
Every estate sale has two goals that pull against each other. The family wants the highest gross, and so do you, because commission is a share of gross. The family also wants an empty house on Sunday night, and so do you, because everything left behind is either a clean-out you are paid little for, a donation run on your own time, or a buy-out dealer paying pennies on the dollar. A pricing strategy is the set of decisions that gets you the best of both, and a company that only chases one of them ends up with either a house full of overpriced furniture or a settlement statement the family cannot believe.
The right frame is that you are pricing a room, not an item. A single lamp priced a little high costs nothing. A whole house priced a little high on the first morning, when the regulars who drive the biggest purchases decide within minutes whether this sale is worth their time, costs the sale. The reverse is also true: a house priced to clear on day one leaves money the discount schedule would have found on day two. And the buyers who spend the most are repeat buyers, who remember. A company known for fair, consistent pricing draws a bigger crowd to its next sale.
Research before the first tag goes on
Most of a house prices itself from experience. A sofa, a set of dishes, a box of hand tools: you have sold a hundred of each, you know what this town pays, and the tag takes five seconds. Research is for the handful of pieces that will account for a large share of the gross, where a wrong number is expensive in either direction. Finding them is what the walk-through is for, and it is worth walking a second time once the family has taken what it is keeping.
The research itself is not mysterious. Sold records on auction platforms, not asking prices, tell you what a comparable piece actually fetched and how recently. Maker's marks, labels and signatures let you search precisely rather than by description. Your own records from past sales are the best local comparison you have, provided you keep them. A dealer you can call for a category you do not know well is worth cultivating. Our guide to finding out whether something is valuable lays out the method.
Research also tells you what should not be in the sale at all. A signed painting, a coin collection or a piece of fine jewelry may do markedly better at a specialist auction than on a folding table, and the family should hear that from you before the sale, not from a buyer afterward. Our guide to estate sales versus auctions covers the trade-off; your contract should say what you charge for placing a piece elsewhere.
Research in one pass, price in another
Doing both at once is how the good pieces get a hurried number. Walk the house first with a phone, photographing marks and setting aside anything that needs a lookup. Do the lookups in the evening, and price the whole house the next day with the answers in hand.
Three tiers, priced three different ways
Nearly every house sorts into three tiers, and each is priced by a different logic. Treating them the same is the most common pricing mistake a newer company makes: either the bulk gets the same careful attention as the headline pieces, which is slow, or the headline pieces get the same quick tag as the bulk, which is costly.
| Tier | What is in it | How it is priced | What happens to it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Headline pieces | Quality furniture, fine jewelry, art, collections, anything with a name or a mark | Individually, from research, with a firm first-day figure and a floor decided in advance | Discounted last and least, often excluded from the posted schedule |
| The middle | Ordinary good furniture, a full kitchen, linens, lamps, rugs, garden tools, working appliances | From experience and your own records, at what local buyers pay, with room for the discount days | Follows the posted schedule; most of the gross comes from here |
| The bulk | Paperbacks, glassware, clothing, holiday decorations, the contents of the junk drawer | By the lot, bag or box, priced to move from the first hour | Cleared fast so the rooms read as shopped and the crew can focus on what matters |
The middle tier is where a company's local knowledge earns its rate; the guide to what common household items sell for can help a newer crew, with the caveat that every range in it depends on condition, maker and local demand. The bulk tier is where the temptation to over-tag lives. Nobody is coming to your sale for the glassware, but a room full of unsold glassware at closing is a room you have to empty. Fill-a-bag pricing and a free box by the door are not giving things away; they are what stops the last day from becoming a clean-out you are not paid for. What sells shifts with fashion and region, and our guide to what sells best at estate sales covers the categories that draw buyers now and the ones that quietly do not.
Discount days: the schedule and its exceptions
A posted discount schedule is what lets you price the first day with some ambition and still empty the house. A common pattern is full price on the first day, a posted percentage off on the second, and a deeper cut on the last, often half. The numbers are yours to set and companies vary; what matters more is that the schedule is decided before the doors open, posted where buyers can see it, and applied consistently, so your staff are not negotiating the rules with every customer.
The schedule has a cost, and you should price with it in mind. Regular buyers know it, and some will look at a piece on Friday and gamble that it will still be there at half price on Sunday. That is fine for the bulk and most of the middle. It is a problem for the headline pieces, so most companies hold those out of the posted discount, mark them plainly as firm or discounted at the company's discretion, and decide on offers piece by piece. Our guide to which day is best to shop is written for buyers and is worth reading from your side of the table: it is the calculation your regulars are making.
Once the basic schedule works, two refinements are worth adding: a further cut in the final hours of the last day, which draws a second crowd, and discounting by category, holding furniture at a smaller cut because it is the hardest thing to remove. Both need clear signage.
A negotiation policy your staff can apply without you
Offers are part of the trade, and how your crew handles them decides both the gross and the mood of the sale. The mistake is to leave it to judgment: a new staff member faced with a persistent buyer will either refuse every offer and lose sales, or accept a bad one to end the conversation. Write the policy down, keep it to a few lines, and go over it before every sale.
What a written negotiation policy covers
- Whether offers are taken on the first day at all, and if so on what: many companies take none until the afternoon, or none below a set dollar figure
- On later days, how far below the posted price a floor staff member may go on their own, and above what figure they must ask the person in charge
- Which items are firm, and how they are marked so staff and buyers can both see it
- How to take an offer you cannot accept now: a name and number on a card, to be called if the piece is still there on the last day
- How to say no: a short, friendly sentence that names the discount schedule and leaves the door open
- Who decides on bundles, and how a bundle is rung up so the accounting stays clean
The offer card is the piece most companies skip and most regret skipping. A buyer who wants a dining set at a third of the tag on Friday is not going to get it, but at four o'clock on Sunday, with the set still there and a haul-away truck coming Monday, that card is worth calling. Our guide to negotiating at an estate sale is written for buyers, and it tells you what the good ones will try. Whatever the policy says, the person applying it should never be a family member: a relative at the checkout refuses fair offers on the things that mattered to them and gives good pieces away to the first person who says something kind. The guide to working with grieving families covers how to ask them to stay away gently.
Gross versus sell-through: the balance in numbers
The tension becomes concrete when you look at what an unsold item actually costs. A dresser tagged high that does not sell is hauled away for a clean-out fee that rarely covers a truck and two people, sold to a buy-out dealer in a lot for a fraction of what a Saturday buyer would have paid, or donated. In each case the family receives nothing and you receive little, whereas at a somewhat lower tag it would have contributed to the gross and to your commission. Multiply that by a house, and a sale with a strong first-day gross and a full house at closing can net the family less than one priced to sell through.
The way to keep the balance is to know your floor before the sale, not on Sunday afternoon. For the headline pieces the floor is a number: what the piece would fetch through the next-best route, less what that route costs. For the middle, the floor is roughly what the buy-out dealer would pay in a lot, low enough that almost any offer from a real buyer beats it. For the bulk, the floor is zero, because the alternative is paying to remove it.
There is a limit in the other direction. A company that prices to clear from the first hour empties the house and leaves a great deal of the estate's money with resellers who knew exactly what they were buying. The guide to buying at estate sales to resell describes that buyer and the margin they need, which tells you how far below market you are when they clear your best table in the first twenty minutes.
A lower rate does not fix bad pricing
Companies sometimes compete on commission when they should compete on results. A careful family compares what reaches them, and a company that prices a house well can net a family more at a higher rate than a cheaper company that sells half as much. Your pricing record is the strongest thing you have to show at a walk-through.
Talking to the family about prices
Families are surprised by prices in both directions: the formal china is worth a fraction of what it cost, and the box of hand tools in the garage is worth more than the dining set. Our guides to grandmother's china, crystal and silver and tools and garage items exist partly so you have something to hand a family that does not want to hear it from you.
Decide before you sign what the family may see and change. Most companies show a family the prices on the higher-value pieces before the doors open, and many accept a reserve on a few named items, on the understanding that a reserved item that does not sell goes back to the family and not into the clean-out. What most companies will not do is let the family price the house or reprice it after the tags are on, and the contract should say so. The guide to what to put in your contract covers the pricing clause. The conversation is easier when you lead with what you are trying to do for them, which is not to sell their things cheaply but to sell them at all: a dresser priced at what it cost new will still be in the house on Monday, costing them money to remove.
Keep records, or you are guessing every time
The most useful pricing tool a company can build is its own history: what sold, for how much, on which day, in which part of your territory. After a dozen sales you have a local price list nobody else has, and it answers the question every family asks at the walk-through, which is what their house is likely to bring in. A company that can say it sold a similar house in the same ZIP code, and show the figures, is in a different position from one that is guessing.
At a minimum, keep the settlement figures by sale: gross, gross by day, and the share of tagged items that sold, which is your sell-through. Keep them by category if your checkout software allows, so you can see that furniture sold through and books did not, and adjust the tiers for the next house. The day-by-day pattern is the most telling: a sale that takes most of its gross on the last day at half price was tagged too high, and one that takes nearly all of it in the first morning was tagged too low. Neither is a disaster, and both are information you will not have unless you write it down.
What to do next
If you are setting a pricing policy for the first time, start with the three tiers and a written discount schedule, add the offer card, and keep the settlement figures from your next three sales. Two other guides for professionals go with this one: staffing an estate sale covers who applies the policy on the floor, and photos and listings that draw buyers covers the crowd your pricing depends on.
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Frequently asked questions
How do estate sale companies decide prices?
Most of a house is priced from experience: the company has sold hundreds of similar sofas, dish sets and tool boxes and knows what its local buyers pay. The higher-value pieces are researched individually, using sold records on auction platforms, maker's marks and dealer contacts. A posted discount schedule over the sale days then lets the company start with some ambition and still clear the house.
Should estate sale prices be firm on the first day?
Many companies hold prices firm on the first day, or take offers only on items above a set figure, and open up to offers on the second and third days alongside the posted discount. The point is consistency: a written policy that every staff member applies the same way, rather than a negotiation with each buyer about what the rules are.
What is a typical estate sale discount on the last day?
A common pattern is a posted percentage off on the second day and a deeper cut on the last, often half price, with the higher-value pieces excluded or discounted at the company's discretion. The numbers vary by company and by region. What matters is that the schedule is decided before the sale, posted for buyers, and applied consistently.
Is it better to price high and discount, or price to sell?
Neither extreme works. Pricing high across the whole house sends the regular buyers away on the first morning and leaves furniture to be hauled away on Monday; pricing everything to clear leaves the estate's money with resellers. Price the headline pieces from research with a floor decided in advance, the middle at what local buyers pay with room for the discount days, and the bulk to move from the first hour.
Can the family set prices at an estate sale?
Most companies will show a family the prices on the higher-value pieces before the sale and accept a reserve on a small number of named items, but will not let the family price the house or change tags once they are on. The contract should say what the family may see and change. A family member should not be the one handling offers on sale day.
What is sell-through at an estate sale?
Sell-through is the share of what was tagged that actually sold by the end of the sale. It matters because everything left behind costs money to remove, donate or sell to a buy-out dealer for very little. A company tracks it alongside gross, and by day, to see whether a house was priced too high, too low, or about right.