How to Advertise an Estate Sale Yourself: Signs and Listings

Where estate sale buyers actually come from

Most people who walk into an estate sale found it online, in the days before, while planning their weekend. They looked at the sales within driving distance, looked at the photos, and picked the two or three worth the trip. A smaller group saw a sign on the way somewhere else and turned in. A smaller group still heard about it from a neighbor, a collector friend or a local community page. Those three sources, in that order, are the whole job.

The order tells you where to spend your time. A well-written listing with forty clear photos, posted a week ahead, brings people from three counties away who came for what they saw. Do the listing first and do it properly; then make the signs; then tell people directly.

None of it costs much: listing a sale is free on this site, the photos come from a phone, and the signs are a few dollars of poster board. The guide to running your own sale covers the rest of the job; this one is only about getting the crowd.

Listing the sale online: what a listing needs

An online listing is the single most effective thing you will do, and it has a fairly fixed shape. Buyers scan dozens at a time, looking for the same handful of facts in the same places. Give them those facts and they read on; make them hunt and they move to the next sale.

You can list your own sale free on this site. It gets a page of its own with up to 200 photos, shoppers who have asked for email alerts in your area hear about it when it goes live, and the street address stays hidden until 24 hours before the sale by default, which is the norm in the trade and the right choice for a private house. The guide to listing your own estate sale online walks through the form field by field.

Whatever site you use, the title should read like a buyer's search, not a headline. "Summerville estate sale: tools, mid-century furniture, sewing, full kitchen" tells a buyer everything in one line. "Everything must go" tells them nothing.

Photos that bring people out

Buyers decide from the photos: whether to come at all, whether to come early, and what to bring the truck for. A listing with six dim photos of a living room draws a fraction of the crowd the same house draws with forty good ones, because the buyer who collects cast iron cannot see the cast iron and the buyer who wants a dining set cannot see the dining set.

• Lead with the best five. The first few photos are all many buyers see before deciding whether to open the listing. Put the strongest pieces there, not the front of the house.
• Shoot in daylight with the lights on too. Open the curtains. A phone camera does the rest.
• Get close. One photo of a whole garage says there is a garage. Six of the workbench, the drawers pulled open and the power tools lined up tell the tool buyers to come at opening.
• Include the ordinary. Linens, kitchenware, holiday decorations and garden tools all have buyers, and those buyers will not come unless they can see there is something for them.
• Photograph marks and labels on anything that might be collected: the underside of pottery, the back of a chair, the stamp on silver.

Photograph after the house is set out and priced, not before. A sorted room with things on tables photographs like a sale; the same room mid-sort photographs like a chore. The guide to photographing an estate sale goes through the shot list room by room.

Writing the description so the right people find it

Buyers search listings by the things they collect. Someone looking for vintage Pyrex, fishing tackle or hand tools types those words and looks for listings that contain them. Your description should be a plain, specific list of what is in the house, in the words a buyer would use. It is not the place for adjectives.

A good description reads something like: "Contents of a three-bedroom home lived in for fifty years. Workshop with hand and power tools, hardware, ladders. Mid-century bedroom set, dining table and six chairs, recliners, lamps. Full kitchen including cast iron, Pyrex, everyday china and small appliances. Sewing room with two machines, fabric and notions. Books, records, costume jewelry, linens, holiday decorations, garden tools, patio furniture." Every noun in that paragraph is a search term.

Be honest about what is not there. If there is no jewelry and no antiques, say the house is everyday household goods and tools; the people who want those will come, and the people who would have been disappointed will not leave a bad impression on the sidewalk. Do not call anything rare or valuable; a listing that oversells reads as one to skip. The guide to what sells best will help you decide which categories to mention near the top.

Signs that get read from a moving car

A sign has one job: to get a driver who was going somewhere else to turn in. It has about two seconds to do it. That rules out almost everything families put on signs; what is readable at speed is three or four large words and an arrow.

• Words: "ESTATE SALE" and an arrow. Nothing else on the directional signs. "Sat & Sun" is fine on the sign at the house.
• Size: letters at least four inches tall, thick strokes, dark on light or the reverse. A marker line that looks bold on the kitchen table disappears at fifty feet.
• Placement: one at every turn between the nearest main road and the house, on the driver's side, at window height, far enough before the turn to react.
• Number: more than you think. A route with three turns needs five or six signs, because a driver who misses one turn is gone.

Check the local rules before you put anything on a utility pole, a median or a public verge. Many cities regulate temporary signs and some remove them on sight; the guide to permits, signs and local rules shows how to check your own city in a few minutes. Neighbors' front lawns, with permission, are the safest places.

Put the signs out early on each sale morning and collect every one when the sale closes. Signs left up are the one thing that reliably turns a neighborhood against the next sale.

When to post, and when the signs go out

Regular buyers plan their weekend on Wednesday and Thursday. A listing that goes live on Friday night has missed most of them; one that goes live ten days ahead is seen, saved and checked again as photos are added. Post the listing as soon as the dates are fixed and you have a first set of photos, and keep adding as the house is set out.

Signs work the other way round. They belong out at first light on each sale day and in each night. A sign that has been up since Wednesday has been driven past a hundred times by Saturday and is no longer seen at all.

Choose the dates with the calendar in mind: a holiday weekend, a big local event or the first warm Saturday of spring all change who is free, and the guide to picking a weekend covers season and weather. Make sure the dates in the listing, on the signs and on your own calendar agree, and that the hours are ones you can keep.

Neighbors, community pages and the people who already collect

Local community pages and neighborhood groups are read by exactly the people within driving distance, and a short post with the dates, the town, three photos and a link to the listing will reach many of them. Keep it to the facts, and answer questions in the comments plainly.

Tell the neighbors in person, or with a note through the door. They will be affected by the parking whether you tell them or not, and a neighbor who has been warned is a neighbor who does not call the city; several will also come, and they will tell others.

If the house holds a real collection, find the people who collect it. A club, a local dealer or a specialist group will pass the word to buyers who would never have looked at a general listing, and a serious collector who drives an hour is worth a dozen browsers. Send them photos of the best pieces and any marks. This is also where you may learn that a piece deserves a specialist route rather than a sale table; the guide to finding out whether something is valuable explains how to check before you price it.

The small things that grow the crowd

Two sales with the same house, the same listing and the same signs can still have very different first mornings. The difference is usually a handful of details that regular buyers notice and families do not.

• Say how the door will work. Regulars want to know whether there is a numbers system, whether they can line up early, and how many people go in at once. "Numbers at 7:30, doors at 8, twenty in at a time" gets the serious buyers there at 7:30. Sales listed here can offer a free digital line: you print one QR sign, shoppers scan it to take a number, and their phone tells them when they are up, which spares you the paper list and the arguments about it. The guide to numbers and lines explains the options.
• Publish the address on time. If it is hidden until the day before, make sure it appears then; a buyer who plans a route on Friday night and finds no address goes elsewhere.
• Answer messages the same day. "Is the dining table still available?" is a buyer deciding whether to come. A reply within the hour brings them; silence sends them to a sale that answered.
• Post your card and cash policy. A cash-only sale should say so, so buyers bring it.
• Make the parking obvious. A sign at the house saying where to park, and a helper waving cars in for the first hour, stops the jam that makes people drive on.

What to do next

Fix the dates, take the photos once the rooms are set out, and list the sale free with the address hidden until the day before. Make more signs than you think you need, check the sign rules for your city, then tell the neighbors and the community pages and answer every message you get.

The sale day checklist takes you hour by hour through the days themselves. If the whole job looks bigger than the family can carry, you can describe the estate once and local companies will reach out to you, free, with no obligation to hire any of them.

Frequently asked questions