What to Expect at an Estate Sale Walk-Through

What a walk-through is, and how long it takes

A walk-through is a visit by the company to see the house before anyone signs anything. It is free, it usually takes between thirty minutes and an hour and a half, and it is the company's only real chance to judge the estate. Everything in the proposal that follows, the rate, the minimum, the dates, the fees, whether they take the job at all, comes from what they see in that hour. It is also the only chance you get to see the company at work before it has your keys, which is worth at least as much.

Most companies want to see the house as it is, before anyone has tidied. They will open closets, drawers and cupboards, look in the garage, the attic and the basement, and ask questions as they go. Expect one person, occasionally two; expect notes and photographs; and expect them to ask you to walk with them, because the questions come room by room. It is not an appraisal and nobody will value items for you piece by piece, though a good company will tell you if something catches its eye.

What the company is looking at

The company is answering three questions: is there enough here to sell, can a sale be run in this house, and is this a family we can work with. Each has its own tells.

Sellable volume. They are counting, roughly, the items that a buyer will pay real money for, and estimating what the whole house might gross. Solid furniture, tools and workshop contents, kitchenware from good makers, jewelry, coins, collections, art, instruments, cameras, quality clothing, outdoor and garage equipment all register. So does the depth of the house: a company that opens every drawer is checking whether the closets are full or empty, because a house that looks full from the doorway can be mostly furniture and a house that looks plain can be full of things that draw a crowd. The what sells best guide is a fair picture of what they are tallying.

Condition and labor. How many days of sorting stand between the house as it is and a house that can be priced and staged. Boxes in the garage, a basement of unlabeled tubs, a hoarded room, a lifetime of paper all mean labor before a single tag goes on, and that labor shows up in the rate, in a set-up fee or in a decline. A house that has already been half cleared by relatives registers in the other direction: the company is wondering what has already gone.

The house as a venue. Parking and the street, the number of entrances, stairs, the width of doorways, whether the neighborhood or the building allows a public sale, whether there is a room that can be locked, whether the power and water are on. A company has run sales in a hundred houses and knows within minutes whether this one will be easy or hard to run.

The family. This is the part nobody says out loud. The company is listening for who has authority to sign, whether the family agrees, whether items are still leaving the house, whether expectations are near the market, and whether the person in front of it will answer the phone and make a decision. A company's worst sales are nearly always the ones with a dispute behind them, and experienced ones would rather decline than referee. If you are an executor, say so, and say what stage the estate is at; the executor's guide explains what the company may reasonably want to know.

What to have ready

The walk-through goes better, and the quote is more accurate, when a few things are settled before the doorbell rings.

What you should not have done is clean out. The instinct to tidy, to donate the obvious junk, to price the good pieces or to let relatives take what they like before a stranger sees the house is the single most expensive mistake families make, and it happens before the walk-through more often than after. The company wants to see the house as it was lived in. The what not to do guide explains each of those mistakes and what it costs.

What to ask during the walk-through

You will not get through a long list, and you do not need to; the written proposal and a follow-up call can carry the rest. These are the questions best asked in the house, where the answers mean something.

• What do you think the sale would bring in, roughly, and what is that based on? A range is the honest answer. A single confident number is a sales pitch, and no number at all is a company that has not looked.
• Is there anything here you would send to auction or a specialist rather than sell in the house? The answer tells you whether the company knows the difference and whether it is looking.
• What is your rate, is there a minimum, and what is charged separately? The commission guide explains what each answer means.
• What would you do with this house? Where the checkout goes, which rooms open, how the crowd moves, where the line forms. A company that has a plan by the end of the walk-through has run a house like this before.
• What happens to what does not sell, and who decides?
• When could you actually run it? Not "we could fit you in" but a weekend.
• Who will be in the house, and who is in charge on sale day? The person at the walk-through is not always the person who runs the sale.
• May I have a certificate of insurance and two recent references? Then call the insurer and the references yourself. The insurance guide explains what cover to ask about and how to confirm it in one phone call.

The full list of questions is grouped by topic with what a good answer sounds like; take it to the follow-up call. Keep notes at the walk-through, because two companies' answers blur together by the end of the week.

How to read their reaction

You learn as much from how the company behaves in the house as from what it says. A few things to watch for.

Attention. A company that opens drawers, looks at the underside of a table, turns over a plate to read the mark and asks about the boxes in the garage is a company that prices by looking. One that walks the main rooms, glances into the garage and quotes from the hallway is going to run your sale the same way.

Honesty about the estate. If the house is modest, a good company says so and tells you what it would do instead, or who it would recommend. If a company is enthusiastic about everything, it is either very kind or not looking. The guide to why companies decline explains what each reason for a no actually tells you, and it is useful to hear a hesitation for what it is.

Interest in the family, not just the contents. A company that asks who has authority, whether the family is agreed and what you need from the sale is protecting itself, and by extension you, from the sale that ends in an argument.

Pressure. A contract produced on the spot with a request to sign today, a "this week only" rate, or a cash offer for the whole contents before the walk-through is finished are all reasons to slow down rather than speed up. A reputable company expects you to talk to others and puts its proposal in writing. The red flags guide lists the warning signs in full.

Finally, notice how you feel about having these people in the house for a month. They will be in the bedrooms, in the desk, in the boxes of letters. Competence matters most, but a family who dreads the crew is a family that avoids the phone, and the sale suffers for it.

After the walk-through

A written proposal should arrive within a few days: rate, minimum, every fee, proposed dates, what happens to unsolds, and what the company expects the sale to bring in. If it does not come, one polite reminder is reasonable, and then move on; a company that cannot send a proposal will not send a settlement statement either.

Do this with two or three companies rather than one, and compare the proposals on paper under the same assumptions: the same expected gross, and then half of it. The guide to getting quotes shows how to run that in a week without wasting anyone's time, and the contract checklist tells you what to look for in the document you finally sign. Once you have signed, the week-by-week timeline explains what happens next and when you will be paid.

One more thing. If a company at the walk-through tells you the estate is too small for a sale, that is not the end of the road. The minimums guide sets out what to do with a modest estate, and most of it does not need a company at all.

What to do next

To arrange walk-throughs with more than one company at once, describe the estate once and local companies will reach out to you, free; the five nearest are emailed directly, other local companies can see the request too, and you can close the request in one click when you have the visits you want. Put the timeline and anything unusual about the house in the description, so the companies that call are the ones that can help.

Before the first visit, read the what not to do guide, and take the questions list with you.

Frequently asked questions