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Cleaning out a family home and getting items ready for sale is almost always a physically and emotionally taxing process. We recently interviewed Gary Germer, (“Portland’s Estate Sale Czar,” WW, Sept. 30) a Portland appraiser and estate sale manager, as he set up a sale in the Laurelhurst neighborhood.
An estate sale is what happens when a matriarch or patriarch dies or needs to downsize to a smaller home or assisted living, and the family hires a company to deal with all the lamps and side tables and art and china that the kids don’t want. Over the course of a few days, the public is welcome to peruse the house and see the items in situ, where they are priced to sell.
But before families get to that point, there are certain steps that will make the progress less painful. Germer, 69, shared some handy tricks he’s learned over 40 years in the biz.
Make it clear who gets what. The majority of fights Germer sees are siblings saying that Mom and Dad promised them the same things. “I don’t care how old you are, you’re still the parent,” he says. “You decide who gets what.” And you need to do better than a piece of masking tape with a name on it. Write out who gets what, date it, have an attorney sign it if you’re going to be really organized (this isn’t even always necessary, Germer says) and file it with your papers, like your will.
Choose one executor. “Parents always know which of their children is the least crazy, and that’s the one who gets to be executor.” An executor is the person named in a will to manage and settle a person’s estate after they die. Don’t choose two executors—it often ends badly, Germer says.
Remember if you hid money somewhere. “I guarantee you there’s millions of dollars in the landfill that no one knows about,” Germer says. He’s come across tens of thousands of dollars hidden in sofa upholstery, and gold coins in a coffee can stashed in a garage. If you’re the type to squirrel away some bread, tell your family where it is.
Don’t presell all the good stuff. It’s going to be hard to hire an estate sale company if you’ve already sold all the big, popular items, like a midcentury modern dining room set. It costs companies about $4,000 in labor to run a sale. The commissions on selling the best stuff pays for the labor of selling all the junk.
Once you hire an estate sale company, back off. Be honest with yourself about your physical and emotional capacity to handle your own or your parents’ estate. If you do hire a company, step aside and trust them to do the work. Germer: “Either have me do it, or you do it.”
