Estate sale experience. Any suggestions?

Hire a reputable estate sale company. They'll have people who know the realistic value of your mom's things and will price them accordingly. If they're really worth their salt, they'll have a hauler who can take out everything that doesn't sell.

We hired a woman who specialized in my parents' area. She brought in her people five days before the sale and they staged everything, priced it, and had everything ready to go, including garden and garage items. She also has an email list of 1,500 people, didn't dicker on pricing, and had the whole thing running like a top.

We ended up with 500 people going through the sale in one day and made $17,000 before her 32% commission (which was worth every penny). She also had a hauler come in who cleared out what didn't sell (a lot of it, sadly) for $1600.

Two days after that, the Realtor's contractors came in and started sprucing up the house. It sold about three days after it went on the market, and we walked away having made a tidy profit.

If you have no expectations of making a lot of money and you have no problem with letting everything go--yep, an estate sale is a good plan.

I think it's good plan. Make sure ALL the stuff family might want pulled out and actually moved off the premises before the sale. We lost a lot of stuff when we moved mom & dad. And the yard sale we staged? Garnered us less than $500 and this was 3000 sf home, packed to the gills with stuff. It just wasn't valuable stuff.

We had one for my MIL. My BIL found a great lady and daughter team. She came in and arranged the whole thing. Took 30% of what was gotten. Cleaned out what was not sold. BIL paid extra to have her clean for the house sale. I would have given her 50%. The sons lived 7 hrs, 12 hrs and 15 hrs away. It was nice.

As long as nobody is under the impression the sale should actually do more than break even it can be a good option, I think it's much less work than trying to deal with it any other way.

Having an estate sale was a good solution for us after my dad’s death. The house sold quickly and had a fast closing date. My brother lives 6 hours away, and it was just my husband and me here to deal. Also adding time pressure was the fact that my husband had a work project coming up that was 16 hour days for weeks on end.

We found an estate guy who sold all contents and hauled the rest off. I believe he took 35% of the sales. Ask around, different companies will have different policies.