Estate Sales Don’t Always Work the Way You Plan

Estate sales have been around a long time and are a well-known way to dispose of goods when closing out a house or after someone passes away. It’s a chance to clean out an entire house of goods that the family and relatives don’t want and make some money in the process. The primary goal of an Estate Sale is to liquidate the house belongings…sometimes this can go too far.

There is a great story that has been circulating both as a funny story but also a warning to many who are planning to hold an Estate Sale to dispose of an entire house of goods. This Estate Sale didn’t go exactly as planned and had some very serious consequences that affected more than the owners of the estate.

Mary Andrews, a resident of Longmont CO, recently had an extremely bad (and surprising) day. Mary was holding a “garage sale” and like all garage sales, didn’t sell everything she had. This left her with a dilemma of what to do with all the remaining goods.  

Her plan was to dispose of these items through donations to charities and other options to clear out her remaining items. This is where the unfortunate (and surprising) situation happened to her. Before Mary cleaned up all the leftover items from her lawn, she left her house without locking her door (never a good idea). Later, when she came home, she found lots of people wandering around her yard and inside her home. Upon further investigation, she suddenly (and shockingly) noticed they were picking up and taking everything that was not nailed down. They were literally ransacking her house!!

How was this happening? What was going on that would have caused such a ruckus and why were there so many people in her house taking all her prized possessions. The answer was simple yet unfortunate. There happened to be and estate sale going on only two doors down from her house. Since it was so close to the other house, people mistakenly believed that her house was the one that was conducting the estate sale. And in this particular estate sale, they had advertised that anything left was free and you could come by and take it. So people mistakenly believed that everything left over, which included the items in her house, were all left over and free for anyone who wanted them.

Sad, but true…like most true stories. Mary had lost thousands of dollars of her prized possessions due to some unplanned circumstances. The police filed a report on the incident but ended up closing the case due to the lack of suspects. Fox News reported on this incident in "Colorado house ransacked after estate sale mix-up."

While this was an unusual and unfortunate incident for Mary, there are some positives to this story for anyone holding an estate sale. First, it shows that people who are having an estate sale can expect very enthusiastic buyers, even if they are not giving the items away for free. Second, Estate sales have proven to be a great way for heirs to dispose of property they do not want. Today, people are using the label “estate sale” to dispose of goods even if they aren’t moving out of the house. It has been translated into meaning “we are disposing of many of our household goods that are still in the house.” Finally, many are using this approach as a precursor to downsizing prior to moving into a smaller residence.

Whatever the reason, they are a great mechanism for disposing of goods. Just don’t make the mistake of leaving your house unattended and make sure you label your sale as to what should go and what should stay. Even in a garage sale, you should always mark merchandise as “not for sale” if you want to keep people from wanting to buy it or walk away with it.