September 18, 2024 • 39 mins
Navigating the emotional and logistical maze of downsizing is a daunting process. Discover the secrets to a seamless transition as we chat with Jeff Marks from Seattle Magpies. Jeff walks us through the entire process, from figuring out what to keep and what to sell, to managing the emotional toll of parting with cherished possessions. You'll hear touching stories, like Neil's journey to a retirement home, offering a heartfelt look into the challenges and rewards of downsizing.
Facing a hoarder house situation? Jeff shares invaluable insights on setting realistic expectations and the immense effort required to tackle such homes. With a compelling case study of Bruce, we delve into the tough decisions and strict guidelines necessary to bring order to chaos. Learn practical advice for those who must live through the liquidation process and why it's often best for homeowners to step back during their own estate sales.
Curious about the ins and outs of estate sales? Jeff breaks down how to identify valuable items that can turn a profit and the various alternative options when a full estate sale isn't feasible. From pop-up and private sales to wholesale buyouts, you'll get a comprehensive look at how to manage unsellable items and why donations are often the preferred route. We also touch on the compensation structure for such services and underscore the importance of choosing the right estate sale company to ensure a smooth, efficient process.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dennis Day (00:00):
Hi everyone.
This is Getting your Edge howto Right-Size your Home and Life
podcast.
I am your co-host, dennis Day,and I'm here today with my
co-host, judy Gratton.
Can you say hello, judy?
Judy Gratton (00:13):
I can say hello Dennis, hello Dennis, hello
everybody.
Dennis Day (00:17):
Today we are here with Jeff Marks of Seattle
Magpies and he's going to talkto us about his business that
helps people before they selltheir home, whether you're
downsizing or not just selling.
So let's introduce Jeff Marksfrom Seattle Magpies.
Tell us a little bit about youand your business, jeff.
Jeff Marksz (00:38):
Yeah, as you said, we're Seattle Magpies and we're
what we call a full serviceliquidator.
When someone's getting ready tosell their house, they'll call
somebody like us, because thehouse has to be emptied to get
it ready to sell.
So we help manage that entireprocess, whether it's help pack
it up and get it moved out ofthe house or sell the contents
(00:58):
to try and raise some money, andat the end just to empty the
house and hand it over to therealtor to get it ready to sell,
as there's a lot of stepsinvolved after that point as
well.
We're just the very tip of thatwhole selling process.
Judy Gratton (01:13):
So when you're talking about the process, can
you give an idea of how thatworks?
At what point do they reach outto you before they put the home
on the market, or how does thatlook?
Jeff Marksz (01:23):
We enter the process at a lot of different
stages.
Some people are just thinkingabout downsizing.
Some people are like my realtorwants the house on the market
next week because we'll miss theselling window.
But generally we're going toenter at whatever point is
needed and take people throughthe process.
The first step for anyonelooking to downsize is deciding
(01:45):
what they want to keep and whatthey don't want to keep.
They've got to go through theirpossessions and decide what
they want to take with them totheir new life, wherever they're
going whether it's downsizingfrom a big house, empty nest, to
a small condo or a retirementcommunity or moving overseas and
how are they going to move itand transition it to the new
space.
Once everything's out of thehouse, you can look at the next
(02:06):
step, which is selling.
What do you do with what's left?
Is it saleable?
If so, how?
At the end of the process, younever sell everything.
There's always stuff left over.
We need to empty the house andget it ready to hand over to the
realtor and manage thattransition.
So there's a lot of steps tothe process and there's a lot of
variations within that process.
A lot of people think ofliquidation as like an estate
(02:27):
sale is probably the thing thatpeople engage with the most, but
there's actually a lot moreways to skin the cat.
When you actually look at aclient's needs whether they need
to move quickly or whether theyhave, say, outstanding debts
and they really need to raisemoney, or there's just lots of
mitigating factors to come upwith the best way to help people
move on.
Judy Gratton (02:46):
You've mentioned before the fact that people can
get quite emotional and we haveexperienced that as realtors.
That there's a lot of emotionin people downsizing and
particularly their home is theirstory.
How do you deal with that?
How do you help them totransition through the emotional
(03:07):
part of that?
Jeff Marksz (03:09):
We don't always enter at that point.
Sometimes people have alreadyleft the house and we're just
picking up the selling.
There are a lot of instanceswhere we are working closely
with the clients to do thatsorting process.
A couple of summers ago weworked with a client, neil,
really nice guy, 92 years old,still playing tennis.
His wife died.
He lived in the big house allby himself and it was dusty, he
(03:32):
couldn't keep up with it and sohe wanted to move to a
retirement home.
He needed help.
So we went in and worked withthem through the entire process
where you know we literally he'dfound a one bedroom retirement
place so we had to downsizedramatically.
So we literally went throughroom by room, drawer by drawer,
and talk to him about okay, soin your new place, what do you
need, what do you want?
(03:53):
And it was.
It's a touching process becauseas you go through that you'll
often get stories.
I won that tennis award at thesuch and such open just
listening to them talk.
One of the first things you doto try and let that out is they
have a story to tell.
It has meaning to them andletting them know that they're
heard is a big part of thatdetachment, but at the end of
(04:15):
the day it is about letting go.
Some people do get stuck onthings like family photos.
People have got boxes and boxesand boxes of family photos.
They've literally been in thetop shelf of the closet for 15
years and they haven't looked atit once and they're like oh, we
need all our family photos.
You have to talk them throughit and say those are important
(04:35):
parts of your family.
Maybe somebody else in thefamily wants them because you
don't necessarily have room forall those boxes of photos.
Let's talk about how manyphotos you want to display in
your new place.
Can we get some frames andlet's pick out the ones you're
actually going to look at andmake sure we have them in a
place where you can look at them.
The other ones you haven'tlooked at in 15 years so they're
not as relevant anymore, andsuggest that they focus on how
(04:59):
it's going to apply into theirnew life, not their old life.
We had a client who was reallyinto cooking and she was going
into a retirement community thathad a full service kitchen and
cooking food service, but shereally loved to cook.
We're trying to work with herand she's got an extensive
amount of cookware.
We're like how much of this doyou need in your new galley
kitchen from your big gourmetkitchen?
(05:20):
She wanted a lot of it.
It was funny because we met upwith her, I don't know, six or
eight months after, just forlunch to see how it was going at
the place.
So how's your cooking going?
Judy Gratton (05:29):
You stay in touch with the people that you work
with from time to time.
Jeff Marksz (05:37):
Oh yeah, quite often being an estate liquidator
, it's a relationship.
There's a lot of trust involved.
You're literally handing overthe keys to your castle when you
invite us in to deal with allof your stuff and do it in a
very sensitive way, both interms of being respectful of it
and honoring their privacy.
Yeah, we do quite often makefriends and still stay in touch
with quite a few of them.
Judy Gratton (05:53):
I think it's so important for people to consider
a service like yours becausewe've had situations where
people are depending on theirfamily.
It doesn't always go wellbecause the children just want
you to get moved.
That ability to share thestories and take time with the
(06:14):
items before they let go of themis sometimes overlooked.
It can cause issues betweenfamily members which otherwise
wouldn't be there.
You wouldn't be having aproblem if it wasn't for that.
Jeff Marksz (06:26):
Sometimes it's even just having a third party do it
.
We haven't worked with thesepeople yet, but they called us
in because the house was anestate, it was a hoarder place
and the parents are out and thechildren are trying to.
They've got powers of attorney.
They're trying to move them on,but my mom won't listen to me.
She'll listen to my brother,but he lives in Spokane and all
(06:50):
the family politics and dramajust start coming out.
Someone who can stand aside andbe the referee or help go
through that, or even situationswhere there's maybe some
contention like different peoplewant different things.
Sometimes we do things likewhat we call family days.
If the family can't decide whogets what, for example, do it
equitably.
We basically come in and priceeverything and they come in and
get first pick so that whenthey're cashing out they know
(07:13):
they're equitably splittingthings up.
Judy Gratton (07:15):
Cool, that's a good idea.
I hadn't thought about that.
That's really a good idea.
So, in terms of the value ofthings, I was very lucky that
Jeff shared some knowledge withme a while back.
I reached out to him trying toget rid of things like China and
crystal silver, and it's a rudeawakening to discover that the
things you think are worth a lotof money are not necessarily
(07:38):
worth a lot of money.
Do you encourage people to lookfor things that are valuable?
What am I going to take?
What am I going to take?
When am I going to leave?
How do you address that?
Because a lot of peopleincluding me, but my
mother-in-law is a good examplehad a white sheer beaver fur
coat and she wanted.
(07:58):
When she passed, everybody feltthat we could get a lot of
money for that white sheerbeaver fur coat and I'm like, no
, it's not gonna happen.
And it went from grandchild tograndchild, finally ended up
with my daughter and she's whatdo I do with this thing?
I don't want it and I'm like atthis point it's been around for
a couple of more years.
Probably donate, it is the bestthat you could hope for, if
(08:22):
anybody would even want it there.
How do you deal with addressinga sense of value over some of
these things that are notvaluable anymore?
Jeff Marksz (08:31):
First of all, it's important to point out certain
things Like, for example, youcan't actually sell beaver fur
it's illegal, so there's not alot of value or that taxidermy
big cat that your uncle broughtback from Africa illegal to sell
Bear claws.
You can sell a taxidermy bear,but you can't sell the claws.
Most forms of ivory.
Judy Gratton (08:49):
Ivory, but I didn't even think about estate
sales.
Jeff Marksz (08:53):
Yeah, but when it comes to valuing, people are
like oh, this stuff has value,but you have to be able to sell
it to get value out of it.
We worked on an estate for alocksmith and the sale of a lot
of locksmithing equipment isregulated.
You're not allowed to sell itbecause it's considered criminal
accessory tools.
If I give somebody a way topick a lock and they happen to
be a crook, then that's myliability and your liability.
(09:15):
To your point about what'svaluable and what's not valuable
.
People have differentperceptions of value.
Start with trying to get peoplein a different frame of mind.
When it comes to liquidation,it's not about the value of the
stuff, it's what you need inyour new life, because once you
have what you want bysubtraction, what's left is
irrelevant and in fact, we oftentalk in terms of assets and
(09:38):
liabilities.
You might have these bigantiques and you think they're
valuable, but trying to get thevalue out of them is going to
add eight weeks to the sellingprocess of the house and you're
losing money, so they'reactually a liability.
As far as categories of things,you're absolutely right.
People used to collect antiquesthat used to be really valuable.
People, particularly in thePacific Northwest aren't into
antiques and they're very hardto sell.
(09:59):
Grandma's China, which peoplelove.
Think of the people who arebuying things these days and
furnishing their homesMillennials and Gen Z.
They have small apartments.
They have fast lives.
If it doesn't go in thedishwasher, they don't want it.
Lots of people are moving onand getting rid of it.
The market's flooded with it.
Nobody wants it, whereas otherthings do have value, things
that people collect that youmight not anticipate.
(10:21):
For example, vintage Pyrex ishighly collectible, that you
might not anticipate.
Judy Gratton (10:24):
For example, vintage Pyrex is highly
collectible.
Jeff Marksz (10:26):
That just blows your mind.
People are like, oh, that oldPyrex that happens to be the
limited edition Spirograph withits Bakelite underplate, which
is worth.
We had a sale where we had thatand they're like, oh, that's
just the Pyrex.
No, that's the Spirograph withthe rare underplate.
And we got calls from all overthe country from people who
wanted that thing.
I think we sold it for 600bucks or something like that.
Judy Gratton (10:45):
Oh my gosh.
Jeff Marksz (10:46):
Or other collectibles like Hot Wheels.
Oh, those are my little HotWheels.
No, that happens to be thefirst set of Hot Wheels they
ever made in its original case.
We got calls from all over thecountry for them.
We sold 18 Hot Wheels in theircase for 3,000 bucks.
Judy Gratton (11:00):
You have to know these things.
Jeff Marksz (11:02):
There's a lot that goes into liquidation and that's
the difference between kind ofa professional liquidator and
someone trying to do itthemselves.
People are often like we workon commission and it's a fairly
high commission.
We put a lot of work into itand bring a lot of knowledge to
the table.
So people are like I can do itmyself and you can.
You're probably A you've got toput the work in to do it.
You're potentially leaving alot of money on the table by
(11:23):
either not knowing whatsomething's worth, they price
their antiques really high, notknowing that they don't sell,
and they either don't sellanything because it's priced too
high or they give it awaybecause they don't know what it
is.
The liquidator's job is toextract the most value they can
in the time that they're given.
Judy Gratton (11:38):
You mentioned hoarding and a lot of people,
including myself.
The older we get, the more wemiss that minimalist stage.
How long does this take for youif you're going through every
drawer and helping people parsethrough decades of stuff?
Jeff Marksz (11:55):
What you're talking about when they're going
through every drawer.
There's three distinct services.
We call that our pack and moveservice and that's an hourly
service.
So that's different than theselling service.
And the answer is it takes aslong as it takes or as much as
they want to invest in thatprocess.
That hoarder house that we weretalking about, the family was
like the mom wants to go throughabsolutely everything and I
(12:16):
laid out for them the amount ofdays and hours it would take to
do it.
And that particular case, forexample, was an extreme hoarder.
Like we literally have to doseveral dumpster runs before we
can even move in the house.
We laid out what that wouldcost to take her through it
step-by-step and we're like it'sa big number.
And they're like, yeah, no,she's just going to have to say
goodbye to it because that'sjust not practical or affordable
(12:37):
.
It's not that we're not goodvalue for money, it's just a big
ask.
A house quicker than you thinkgenerally doesn't take more than
a couple of days to go throughit and make the big decisions.
There's plenty of revisions andgoing back and working through
stuff, but we try and getclients in the right headspace
before we start, because themore they can do in advance to
get their head around what theyneed and want, the easier the
(13:00):
process goes when you work withthem to sort through things.
Dennis Day (13:05):
So what are the common mistakes people make when
they are separating and sorting?
Jeff Marksz (13:10):
I think it depends on what.
First of all, there's nomistakes you can really make
because, again, if you'refocusing on what you need and
want, the biggest mistake youcan make is trying to take too
much and you're making sure that, as you are going through it,
that you have a need or want forit or a use for it.
I wouldn't go as far as to sayit's the Marie Kondo, does, it
(13:31):
bring me joy?
Minimalist type of thing, butit's got to at least have a use.
We had one client, bruce, alovely guy.
He was getting on, he hadhealth problems but, amazing guy
, he was going to sell his house, buy a house for a son, go live
with his son to live out hisdays and all that sort of stuff.
But he'll be effectively beliving in a mother-in-law suite
from his house.
And he was an extreme hoarder.
(13:52):
And we're going through thisprocess of what do you want,
what don't you want, and when Isay hoarder, again hard to move
around.
And we go in the backyard andthere's this tarp and there's
all this stuff under the tarpand we said, bruce, what's this?
We whipped the tarp off andit's full of diesel fuel, water
(14:13):
tools and things like that oh,that's my Y2K emergency stash.
I was like, okay, bruce, whatof this do we actually need?
There was a brand new in thebox, reciprocating miter saw
from Harbor Freight, which waslike and Bruce, oh, I need that.
That was a good deal, that's agreat saw.
I need that, yeah.
Finally I turned to Bruce and Isaid what are you going to cut
in the next 20 years that youhaven't cut in the previous 20
years that it's been under thistarp?
It was an eye-opener for him.
Oh, my God, you're right, I'mholding on to all this stuff.
(14:36):
I got to focus on what I needand where I'm going to be and
what I'm going to do.
So the first thing is to bereally strict with yourself
about what you want and what youneed.
If you're going to hire aliquidator, let the liquidator
do their job.
Liquidation is a service andyou often hear people say, oh, I
went ahead and I did a bunch ofdonation runs First.
(14:56):
It just makes any liquidator'sheart stop because you're like
oh, what did you do?
Oh, grandma's old clothes.
Oh, you mean the funky vintageones that all the hip kids want.
My old toolbox, oh, you meanthose Hot Wheels, red lines that
I sell for thousands.
You don't know what's valuableor could be valuable and isn't
valuable.
There's enough stress in tryingto manage your move anyway.
Let the liquidator serve you.
It's a service.
Focus on you, focus on yourtransition, focus on packing,
(15:20):
picking what you want and leavethe rest behind and hand the
keys over is the best advice tonot.
Judy Gratton (15:26):
Now, do you deal with people who are still living
in the home as they're goingthrough this, or are they out by
the time you come into thepicture?
Jeff Marksz (15:50):
they're moving, how much time they have to move,
and some people don't have thechoice.
They have to sell their housebefore they get a new house, for
example.
It's not ideal, but you canmake it work With liquidation.
It's a very chaotic processbecause if you're doing an
estate sale that's happening insomeone's house, you're inviting
strangers in, so you can't havestuff intermingled and mixed
together.
You really need to create aclear space if you want to
extract any value out of things.
(16:11):
So if somebody does need tolive in the home while we're
working there, we do suggestthat they effectively pack up
and sequester everything.
We're like okay, all your stuffgoes in the back bedroom and
we'll lock the door so thatthere's absolutely no mistake
about what is to be sold ortaken away and what isn't to be
sold.
People often ask should Iattend my own estate sale?
(16:32):
We don't prohibit it, but werecommend against it because
it's not comfortable for theperson and it's not comfortable
for the buyers either.
It's just not recommended.
Judy Gratton (16:39):
When you're selling the house, it's not a
good idea for the owner to bethere.
Jeff Marksz (16:43):
But again, we're practical.
The job has to be done.
If they have to live there, wemake it work.
They have to be ready to makethose compromises.
For example, sometimes we'llget a pod and we'll have them
parking out front.
We'll put all their stuff in apod and it gets taken away to
the storage facility.
They live out of a suitcase fora couple of weeks or as long as
it takes.
There's lots of ways that wecan make it work, but the best
(17:05):
situation is if you can vacateyourself from the property.
That's the best for everybody.
Judy Gratton (17:10):
I think what I'd like to cover next is a bit
about okay, now you've done thesale, and now comes the part of
whether or not you are going todonate the things.
How do you deal with theirdonations?
I think, now we've done thesale, there are still things
(17:30):
left over and I believe from ourprevious conversation you
mentioned that you'd help themdonate things to places they
want them to go.
Jeff Marksz (17:40):
It might be worth touching on the point about sale
viability, because it's a pointthat people often miss.
People think, oh, I've gotstuff, I can sell it.
It's not always the way you doit.
There is that threshold forthere to even be any sort of
selling to happen from aprofessional liquidator.
We all have minimums becauseit's all on commission.
Dennis Day (18:00):
So Jeff tell, us what you do when the stuff in
the home isn't as valuable asthe owner thinks and it's really
not sellable.
Jeff Marksz (18:11):
Yeah, and there are some situations where that's
the case.
Just to give you an example todo an estate sale, a
professional company is going tospend with their crew maybe a
week setting up and a weekendrunning the sale.
When we work on commissions wehave to cover those selling
costs.
So your breakeven point on mostestate sales is a gross revenue
of about $10,000.
So your break-even point onmost estate sales is a gross
revenue of about $10,000.
(18:31):
If you can look around at yourstuff and think to yourself, is
this going to raise $10,000?
That's the break point.
We can tell pretty quicklywhether the contents of a home
are viable for an estate sale.
Normally, some clues are westart by looking for what we
call the long poles or theanchor items.
Clues are we start by lookingfor what we call the long poles
(18:52):
or the anchor items.
Is there a set of sterlingsilver, you know?
Or is there expensive jewelryor a vehicle that we can sell
for hundreds or thousands ofdollars?
Because if you're trying to getto $10,000, it's a long way,
doing it five or $10 at a time.
Just because it doesn't meanthat household items aren't
valuable, it just means that thehelp of a professional seller
(19:13):
isn't covered by the value ofwhat they are, and that doesn't
mean that we can't extract valuefrom it.
We talked before about thecontents of a house sometimes
being a liability versus anasset.
If you can't easily sell thembecause it's either not valuable
enough or it's not the type ofvalue that can sell locally,
then you've got to start lookingat other liquidation options.
(19:34):
Sometimes we do things that wecall a pop-up sale, which is
more like a managed garage sale.
It's much less labor for us,but it allows us to generate
some revenue.
Sometimes there's a fewvaluable things, like a vehicle.
We could sell that privatelyand try and raise some money
that way.
Or sometimes maybe it's a smallcollection and we can do what
(19:56):
we call a buyout with wholesalepricing and get on with the sale
of the property when a fullestate experience isn't viable.
You're looking at differentoptions and again it's our job
to try and figure out is therevalue and how can we unlock it?
And it's not always an estatesale and you explain that bio
you mentioned.
(20:16):
I saw it on your website and I'mnot sure what that is yeah, for
example, let's take thesterling silver set, which has a
good value.
They typically sell for athousand bucks or whatever.
But there's just not nothingelse in the house.
It's pretty bare and you'relike, okay, I can't run an
estate sale, but this silver hasvalues.
We'll be like, okay, we caneffectively buy that from you at
a fair wholesale price whichleaves a profit for us but also
(20:38):
allows you to move it quickly.
Then we can move on.
It's usually as part of the nextphase of the process which
we'll talk about, which is theclear out, where you're clearing
the house out.
Because the house out?
Because when we talk about thecontents of the home as a
liability rather than an asset,what we're trying to do is
decrease that liability.
Part of that liability is thecost of removing it from the
(20:59):
house.
When you're at that stage, it'snot really about raising money,
it's about how do you decreasethat liability, decrease the
cost of donating or trashing it.
And again, one way is wholesale,wholesale.
We have other methods ofselling that aren't estate sales
.
We sell online, we have privateclients and things like that,
but there's a small collectionof hot wheels or whatever.
We're like, okay, that'ssomething we know we can sell
(21:21):
online, so we work out this iswhat we can sell it for, this is
our margin, and we say this ishow much we can offer.
It's a wholesale price.
Our goal is to try and getthose costs down when it comes
to the removals, to offset thecost of actually clearing the
house.
That's how a buyout works.
Dennis Day (21:39):
I'm really disappointed.
I didn't keep my Hot Wheels.
I was right at the cusp rightwhen they started with the
orange track the whole bit.
Every time a new one came outwe were just wild about it.
But yeah, you can't pack aroundfor 60 years.
So, in your experience, whatkinds of things are valuable?
Is there furniture, artwork,jewelry?
(22:01):
What tends to bring the mostvalue?
Jeff Marksz (22:04):
Interesting question, A tricky question,
because within every categorythere is something that's
valuable.
I'd say one of the principlesabout understanding what's
valuable is, if it was expensivewhen it was new, it has a
chance of being expensive whenit's old.
Grandma's china is very nicequality, but she bought it at
the department store and it wasdepartment store china then,
(22:28):
department store china now, soit's not rare or particularly
collectible as a category.
China is not a great thing tosell, but if it's Wedgwood
Queensware, there's a hugefollowing for it and it's very
collectible.
We had a sale where we had acomplete set of that and we
literally had people.
The house had a centralcourtyard.
It was a lovely mid-centuryarchitecture house and you can
(22:49):
either go left or right.
The kitchen was in the back andwe had all these people signed
up on the list.
They wanted the Queensware andthey came in the house.
Some of the people who wantedthe Queensware went left and
right and they both met in themiddle at the same time and
they're both grabbing it.
It's just finally had to sayokay, wait a minute, who was
first on the list and who getsit?
There are certain categoriesthat can be more valuable, for
(23:10):
example, when it comes tofurniture.
I mentioned antiques not beingparticularly valuable but in
this particular market in thePacific Northwest, mid-century
modern furniture does very well,just good quality, like full
grain leather, chesterfield.
If it was really expensive orspecial when it's new it has a
(23:30):
chance of being valuable whenit's old.
Other thing that sells well inthis area again, we talked about
toys, vintage video games veryhot market people looking for
those old Nintendo games andthings like that.
I'm just trying to rattle thesethings off the top of my head.
We talked about Pyrex, otherKitchenalia there's a lot of
vintage electronics and Hi-Fi isvery collectible.
(23:51):
Other kitchen alia there's alot of vintage electronics and
hi-fi is very collectible.
Albums, albums and now not allalbums.
Again within the category thereare certain albums that most
albums are worth five bucks.
We had a record collection.
We went through it and you'lllook for the usual suspects,
beatles and elvis and thingslike that, and we found a
beatles album within thiscategory.
It's called the butchercherCover.
When they released the album itshowed a picture of the Beatles
(24:13):
in white butcher's coats withchopped up dolls all over the
cover.
That proved too much to themarket but they'd already
printed and released them.
So they recalled all the albums.
In the UK they destroyed allthe covers, but in the US,
rather than destroy them, theyjust put a sticker over the
Butcher cover.
So if you have the originalalbum that never had a sticker
(24:37):
on it, because you bought itwhen it first came out, or you
had a promo version,particularly with the letter,
then that's worth mega, megamoney.
But a lot of people, when theygot the sticker version, they
knew to take the sticker offright away and it caused a
little bit of damage but youcould steam it off and anyway,
there's various grades of thisbutcher cover and I think we
sold that album for about 1200bucks.
There are categories of thingsto look for, but the main thing
(24:59):
is knowing the thing that isvaluable and collectible.
The best of each category iswhat you're looking for.
Things like Pianos are the bestexample of liability versus an
asset.
Even if you gave it away forfree, the person is going to be
spending $300 moving it and $100tuning it, and these
instruments just aren't worththat much money.
You can get a good digitalpiano that takes up less space
(25:22):
for practicing.
Judy Gratton (25:23):
I've seen free baby grand pianos.
I have hauled pianos to thedump in homes that I've sold
because nobody would take it.
Jeff Marksz (25:34):
Yeah, and it is a shame.
Again, it's one of the otherthings about being a liquidator,
though.
We often say I got a guy, apiano guy.
He can tell me whether thepiano has instrument value.
Some cheaper brand pianos orolder pianos that weren't
actually that expensive to beginwith and they're just worthless
.
But there's other.
Obviously, like a Steinway, isalways going to have value.
(25:56):
It's worth restoring, it'sworth whatever.
Yamaha is a very good brand.
It has musical credibility, sothere's a market for it.
I call my guy, tell him what Igot and he tells me whether
that's an instrument or whetherit's a paperweight and we deal
with it appropriately.
Judy Gratton (26:14):
What do you love most about your job?
Jeff Marksz (26:21):
It's an interesting job.
One of the coolest things aboutthe job is we're learning new
stuff all the time and it's verystimulating.
I often tell clients jokinglythat I know more about Barbie
clothes than any adult male hasany right to know, because I had
to research them and I sold oneBarbie outfit for $500.
You just learn these thingsthrough experience.
But I think the best thingabout it is just our ability to
help people.
We get so many people who areso appreciative of what we do.
(26:42):
We talked about how we form arelationship with the people we
work with and we get notes andletters and gifts like I
couldn't have done it withoutyou.
It was such a stressful time inmy life dealing with grief or
change or whatever, and they'reout of state and under stress.
They're so appreciative thatsomeone can come in hand the
keys over and just know it'sgoing to happen and it does
(27:04):
happen and I don't know what Iwould have done if I didn't have
his help.
And that's the thing that makesyou come back and deal with the
rat poop and the dust in thehoarder houses and the messes,
because if you're not doing it,this family is going to be in a
bad situation and you're reallyhelping them.
That's what brings you in andmakes you go the extra mile,
knowing that they really needyour help.
(27:25):
Jeff.
Dennis Day (27:25):
I'm wondering what you do with things you mentioned
being illegal to sell, like thefur coat, the beaver fur coat
or maybe a stuffed cheetah fromAfrica.
What do you do with thesethings that you can't sell?
Jeff Marksz (27:40):
Again, it varies.
Obviously, the best thing is ifsomebody in the family does
want it or has a use for it.
You can't sell ivory, but youcan inherit ivory, for example.
Judy Gratton (27:50):
Donate it to a museum or something like that
Exactly.
Jeff Marksz (27:54):
We talk with Fish and Wildlife about these things
and they recommend places wherewe can donate them Museums,
universities.
There's a big cat conservationcharity who's allowed to take
them.
There are places like that,ivory.
Similarly, you can donate it tothose places or it ultimately
gets destroyed, rightly becauseit is a problem.
Beaver fur we do the rightthing.
(28:16):
We take it out of circulationand sometimes that means
destroying it.
But if we can find a home forit, we certainly do, whether
it's with the family or with aninstitution, what is the coolest
, funnest, most memorable thingyou've found.
We get that question a lot.
You sell so many things.
It blurs together.
But we certainly love sellingcool things like vintage cars.
(28:37):
We sold a 69 Charger, onceDodge Charger.
It got a huge amount ofinterest and made lots of money.
We love our jewelry, findingsome great big diamonds and
learning about them and gettingthem graded In terms of cool
stuff.
I like industrial stuff.
We liquidated a guy bigdiamonds and learning about them
and getting them graded interms of cool stuff.
I like industrial stuff.
We liquidated a guy who was a.
He was basically a forensicanalysis, so we were literally
(28:59):
think abby and csi, so like hehad a mass spectrometer and
microscopes and samples tocompare things to and it was
like really fun because, hey, wehave to learn it and we're
reaching out to people all overthe country.
It's a very narrow market sowe're making connections and
learning about all thatinteresting stuff.
So many unusual things.
A lot of metal workers in thisregion so we get lots of
(29:21):
blacksmithing, cool specialtytools and big industrial things.
People get excited about allsorts of stuff, but the more
obscure the better.
For me, one of my particularareas is vintage hi-fi and
electronics.
I love finding that rare clipcorner horn that if people want
want to collect or the pioneerstack from the from the
(29:42):
seventies, that's got theoriginal everything equalizer
and the reel to reel tape, thewhole nine yards.
I love my vintage electronics,my obscure industrial things.
Judy Gratton (29:52):
Very good.
Dennis Day (29:53):
Jeff, tell us, how are you compensated for all this
time and hard work?
Good question.
Jeff Marksz (29:59):
We talked about the different services we have.
There's packing and moving, theselling process and the
clearing out process.
For packing and moving it's anhourly charge, typically about
$75 an hour.
There's other things that we doin that service.
For example, sometimes peopleneed an inventory for probate
and again by the hour we'll comein.
(30:20):
We also we aren't certifiedappraisers ourselves, but we do
have appraisers who we bring in.
Appraisers generally costaround $150 an hour.
A lot of that upfront work.
People charge by the hour.
It's a service.
But when it comes to estatesales and working on commission,
most companies charge a similarrate, about 40% of the gross.
(30:40):
Some companies charge a littlemore, a little less, depending
on the situation.
The amount of effort doesn'treally change and the main thing
is finding someone you feel youcan partner with when selecting
an estate sale company.
It's not something you priceshop on.
It's about who's going toservice you the best.
So, yeah, 40%, and that's whythere's a minimum amount.
(31:02):
A lot of companies have that intheir contract and we're very
straight with people.
The whole process starts with afree consultation.
We'll come in, look at theproperty and we can tell you
whether it's viable.
If it doesn't, we'll tell youit's not something we can help
with because it won't cover ourcosts.
But here's some things you cando, and we're not shy of even
telling people.
You'll probably be better offif you did it yourself.
(31:24):
This sells best on Craigslist.
If you know how to do that,great.
That's why I'd suggest you tryand sell.
It's on the commission and it'sgenerally around the 40% mark.
Judy Gratton (31:34):
The clear out.
Jeff Marksz (31:35):
So the clear out once the selling process is done
.
Even if you have enoughcontents to run an estate sale,
you never sell everything.
You probably are only sellinghalf of the contents of the
house.
It is possible to literallysell everything in the house.
If you price everything at adollar, you could empty the
house.
But that to literally selleverything in the house, if you
price everything at a dollar,you could empty the house.
But that's not the job of aliquidator.
The job of the liquidator is toextract the most value in the
(31:56):
time that you have.
If you can sell half of thehouse at a premium, you're going
to make more money than if youempty the house.
Selling everything at a dollar,right, but you still need to
empty the house at the end.
We do offer that service.
Not a lot of estate companiesdo and there are other people
that provide the service, fromGot Junk to other clear out
companies.
But when you're working withthose companies it's literally
(32:18):
going to the dump in a dumptruck and dumped out the back.
Our philosophy as people whoare working with families with
needs is about donating andAfter the sale's done, if you
engage us to do the clear out,we'll come in with the crew.
We'll literally pack all thedonations, things that are
(32:38):
donatable.
It's interesting.
Even knowing what's donatable isa skill, because donation
places are very picky about whatthey'll take.
We pack it all up.
We basically then load a truck,we do a donation run and
everything that we haven'tpacked for donation is trash.
Then we load the rest on thetruck and take it to the dump.
Our goal at that point is if itisn't attached to the wall,
(33:01):
it's gone.
When getting a house ready forsale, the realtors want you know
so that they can come in and dothe repairs paint cleaning,
staging etc.
So that's what we do, and thewhole process takes about two
days.
The cost to clear out a typicalnon-hoarder house it's about
$2,000 plus whatever the trashbill is is what people can
(33:22):
expect, and so that's a crewworking for two days plus the
truck.
Dennis Day (33:26):
Can you handle old fertilizer, paint oil,
insecticides?
Jeff Marksz (33:31):
A great question because the answer is yes and no
.
As a company and as anindividual, I'm not licensed to
carry hazardous wastes.
So if I put those things on mytruck and I drive away and I get
pulled over and they find thatI'm transporting hazardous
wastes as a company without alicense, I get in big trouble.
However, we do have licensedhazmat people to take care of
(33:55):
those things.
Interestingly, as a rule,what's considered a hazmat and
what isn't can be a blurry line.
There are some things that youwouldn't think twice about, like
bleach, but it's actuallyconsidered a hazardous material
for a company to transport atcertain volumes.
So we generally say that wedon't transport liquids because
instead of trying to parsewhat's toxic and what's not
(34:16):
toxic, we put all the paint andliquids in a box in the garage.
If we can dump it down thedrain like vinegar, we empty as
much as we can.
If we have a question.
We leave the liquids and ifyou'd like us to contact our
hazmat guy, we do it and it'snot that expensive, our hazmat
guy it's about 200 bucks to do ahazmat run and we dispose of it
properly.
Latex paint has to be dried out, which takes forever, or you
(34:38):
take it to certain locations.
You can only drop off so manygallons at a time.
In our area there are hazardouswaste facilities where you can
take fertilizer and things up tocertain quantities, usually at
the transfer stations a coupleof the transfer stations of
hazmat areas and we do that.
We had a client just recentlywho went into his garage and
(34:58):
there were five 50-gallon drumsof diesel fuel that had been
there for 30 years.
How do you deal with that?
We did find a company who cantake 50-gallon drums or the
alternative was to get a barrelpump and decant it into five
gallon barrels because you couldonly drop it off in certain
(35:18):
amounts at a time and basicallydecant it and take it to hazmat
in stages.
You're absolutely right,because a lot of these old
houses you find those oldlinoleum style tiles that are
actually full of asbestos andyou'd have to handle them really
carefully, just like everythingelse in the estate business,
your knowledge is reallyimportant about what you can and
(35:39):
can't do or shouldn't do.
Thank, you?
Judy Gratton (35:40):
That's amazing.
Was that your same guy that wassaving up all the stuff for Y2K
?
Dennis Day (35:46):
No different guy.
Jeff, if we were looking forSeattle Magpies, what would we
do to find you and where we have?
Jeff Marksz (35:54):
a website, wwwseattlemagpiescom.
We're on Facebook, we're onemail seattlemagpies at gmailcom
, and we're happy to take calls.
We answer our phone pretty muchall the time 206-272-0371.
Dennis Day (36:11):
All your weekends are taken with estate sales
right now.
If I wanted to do one, am Igoing to wait six weeks, 10
weeks?
Where am I at.
Yeah absolutely.
Jeff Marksz (36:20):
We're typically.
First of all, if you want toengage us, we can come out and
do a consultation pretty quicklyduring the week.
But, as you rightly say, theweekends book up pretty quickly
and us and pretty much all theother credible companies that
are out there and there's somegreat liquidators in the Seattle
area we all know each other, weall help each other, but most
(36:41):
of us are booking four to sixweeks out.
So if you're looking to sellthings, expect a delay of four
to six weeks, Because if we'renot doing an estate sale, we
might be doing a move, we mightbe doing a clear out.
We are pretty our weekends fillvery quickly.
You'll find that we get callsall the time where people are
like I need to do a sale.
I've got lots of great stuff.
Oh, that's great, I love tohear it, but it needs to be next
weekend.
We're like sorry, we can clearit out for you.
(37:04):
We can maybe do a bit of abuyout.
It's about trading time formoney If you're trying to get
out on the market before theAugust summer vacations.
Sometimes you just got to makea decision.
But yeah, to your point, Dennis, expect a four to six week
window for booking most estatesale companies.
Dennis Day (37:24):
This has been great, Jeff.
I really appreciate your time.
We'll get your information onthe audio and video.
Judy Gratton (37:33):
Printed on there as well.
Dennis Day (37:34):
Any last words, anything we didn't discuss that
you feel the need to informationon the audio and video Printed
on there as well.
Any last words?
Jeff Marksz (37:42):
anything we didn't discuss, that you feel the need
to let people know.
No, there's so much that goesinto estate liquidation.
The best thing is to engage acompany and get that advice, and
we love to talk to people andhelp them out.
Even if our advice at the endof the day is here's how you can
do it yourself.
The best thing is to get thatconversation started as soon as
possible.
We're all here to help you andwe hope we can.
Why Magpies?
(38:02):
Good question.
We have a lot of expertise.
There's another part of ourbusiness that we didn't talk
about.
We have a big eBay business.
We've got a warehouse.
We ship thousands of packages ayear all over the world and
that really helps us tune in towhat's valuable and what isn't
valuable.
We have a pretty deep knowledge,not only because of what we
(38:23):
sell at estate sales, butbecause we sell a lot of things
through other channels as well.
Clients give us a lot offeedback that we're very
responsive and reliable.
Our business is pretty much100% referral.
We generally work with peoplewho know us and they keep
calling us back because theyknow they can rely on us.
When we say we'll get the jobdone, we get it done, which is
(38:46):
particularly important whenworking with realtors, because
you guys have scheduled thepainters and you've scheduled
the.
There's a lot of dependenciesthat are involved in getting it
done.
Reliability is a big factor forus as well.
We're fun to work with.
We like people, we like helpingpeople out.
Hopefully, if there's a goodchemistry, people will feel the
same.
Anything else, judy.
Judy Gratton (39:06):
I don't think so.
I was just very impressed fromthe first time I talked to you,
jeff.
You were honest and supportiveat the same time.
I'm talking to you about mygreat aunt's china from Japan,
and I was able to let go of itbecause it was like, why hold on
to it?
I gave it to a very dear friendwho wanted it and it made me
feel good.
Dennis Day (39:25):
Thank you, jeff, so much for taking the time to be
with us, and we will have afabulous guest the next time.
If you are interested incontacting us about downsizing
or any other real estatequestion, give us a call or go
to our website atedgeroopteencom.
(39:46):
Thanks for watching andlistening.
That's it.
See you next time.
Bye.
Judy Gratton (39:51):
Thank you JR, thank you Dennis.
Dennis Day (39:53):
Thank you guys.
Hi everyone.
This is Getting your Edge howto Right-Size your Home and Life
podcast.
I am your co-host, dennis Day,and I'm here today with my
co-host, judy Gratton.
Can you say hello, judy?
Judy Gratton (00:13):
I can say hello Dennis, hello Dennis, hello
everybody.
Dennis Day (00:17):
Today we are here with Jeff Marks of Seattle
Magpies and he's going to talkto us about his business that
helps people before they selltheir home, whether you're
downsizing or not just selling.
So let's introduce Jeff Marksfrom Seattle Magpies.
Tell us a little bit about youand your business, jeff.
Jeff Marksz (00:38):
Yeah, as you said, we're Seattle Magpies and we're
what we call a full serviceliquidator.
When someone's getting ready tosell their house, they'll call
somebody like us, because thehouse has to be emptied to get
it ready to sell.
So we help manage that entireprocess, whether it's help pack
it up and get it moved out ofthe house or sell the contents
(00:58):
to try and raise some money, andat the end just to empty the
house and hand it over to therealtor to get it ready to sell,
as there's a lot of stepsinvolved after that point as
well.
We're just the very tip of thatwhole selling process.
Judy Gratton (01:13):
So when you're talking about the process, can
you give an idea of how thatworks?
At what point do they reach outto you before they put the home
on the market, or how does thatlook?
Jeff Marksz (01:23):
We enter the process at a lot of different
stages.
Some people are just thinkingabout downsizing.
Some people are like my realtorwants the house on the market
next week because we'll miss theselling window.
But generally we're going toenter at whatever point is
needed and take people throughthe process.
The first step for anyonelooking to downsize is deciding
(01:45):
what they want to keep and whatthey don't want to keep.
They've got to go through theirpossessions and decide what
they want to take with them totheir new life, wherever they're
going whether it's downsizingfrom a big house, empty nest, to
a small condo or a retirementcommunity or moving overseas and
how are they going to move itand transition it to the new
space.
Once everything's out of thehouse, you can look at the next
(02:06):
step, which is selling.
What do you do with what's left?
Is it saleable?
If so, how?
At the end of the process, younever sell everything.
There's always stuff left over.
We need to empty the house andget it ready to hand over to the
realtor and manage thattransition.
So there's a lot of steps tothe process and there's a lot of
variations within that process.
A lot of people think ofliquidation as like an estate
(02:27):
sale is probably the thing thatpeople engage with the most, but
there's actually a lot moreways to skin the cat.
When you actually look at aclient's needs whether they need
to move quickly or whether theyhave, say, outstanding debts
and they really need to raisemoney, or there's just lots of
mitigating factors to come upwith the best way to help people
move on.
Judy Gratton (02:46):
You've mentioned before the fact that people can
get quite emotional and we haveexperienced that as realtors.
That there's a lot of emotionin people downsizing and
particularly their home is theirstory.
How do you deal with that?
How do you help them totransition through the emotional
(03:07):
part of that?
Jeff Marksz (03:09):
We don't always enter at that point.
Sometimes people have alreadyleft the house and we're just
picking up the selling.
There are a lot of instanceswhere we are working closely
with the clients to do thatsorting process.
A couple of summers ago weworked with a client, neil,
really nice guy, 92 years old,still playing tennis.
His wife died.
He lived in the big house allby himself and it was dusty, he
(03:32):
couldn't keep up with it and sohe wanted to move to a
retirement home.
He needed help.
So we went in and worked withthem through the entire process
where you know we literally he'dfound a one bedroom retirement
place so we had to downsizedramatically.
So we literally went throughroom by room, drawer by drawer,
and talk to him about okay, soin your new place, what do you
need, what do you want?
(03:53):
And it was.
It's a touching process becauseas you go through that you'll
often get stories.
I won that tennis award at thesuch and such open just
listening to them talk.
One of the first things you doto try and let that out is they
have a story to tell.
It has meaning to them andletting them know that they're
heard is a big part of thatdetachment, but at the end of
(04:15):
the day it is about letting go.
Some people do get stuck onthings like family photos.
People have got boxes and boxesand boxes of family photos.
They've literally been in thetop shelf of the closet for 15
years and they haven't looked atit once and they're like oh, we
need all our family photos.
You have to talk them throughit and say those are important
(04:35):
parts of your family.
Maybe somebody else in thefamily wants them because you
don't necessarily have room forall those boxes of photos.
Let's talk about how manyphotos you want to display in
your new place.
Can we get some frames andlet's pick out the ones you're
actually going to look at andmake sure we have them in a
place where you can look at them.
The other ones you haven'tlooked at in 15 years so they're
not as relevant anymore, andsuggest that they focus on how
(04:59):
it's going to apply into theirnew life, not their old life.
We had a client who was reallyinto cooking and she was going
into a retirement community thathad a full service kitchen and
cooking food service, but shereally loved to cook.
We're trying to work with herand she's got an extensive
amount of cookware.
We're like how much of this doyou need in your new galley
kitchen from your big gourmetkitchen?
(05:20):
She wanted a lot of it.
It was funny because we met upwith her, I don't know, six or
eight months after, just forlunch to see how it was going at
the place.
So how's your cooking going?
Judy Gratton (05:29):
You stay in touch with the people that you work
with from time to time.
Jeff Marksz (05:37):
Oh yeah, quite often being an estate liquidator
, it's a relationship.
There's a lot of trust involved.
You're literally handing overthe keys to your castle when you
invite us in to deal with allof your stuff and do it in a
very sensitive way, both interms of being respectful of it
and honoring their privacy.
Yeah, we do quite often makefriends and still stay in touch
with quite a few of them.
Judy Gratton (05:53):
I think it's so important for people to consider
a service like yours becausewe've had situations where
people are depending on theirfamily.
It doesn't always go wellbecause the children just want
you to get moved.
That ability to share thestories and take time with the
(06:14):
items before they let go of themis sometimes overlooked.
It can cause issues betweenfamily members which otherwise
wouldn't be there.
You wouldn't be having aproblem if it wasn't for that.
Jeff Marksz (06:26):
Sometimes it's even just having a third party do it
.
We haven't worked with thesepeople yet, but they called us
in because the house was anestate, it was a hoarder place
and the parents are out and thechildren are trying to.
They've got powers of attorney.
They're trying to move them on,but my mom won't listen to me.
She'll listen to my brother,but he lives in Spokane and all
(06:50):
the family politics and dramajust start coming out.
Someone who can stand aside andbe the referee or help go
through that, or even situationswhere there's maybe some
contention like different peoplewant different things.
Sometimes we do things likewhat we call family days.
If the family can't decide whogets what, for example, do it
equitably.
We basically come in and priceeverything and they come in and
get first pick so that whenthey're cashing out they know
(07:13):
they're equitably splittingthings up.
Judy Gratton (07:15):
Cool, that's a good idea.
I hadn't thought about that.
That's really a good idea.
So, in terms of the value ofthings, I was very lucky that
Jeff shared some knowledge withme a while back.
I reached out to him trying toget rid of things like China and
crystal silver, and it's a rudeawakening to discover that the
things you think are worth a lotof money are not necessarily
(07:38):
worth a lot of money.
Do you encourage people to lookfor things that are valuable?
What am I going to take?
What am I going to take?
When am I going to leave?
How do you address that?
Because a lot of peopleincluding me, but my
mother-in-law is a good examplehad a white sheer beaver fur
coat and she wanted.
(07:58):
When she passed, everybody feltthat we could get a lot of
money for that white sheerbeaver fur coat and I'm like, no
, it's not gonna happen.
And it went from grandchild tograndchild, finally ended up
with my daughter and she's whatdo I do with this thing?
I don't want it and I'm like atthis point it's been around for
a couple of more years.
Probably donate, it is the bestthat you could hope for, if
(08:22):
anybody would even want it there.
How do you deal with addressinga sense of value over some of
these things that are notvaluable anymore?
Jeff Marksz (08:31):
First of all, it's important to point out certain
things Like, for example, youcan't actually sell beaver fur
it's illegal, so there's not alot of value or that taxidermy
big cat that your uncle broughtback from Africa illegal to sell
Bear claws.
You can sell a taxidermy bear,but you can't sell the claws.
Most forms of ivory.
Judy Gratton (08:49):
Ivory, but I didn't even think about estate
sales.
Jeff Marksz (08:53):
Yeah, but when it comes to valuing, people are
like oh, this stuff has value,but you have to be able to sell
it to get value out of it.
We worked on an estate for alocksmith and the sale of a lot
of locksmithing equipment isregulated.
You're not allowed to sell itbecause it's considered criminal
accessory tools.
If I give somebody a way topick a lock and they happen to
be a crook, then that's myliability and your liability.
(09:15):
To your point about what'svaluable and what's not valuable
.
People have differentperceptions of value.
Start with trying to get peoplein a different frame of mind.
When it comes to liquidation,it's not about the value of the
stuff, it's what you need inyour new life, because once you
have what you want bysubtraction, what's left is
irrelevant and in fact, we oftentalk in terms of assets and
(09:38):
liabilities.
You might have these bigantiques and you think they're
valuable, but trying to get thevalue out of them is going to
add eight weeks to the sellingprocess of the house and you're
losing money, so they'reactually a liability.
As far as categories of things,you're absolutely right.
People used to collect antiquesthat used to be really valuable.
People, particularly in thePacific Northwest aren't into
antiques and they're very hardto sell.
(09:59):
Grandma's China, which peoplelove.
Think of the people who arebuying things these days and
furnishing their homesMillennials and Gen Z.
They have small apartments.
They have fast lives.
If it doesn't go in thedishwasher, they don't want it.
Lots of people are moving onand getting rid of it.
The market's flooded with it.
Nobody wants it, whereas otherthings do have value, things
that people collect that youmight not anticipate.
(10:21):
For example, vintage Pyrex ishighly collectible, that you
might not anticipate.
Judy Gratton (10:24):
For example, vintage Pyrex is highly
collectible.
Jeff Marksz (10:26):
That just blows your mind.
People are like, oh, that oldPyrex that happens to be the
limited edition Spirograph withits Bakelite underplate, which
is worth.
We had a sale where we had thatand they're like, oh, that's
just the Pyrex.
No, that's the Spirograph withthe rare underplate.
And we got calls from all overthe country from people who
wanted that thing.
I think we sold it for 600bucks or something like that.
Judy Gratton (10:45):
Oh my gosh.
Jeff Marksz (10:46):
Or other collectibles like Hot Wheels.
Oh, those are my little HotWheels.
No, that happens to be thefirst set of Hot Wheels they
ever made in its original case.
We got calls from all over thecountry for them.
We sold 18 Hot Wheels in theircase for 3,000 bucks.
Judy Gratton (11:00):
You have to know these things.
Jeff Marksz (11:02):
There's a lot that goes into liquidation and that's
the difference between kind ofa professional liquidator and
someone trying to do itthemselves.
People are often like we workon commission and it's a fairly
high commission.
We put a lot of work into itand bring a lot of knowledge to
the table.
So people are like I can do itmyself and you can.
You're probably A you've got toput the work in to do it.
You're potentially leaving alot of money on the table by
(11:23):
either not knowing whatsomething's worth, they price
their antiques really high, notknowing that they don't sell,
and they either don't sellanything because it's priced too
high or they give it awaybecause they don't know what it
is.
The liquidator's job is toextract the most value they can
in the time that they're given.
Judy Gratton (11:38):
You mentioned hoarding and a lot of people,
including myself.
The older we get, the more wemiss that minimalist stage.
How long does this take for youif you're going through every
drawer and helping people parsethrough decades of stuff?
Jeff Marksz (11:55):
What you're talking about when they're going
through every drawer.
There's three distinct services.
We call that our pack and moveservice and that's an hourly
service.
So that's different than theselling service.
And the answer is it takes aslong as it takes or as much as
they want to invest in thatprocess.
That hoarder house that we weretalking about, the family was
like the mom wants to go throughabsolutely everything and I
(12:16):
laid out for them the amount ofdays and hours it would take to
do it.
And that particular case, forexample, was an extreme hoarder.
Like we literally have to doseveral dumpster runs before we
can even move in the house.
We laid out what that wouldcost to take her through it
step-by-step and we're like it'sa big number.
And they're like, yeah, no,she's just going to have to say
goodbye to it because that'sjust not practical or affordable
(12:37):
.
It's not that we're not goodvalue for money, it's just a big
ask.
A house quicker than you thinkgenerally doesn't take more than
a couple of days to go throughit and make the big decisions.
There's plenty of revisions andgoing back and working through
stuff, but we try and getclients in the right headspace
before we start, because themore they can do in advance to
get their head around what theyneed and want, the easier the
(13:00):
process goes when you work withthem to sort through things.
Dennis Day (13:05):
So what are the common mistakes people make when
they are separating and sorting?
Jeff Marksz (13:10):
I think it depends on what.
First of all, there's nomistakes you can really make
because, again, if you'refocusing on what you need and
want, the biggest mistake youcan make is trying to take too
much and you're making sure that, as you are going through it,
that you have a need or want forit or a use for it.
I wouldn't go as far as to sayit's the Marie Kondo, does, it
(13:31):
bring me joy?
Minimalist type of thing, butit's got to at least have a use.
We had one client, bruce, alovely guy.
He was getting on, he hadhealth problems but, amazing guy
, he was going to sell his house, buy a house for a son, go live
with his son to live out hisdays and all that sort of stuff.
But he'll be effectively beliving in a mother-in-law suite
from his house.
And he was an extreme hoarder.
(13:52):
And we're going through thisprocess of what do you want,
what don't you want, and when Isay hoarder, again hard to move
around.
And we go in the backyard andthere's this tarp and there's
all this stuff under the tarpand we said, bruce, what's this?
We whipped the tarp off andit's full of diesel fuel, water
(14:13):
tools and things like that oh,that's my Y2K emergency stash.
I was like, okay, bruce, whatof this do we actually need?
There was a brand new in thebox, reciprocating miter saw
from Harbor Freight, which waslike and Bruce, oh, I need that.
That was a good deal, that's agreat saw.
I need that, yeah.
Finally I turned to Bruce and Isaid what are you going to cut
in the next 20 years that youhaven't cut in the previous 20
years that it's been under thistarp?
It was an eye-opener for him.
Oh, my God, you're right, I'mholding on to all this stuff.
(14:36):
I got to focus on what I needand where I'm going to be and
what I'm going to do.
So the first thing is to bereally strict with yourself
about what you want and what youneed.
If you're going to hire aliquidator, let the liquidator
do their job.
Liquidation is a service andyou often hear people say, oh, I
went ahead and I did a bunch ofdonation runs First.
(14:56):
It just makes any liquidator'sheart stop because you're like
oh, what did you do?
Oh, grandma's old clothes.
Oh, you mean the funky vintageones that all the hip kids want.
My old toolbox, oh, you meanthose Hot Wheels, red lines that
I sell for thousands.
You don't know what's valuableor could be valuable and isn't
valuable.
There's enough stress in tryingto manage your move anyway.
Let the liquidator serve you.
It's a service.
Focus on you, focus on yourtransition, focus on packing,
(15:20):
picking what you want and leavethe rest behind and hand the
keys over is the best advice tonot.
Judy Gratton (15:26):
Now, do you deal with people who are still living
in the home as they're goingthrough this, or are they out by
the time you come into thepicture?
Jeff Marksz (15:50):
they're moving, how much time they have to move,
and some people don't have thechoice.
They have to sell their housebefore they get a new house, for
example.
It's not ideal, but you canmake it work With liquidation.
It's a very chaotic processbecause if you're doing an
estate sale that's happening insomeone's house, you're inviting
strangers in, so you can't havestuff intermingled and mixed
together.
You really need to create aclear space if you want to
extract any value out of things.
(16:11):
So if somebody does need tolive in the home while we're
working there, we do suggestthat they effectively pack up
and sequester everything.
We're like okay, all your stuffgoes in the back bedroom and
we'll lock the door so thatthere's absolutely no mistake
about what is to be sold ortaken away and what isn't to be
sold.
People often ask should Iattend my own estate sale?
(16:32):
We don't prohibit it, but werecommend against it because
it's not comfortable for theperson and it's not comfortable
for the buyers either.
It's just not recommended.
Judy Gratton (16:39):
When you're selling the house, it's not a
good idea for the owner to bethere.
Jeff Marksz (16:43):
But again, we're practical.
The job has to be done.
If they have to live there, wemake it work.
They have to be ready to makethose compromises.
For example, sometimes we'llget a pod and we'll have them
parking out front.
We'll put all their stuff in apod and it gets taken away to
the storage facility.
They live out of a suitcase fora couple of weeks or as long as
it takes.
There's lots of ways that wecan make it work, but the best
(17:05):
situation is if you can vacateyourself from the property.
That's the best for everybody.
Judy Gratton (17:10):
I think what I'd like to cover next is a bit
about okay, now you've done thesale, and now comes the part of
whether or not you are going todonate the things.
How do you deal with theirdonations?
I think, now we've done thesale, there are still things
(17:30):
left over and I believe from ourprevious conversation you
mentioned that you'd help themdonate things to places they
want them to go.
Jeff Marksz (17:40):
It might be worth touching on the point about sale
viability, because it's a pointthat people often miss.
People think, oh, I've gotstuff, I can sell it.
It's not always the way you doit.
There is that threshold forthere to even be any sort of
selling to happen from aprofessional liquidator.
We all have minimums becauseit's all on commission.
Dennis Day (18:00):
So Jeff tell, us what you do when the stuff in
the home isn't as valuable asthe owner thinks and it's really
not sellable.
Jeff Marksz (18:11):
Yeah, and there are some situations where that's
the case.
Just to give you an example todo an estate sale, a
professional company is going tospend with their crew maybe a
week setting up and a weekendrunning the sale.
When we work on commissions wehave to cover those selling
costs.
So your breakeven point on mostestate sales is a gross revenue
of about $10,000.
So your break-even point onmost estate sales is a gross
revenue of about $10,000.
(18:31):
If you can look around at yourstuff and think to yourself, is
this going to raise $10,000?
That's the break point.
We can tell pretty quicklywhether the contents of a home
are viable for an estate sale.
Normally, some clues are westart by looking for what we
call the long poles or theanchor items.
Clues are we start by lookingfor what we call the long poles
(18:52):
or the anchor items.
Is there a set of sterlingsilver, you know?
Or is there expensive jewelryor a vehicle that we can sell
for hundreds or thousands ofdollars?
Because if you're trying to getto $10,000, it's a long way,
doing it five or $10 at a time.
Just because it doesn't meanthat household items aren't
valuable, it just means that thehelp of a professional seller
(19:13):
isn't covered by the value ofwhat they are, and that doesn't
mean that we can't extract valuefrom it.
We talked before about thecontents of a house sometimes
being a liability versus anasset.
If you can't easily sell thembecause it's either not valuable
enough or it's not the type ofvalue that can sell locally,
then you've got to start lookingat other liquidation options.
(19:34):
Sometimes we do things that wecall a pop-up sale, which is
more like a managed garage sale.
It's much less labor for us,but it allows us to generate
some revenue.
Sometimes there's a fewvaluable things, like a vehicle.
We could sell that privatelyand try and raise some money
that way.
Or sometimes maybe it's a smallcollection and we can do what
(19:56):
we call a buyout with wholesalepricing and get on with the sale
of the property when a fullestate experience isn't viable.
You're looking at differentoptions and again it's our job
to try and figure out is therevalue and how can we unlock it?
And it's not always an estatesale and you explain that bio
you mentioned.
(20:16):
I saw it on your website and I'mnot sure what that is yeah, for
example, let's take thesterling silver set, which has a
good value.
They typically sell for athousand bucks or whatever.
But there's just not nothingelse in the house.
It's pretty bare and you'relike, okay, I can't run an
estate sale, but this silver hasvalues.
We'll be like, okay, we caneffectively buy that from you at
a fair wholesale price whichleaves a profit for us but also
(20:38):
allows you to move it quickly.
Then we can move on.
It's usually as part of the nextphase of the process which
we'll talk about, which is theclear out, where you're clearing
the house out.
Because the house out?
Because when we talk about thecontents of the home as a
liability rather than an asset,what we're trying to do is
decrease that liability.
Part of that liability is thecost of removing it from the
(20:59):
house.
When you're at that stage, it'snot really about raising money,
it's about how do you decreasethat liability, decrease the
cost of donating or trashing it.
And again, one way is wholesale,wholesale.
We have other methods ofselling that aren't estate sales
.
We sell online, we have privateclients and things like that,
but there's a small collectionof hot wheels or whatever.
We're like, okay, that'ssomething we know we can sell
(21:21):
online, so we work out this iswhat we can sell it for, this is
our margin, and we say this ishow much we can offer.
It's a wholesale price.
Our goal is to try and getthose costs down when it comes
to the removals, to offset thecost of actually clearing the
house.
That's how a buyout works.
Dennis Day (21:39):
I'm really disappointed.
I didn't keep my Hot Wheels.
I was right at the cusp rightwhen they started with the
orange track the whole bit.
Every time a new one came outwe were just wild about it.
But yeah, you can't pack aroundfor 60 years.
So, in your experience, whatkinds of things are valuable?
Is there furniture, artwork,jewelry?
(22:01):
What tends to bring the mostvalue?
Jeff Marksz (22:04):
Interesting question, A tricky question,
because within every categorythere is something that's
valuable.
I'd say one of the principlesabout understanding what's
valuable is, if it was expensivewhen it was new, it has a
chance of being expensive whenit's old.
Grandma's china is very nicequality, but she bought it at
the department store and it wasdepartment store china then,
(22:28):
department store china now, soit's not rare or particularly
collectible as a category.
China is not a great thing tosell, but if it's Wedgwood
Queensware, there's a hugefollowing for it and it's very
collectible.
We had a sale where we had acomplete set of that and we
literally had people.
The house had a centralcourtyard.
It was a lovely mid-centuryarchitecture house and you can
(22:49):
either go left or right.
The kitchen was in the back andwe had all these people signed
up on the list.
They wanted the Queensware andthey came in the house.
Some of the people who wantedthe Queensware went left and
right and they both met in themiddle at the same time and
they're both grabbing it.
It's just finally had to sayokay, wait a minute, who was
first on the list and who getsit?
There are certain categoriesthat can be more valuable, for
(23:10):
example, when it comes tofurniture.
I mentioned antiques not beingparticularly valuable but in
this particular market in thePacific Northwest, mid-century
modern furniture does very well,just good quality, like full
grain leather, chesterfield.
If it was really expensive orspecial when it's new it has a
(23:30):
chance of being valuable whenit's old.
Other thing that sells well inthis area again, we talked about
toys, vintage video games veryhot market people looking for
those old Nintendo games andthings like that.
I'm just trying to rattle thesethings off the top of my head.
We talked about Pyrex, otherKitchenalia there's a lot of
vintage electronics and Hi-Fi isvery collectible.
(23:51):
Other kitchen alia there's alot of vintage electronics and
hi-fi is very collectible.
Albums, albums and now not allalbums.
Again within the category thereare certain albums that most
albums are worth five bucks.
We had a record collection.
We went through it and you'lllook for the usual suspects,
beatles and elvis and thingslike that, and we found a
beatles album within thiscategory.
It's called the butchercherCover.
When they released the album itshowed a picture of the Beatles
(24:13):
in white butcher's coats withchopped up dolls all over the
cover.
That proved too much to themarket but they'd already
printed and released them.
So they recalled all the albums.
In the UK they destroyed allthe covers, but in the US,
rather than destroy them, theyjust put a sticker over the
Butcher cover.
So if you have the originalalbum that never had a sticker
(24:37):
on it, because you bought itwhen it first came out, or you
had a promo version,particularly with the letter,
then that's worth mega, megamoney.
But a lot of people, when theygot the sticker version, they
knew to take the sticker offright away and it caused a
little bit of damage but youcould steam it off and anyway,
there's various grades of thisbutcher cover and I think we
sold that album for about 1200bucks.
There are categories of thingsto look for, but the main thing
(24:59):
is knowing the thing that isvaluable and collectible.
The best of each category iswhat you're looking for.
Things like Pianos are the bestexample of liability versus an
asset.
Even if you gave it away forfree, the person is going to be
spending $300 moving it and $100tuning it, and these
instruments just aren't worththat much money.
You can get a good digitalpiano that takes up less space
(25:22):
for practicing.
Judy Gratton (25:23):
I've seen free baby grand pianos.
I have hauled pianos to thedump in homes that I've sold
because nobody would take it.
Jeff Marksz (25:34):
Yeah, and it is a shame.
Again, it's one of the otherthings about being a liquidator,
though.
We often say I got a guy, apiano guy.
He can tell me whether thepiano has instrument value.
Some cheaper brand pianos orolder pianos that weren't
actually that expensive to beginwith and they're just worthless
.
But there's other.
Obviously, like a Steinway, isalways going to have value.
(25:56):
It's worth restoring, it'sworth whatever.
Yamaha is a very good brand.
It has musical credibility, sothere's a market for it.
I call my guy, tell him what Igot and he tells me whether
that's an instrument or whetherit's a paperweight and we deal
with it appropriately.
Judy Gratton (26:14):
What do you love most about your job?
Jeff Marksz (26:21):
It's an interesting job.
One of the coolest things aboutthe job is we're learning new
stuff all the time and it's verystimulating.
I often tell clients jokinglythat I know more about Barbie
clothes than any adult male hasany right to know, because I had
to research them and I sold oneBarbie outfit for $500.
You just learn these thingsthrough experience.
But I think the best thingabout it is just our ability to
help people.
We get so many people who areso appreciative of what we do.
(26:42):
We talked about how we form arelationship with the people we
work with and we get notes andletters and gifts like I
couldn't have done it withoutyou.
It was such a stressful time inmy life dealing with grief or
change or whatever, and they'reout of state and under stress.
They're so appreciative thatsomeone can come in hand the
keys over and just know it'sgoing to happen and it does
(27:04):
happen and I don't know what Iwould have done if I didn't have
his help.
And that's the thing that makesyou come back and deal with the
rat poop and the dust in thehoarder houses and the messes,
because if you're not doing it,this family is going to be in a
bad situation and you're reallyhelping them.
That's what brings you in andmakes you go the extra mile,
knowing that they really needyour help.
(27:25):
Jeff.
Dennis Day (27:25):
I'm wondering what you do with things you mentioned
being illegal to sell, like thefur coat, the beaver fur coat
or maybe a stuffed cheetah fromAfrica.
What do you do with thesethings that you can't sell?
Jeff Marksz (27:40):
Again, it varies.
Obviously, the best thing is ifsomebody in the family does
want it or has a use for it.
You can't sell ivory, but youcan inherit ivory, for example.
Judy Gratton (27:50):
Donate it to a museum or something like that
Exactly.
Jeff Marksz (27:54):
We talk with Fish and Wildlife about these things
and they recommend places wherewe can donate them Museums,
universities.
There's a big cat conservationcharity who's allowed to take
them.
There are places like that,ivory.
Similarly, you can donate it tothose places or it ultimately
gets destroyed, rightly becauseit is a problem.
Beaver fur we do the rightthing.
(28:16):
We take it out of circulationand sometimes that means
destroying it.
But if we can find a home forit, we certainly do, whether
it's with the family or with aninstitution, what is the coolest
, funnest, most memorable thingyou've found.
We get that question a lot.
You sell so many things.
It blurs together.
But we certainly love sellingcool things like vintage cars.
(28:37):
We sold a 69 Charger, onceDodge Charger.
It got a huge amount ofinterest and made lots of money.
We love our jewelry, findingsome great big diamonds and
learning about them and gettingthem graded In terms of cool
stuff.
I like industrial stuff.
We liquidated a guy bigdiamonds and learning about them
and getting them graded interms of cool stuff.
I like industrial stuff.
We liquidated a guy who was a.
He was basically a forensicanalysis, so we were literally
(28:59):
think abby and csi, so like hehad a mass spectrometer and
microscopes and samples tocompare things to and it was
like really fun because, hey, wehave to learn it and we're
reaching out to people all overthe country.
It's a very narrow market sowe're making connections and
learning about all thatinteresting stuff.
So many unusual things.
A lot of metal workers in thisregion so we get lots of
(29:21):
blacksmithing, cool specialtytools and big industrial things.
People get excited about allsorts of stuff, but the more
obscure the better.
For me, one of my particularareas is vintage hi-fi and
electronics.
I love finding that rare clipcorner horn that if people want
want to collect or the pioneerstack from the from the
(29:42):
seventies, that's got theoriginal everything equalizer
and the reel to reel tape, thewhole nine yards.
I love my vintage electronics,my obscure industrial things.
Judy Gratton (29:52):
Very good.
Dennis Day (29:53):
Jeff, tell us, how are you compensated for all this
time and hard work?
Good question.
Jeff Marksz (29:59):
We talked about the different services we have.
There's packing and moving, theselling process and the
clearing out process.
For packing and moving it's anhourly charge, typically about
$75 an hour.
There's other things that we doin that service.
For example, sometimes peopleneed an inventory for probate
and again by the hour we'll comein.
(30:20):
We also we aren't certifiedappraisers ourselves, but we do
have appraisers who we bring in.
Appraisers generally costaround $150 an hour.
A lot of that upfront work.
People charge by the hour.
It's a service.
But when it comes to estatesales and working on commission,
most companies charge a similarrate, about 40% of the gross.
(30:40):
Some companies charge a littlemore, a little less, depending
on the situation.
The amount of effort doesn'treally change and the main thing
is finding someone you feel youcan partner with when selecting
an estate sale company.
It's not something you priceshop on.
It's about who's going toservice you the best.
So, yeah, 40%, and that's whythere's a minimum amount.
(31:02):
A lot of companies have that intheir contract and we're very
straight with people.
The whole process starts with afree consultation.
We'll come in, look at theproperty and we can tell you
whether it's viable.
If it doesn't, we'll tell youit's not something we can help
with because it won't cover ourcosts.
But here's some things you cando, and we're not shy of even
telling people.
You'll probably be better offif you did it yourself.
(31:24):
This sells best on Craigslist.
If you know how to do that,great.
That's why I'd suggest you tryand sell.
It's on the commission and it'sgenerally around the 40% mark.
Judy Gratton (31:34):
The clear out.
Jeff Marksz (31:35):
So the clear out once the selling process is done
.
Even if you have enoughcontents to run an estate sale,
you never sell everything.
You probably are only sellinghalf of the contents of the
house.
It is possible to literallysell everything in the house.
If you price everything at adollar, you could empty the
house.
But that to literally selleverything in the house, if you
price everything at a dollar,you could empty the house.
But that's not the job of aliquidator.
The job of the liquidator is toextract the most value in the
(31:56):
time that you have.
If you can sell half of thehouse at a premium, you're going
to make more money than if youempty the house.
Selling everything at a dollar,right, but you still need to
empty the house at the end.
We do offer that service.
Not a lot of estate companiesdo and there are other people
that provide the service, fromGot Junk to other clear out
companies.
But when you're working withthose companies it's literally
(32:18):
going to the dump in a dumptruck and dumped out the back.
Our philosophy as people whoare working with families with
needs is about donating andAfter the sale's done, if you
engage us to do the clear out,we'll come in with the crew.
We'll literally pack all thedonations, things that are
(32:38):
donatable.
It's interesting.
Even knowing what's donatable isa skill, because donation
places are very picky about whatthey'll take.
We pack it all up.
We basically then load a truck,we do a donation run and
everything that we haven'tpacked for donation is trash.
Then we load the rest on thetruck and take it to the dump.
Our goal at that point is if itisn't attached to the wall,
(33:01):
it's gone.
When getting a house ready forsale, the realtors want you know
so that they can come in and dothe repairs paint cleaning,
staging etc.
So that's what we do, and thewhole process takes about two
days.
The cost to clear out a typicalnon-hoarder house it's about
$2,000 plus whatever the trashbill is is what people can
(33:22):
expect, and so that's a crewworking for two days plus the
truck.
Dennis Day (33:26):
Can you handle old fertilizer, paint oil,
insecticides?
Jeff Marksz (33:31):
A great question because the answer is yes and no
.
As a company and as anindividual, I'm not licensed to
carry hazardous wastes.
So if I put those things on mytruck and I drive away and I get
pulled over and they find thatI'm transporting hazardous
wastes as a company without alicense, I get in big trouble.
However, we do have licensedhazmat people to take care of
(33:55):
those things.
Interestingly, as a rule,what's considered a hazmat and
what isn't can be a blurry line.
There are some things that youwouldn't think twice about, like
bleach, but it's actuallyconsidered a hazardous material
for a company to transport atcertain volumes.
So we generally say that wedon't transport liquids because
instead of trying to parsewhat's toxic and what's not
(34:16):
toxic, we put all the paint andliquids in a box in the garage.
If we can dump it down thedrain like vinegar, we empty as
much as we can.
If we have a question.
We leave the liquids and ifyou'd like us to contact our
hazmat guy, we do it and it'snot that expensive, our hazmat
guy it's about 200 bucks to do ahazmat run and we dispose of it
properly.
Latex paint has to be dried out, which takes forever, or you
(34:38):
take it to certain locations.
You can only drop off so manygallons at a time.
In our area there are hazardouswaste facilities where you can
take fertilizer and things up tocertain quantities, usually at
the transfer stations a coupleof the transfer stations of
hazmat areas and we do that.
We had a client just recentlywho went into his garage and
(34:58):
there were five 50-gallon drumsof diesel fuel that had been
there for 30 years.
How do you deal with that?
We did find a company who cantake 50-gallon drums or the
alternative was to get a barrelpump and decant it into five
gallon barrels because you couldonly drop it off in certain
(35:18):
amounts at a time and basicallydecant it and take it to hazmat
in stages.
You're absolutely right,because a lot of these old
houses you find those oldlinoleum style tiles that are
actually full of asbestos andyou'd have to handle them really
carefully, just like everythingelse in the estate business,
your knowledge is reallyimportant about what you can and
(35:39):
can't do or shouldn't do.
Thank, you?
Judy Gratton (35:40):
That's amazing.
Was that your same guy that wassaving up all the stuff for Y2K
?
Dennis Day (35:46):
No different guy.
Jeff, if we were looking forSeattle Magpies, what would we
do to find you and where we have?
Jeff Marksz (35:54):
a website, wwwseattlemagpiescom.
We're on Facebook, we're onemail seattlemagpies at gmailcom
, and we're happy to take calls.
We answer our phone pretty muchall the time 206-272-0371.
Dennis Day (36:11):
All your weekends are taken with estate sales
right now.
If I wanted to do one, am Igoing to wait six weeks, 10
weeks?
Where am I at.
Yeah absolutely.
Jeff Marksz (36:20):
We're typically.
First of all, if you want toengage us, we can come out and
do a consultation pretty quicklyduring the week.
But, as you rightly say, theweekends book up pretty quickly
and us and pretty much all theother credible companies that
are out there and there's somegreat liquidators in the Seattle
area we all know each other, weall help each other, but most
(36:41):
of us are booking four to sixweeks out.
So if you're looking to sellthings, expect a delay of four
to six weeks, Because if we'renot doing an estate sale, we
might be doing a move, we mightbe doing a clear out.
We are pretty our weekends fillvery quickly.
You'll find that we get callsall the time where people are
like I need to do a sale.
I've got lots of great stuff.
Oh, that's great, I love tohear it, but it needs to be next
weekend.
We're like sorry, we can clearit out for you.
(37:04):
We can maybe do a bit of abuyout.
It's about trading time formoney If you're trying to get
out on the market before theAugust summer vacations.
Sometimes you just got to makea decision.
But yeah, to your point, Dennis, expect a four to six week
window for booking most estatesale companies.
Dennis Day (37:24):
This has been great, Jeff.
I really appreciate your time.
We'll get your information onthe audio and video.
Judy Gratton (37:33):
Printed on there as well.
Dennis Day (37:34):
Any last words, anything we didn't discuss that
you feel the need to informationon the audio and video Printed
on there as well.
Any last words?
Jeff Marksz (37:42):
anything we didn't discuss, that you feel the need
to let people know.
No, there's so much that goesinto estate liquidation.
The best thing is to engage acompany and get that advice, and
we love to talk to people andhelp them out.
Even if our advice at the endof the day is here's how you can
do it yourself.
The best thing is to get thatconversation started as soon as
possible.
We're all here to help you andwe hope we can.
Why Magpies?
(38:02):
Good question.
We have a lot of expertise.
There's another part of ourbusiness that we didn't talk
about.
We have a big eBay business.
We've got a warehouse.
We ship thousands of packages ayear all over the world and
that really helps us tune in towhat's valuable and what isn't
valuable.
We have a pretty deep knowledge,not only because of what we
(38:23):
sell at estate sales, butbecause we sell a lot of things
through other channels as well.
Clients give us a lot offeedback that we're very
responsive and reliable.
Our business is pretty much100% referral.
We generally work with peoplewho know us and they keep
calling us back because theyknow they can rely on us.
When we say we'll get the jobdone, we get it done, which is
(38:46):
particularly important whenworking with realtors, because
you guys have scheduled thepainters and you've scheduled
the.
There's a lot of dependenciesthat are involved in getting it
done.
Reliability is a big factor forus as well.
We're fun to work with.
We like people, we like helpingpeople out.
Hopefully, if there's a goodchemistry, people will feel the
same.
Anything else, judy.
Judy Gratton (39:06):
I don't think so.
I was just very impressed fromthe first time I talked to you,
jeff.
You were honest and supportiveat the same time.
I'm talking to you about mygreat aunt's china from Japan,
and I was able to let go of itbecause it was like, why hold on
to it?
I gave it to a very dear friendwho wanted it and it made me
feel good.
Dennis Day (39:25):
Thank you, jeff, so much for taking the time to be
with us, and we will have afabulous guest the next time.
If you are interested incontacting us about downsizing
or any other real estatequestion, give us a call or go
to our website atedgeroopteencom.
(39:46):
Thanks for watching andlistening.
That's it.
See you next time.
Bye.
Judy Gratton (39:51):
Thank you JR, thank you Dennis.
Dennis Day (39:53):
Thank you guys.
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