Making Money From Personal Property Guide by House buyer in Indianapolis

If you are using Allen+Roth products, I know that your house must be beautiful. And when you sold it (after all, nobody these days lives in the same house forever), you realized that you made quite a profit.

Congratulations to you!

But what if it is possible to turn it into a business?

How to make money while helping others to sell their house?

Let’s explore this in our Making Money From Personal Property guide.

The basics

Just like you make money on the difference between the purchase price of your house and its selling price, the same exact thing can happen with the personal property of the real estate.

Do you feel that there is enough of a profit to be made in the case of this particular house?

You can find this out once you have a list of all of the properties and goods that come associated with the real estate in the interest.

If it comes to thousands of dollars or more, then that shows you that there is some money to be made there, says the owner of a house buying company based in Indianapolis.

How to help property owners

Now, this is quite a large administrative burden that you can relieve for the heirs and for their personal representative. If you’ve ever had a yard sale to sell some of your stuff, then you know how much work it can be to go through. You need to announce it, try to sell a piece of it here, a piece of it there, and handle all this crowd that comes to your yard sale.

Meanwhile, these folks who own the house might live far away from the property itself.

They just want to get the job done.

This is how you can do it quickly and expediently.

The first thing is to let them know that you want to buy all of the personal property at once except for anything that they want to exclude for sentimental reasons. Think about how big of a relief that’s going to be for them. It’s much more convenient to get it all done through one person.

That person is you.

Evaluating personal property

Let’s say that you go through the documentation and find that there is around $10,000 worth of personal property—maybe a car, some jewelry, furniture, etc. You can get those values from the Kelly Blue Book and other places, or just use your best guess.

Then you can offer the estate $2,000, for example, in exchange for buying it all at once, except you’re getting the option to buy it.

So, you’re not even promising to pay it.

You’re just saying that if you do buy it, it would be for this much money within this timeframe. Give yourself 20—30 days, and schedule that sometime before the closing. Then, you stand to make money on the difference between what you sell the property for and the price you’re getting the option to buy it for right now.

Legal documents

You want to use a document called the Purchase of Goods Agreement.

It pretty much says you have these many days to exercise an option to buy all of these personal items, and you make a list of them one at a time for this much money.

Let the owners know that you’re going to be showing the items to some buyers and to some auction companies and handling that all for them.

How to sell personal property

Now, where are you going to find the people that will buy this personal property for you?

The first step is to open either the Yellow Pages in the phone book or Yellowpages.com (or Superpages.com and so on) and find auction houses or estate sale buyers in the auction section.

You can also look at the local classified ads, either in print or online, and do the same thing.

You’re going to see ads that say things like “I buy antiques, used furniture, etc.,” “We buy used furniture,” or “We buy junk cars. Have a junk car? Ship it to us.”

You’re going to find people interested in buying certain things. You might even have people like this in your network.

You might have a person to call who would take care of it.

How to make the most of the sale

Once you have made a list of seven to ten of these companies, auction houses, and personal property buyers, call them on the phone and let them know that you have scheduled an auction date or a date that they can purchase what’s there at the property. Have them all come at once.

The more people that are there, the more competition there’s going to be, the more likely it is that you get paid more.

Find out from each of them what they’re willing to pay and get an agreement signed with them that is similar to what you had with the seller (an Agreement to Purchase Goods), except this isn’t giving them the option. This is saying that they are paying this for that right now or within 48 hours in cash.

Just make it clear that you have an option to buy it and you will have the full authority to sell the items of an estate you’ve come into.

However, no items will change hands until the personal representative of the estate is paid and you are in a position to facilitate this transaction.  

 

Hope you liked our guide about how to make from personal property. Let us know what you think in the comments!