[Closed] House clearances, value?

Are there no other charities in the area that will do house clearances?

Err he's left it to the "one" charity, so giving it to another may well be seen as going against his wishes? I dunoo, I'd just like to help

In my experience of these things just use a house clearance company to take the lot and don't waste your time getting a few quid extra for the charity. If they can't be bothered, why should you?

Just get everything approved through the solicitor handling the estate. Tell them exactly what you propose and get approval in writing.

Train stuff - there are 'Wanted ads' in almost all of the railway mags.
They'd take the lot, but probably only offer 25% of their selling price (50%-70% of the new price), so a book that wil sell for £10, you'd get £2.50.
Many will be worth nothing.
Builders tools, ebay as a job lot.Expect next to FA for them.
Furniture - nothing. Really.
Coins - correct, take them to a bank.
Cameras, again, a camera mag will give you a contact to buy the lot. Dont be surprised if they are'nt interested, film cameras are still worth FA unless it is a good model from one of the big Brands.

It's sad, but old stuff isnt worth much.

As above, most stuff worth v little even though perfectly useful.

Worth getting a house clearance firm to look in case there's something worth auctioning.

Her legal duty is (I'd guess) to make a reasonable efforts to maximise the profit from the estate - but not to go to the end of the earth.

Some of the furniture could be worth something, the whole shabby chic market has exploded recently (ercol and the like sell for £100s).
If you have any idea who the furniture is made by, it would help loads...

Err he's left it to the "one" charity, so giving it to another may well be seen as going against his wishes? I dunoo, I'd just like to help

If they aren't interested/unable to help, then you need to identify a cost effective way of clearing the place.
If there is a Bread-esque trader that will come and clear it and pay a few quid, all well and good. If there isn't then you could just end up paying for the rubbish removal which would reduce the value of the estate further. Depends how much time you have / effort you are wiling to put in.

Erm don't the charity get what's leftover after everything else has been sorted, so if nominated charity CBA and other charities aren't interested in the contents then get a clearance company in and take the costs out of the estate.
hardly needs saying but IANAL

Ring the housing association, get an idea of how much of a charge there will be for clearing it, take it. If it's going to expensive, cherry pick enough items and flog them to pay for it.

The problem is time - if you have 2 weeks to clear the bungalow you can't afford to waste time for 'enthusiasts' to ponder if they are buying a train or not!

Call the solicitor and see what the easiest, legal path is. Is there other money (savings) from his estate to pay a clearance company?

I believe so, but she want to do it herself.. Big skip time I reckon

I've just cleared out 50 plus years of my parents home.

Some of the furniture my Mum has was very similar to what you describe, but didn't seem to be popular in Yorkshire, and it would have been too expensive to bring it down to Bristol in the hope of selling.

The most money I got for anything was my Dad's hand tools - chisels etc. Got over £50 for a about 12-15 tools at an 'antique' dealer. I also used a local auctioneers who cleared much of the house and then sold it and took their commission off it - got about £140 which is bugger all as there was a fairly new washing machine and fridge freezer as well as various bits of furniture.

A local furniture reuse charity will take beds, sofas and maybe some other furniture, and possibly even electrical goods. Beds, sofas need to have a fire certificate. Find your nearest at http://www.frn.org.uk/

I think you just have to realise that you will effectively be dumping loads of really useful stuff.

Might be worth asking http://www.ianallanpublishing.com/our-shops.htm about getting shot of the transport books

If the charity don't want the "estate" which I presume means junk left in house, then surely thats the end of the matter?

Yes if you don't care, but as she a decent human being, she does 🙄

I'm clearing my folks' house at the moment.

Luckily there is no deadline (mum is in sheltered housing) but that's just as well - she moved out in November and I'm still not 1/2 way through. I and we have this issue with value as well, luckily a local charity shop are doing a collection from the house on weekly basis as I sort it - there are scary similarities, furniture from 50s / 60s, books by the truck load, model trains, climbing kit, more books, papers.. slides. pictures.

local model railway club could help you quite possibly, at least they would clear it, you get cash and it will be used. books - Oxfam or the local dump I'm afraid unless they're niche. tools - try local joiners / builders? DVDs - job lot really, time is the enemy as you know.

Yes if you don't care, but as she a decent human being, she does

*from the sound of your OP. Maybe they phrased it a little better and had reasons/excuses about time/staff/complications etc etc but as it reads they just DGAS and want the bottom line cash total - whatever that is.

sounds to me like charitys are fed up doing free house clearances for people.

what little money they make off the stuff will be offset by the cost of disposing of the inevitable crap people have.

agreed t_r and that's the dilemma I have. I realise quite a bit is junk, but I have no idea what is junk and what could have some value - even as rags, or that there may be useful books in there.

I don't think it's laziness on the part of relatives - I'm not lazy; I also reckon a house clearance on a commercial basis would simply bin most of it - I'm at least sorting through the stuff and clearing papers, things of sentimental but no cash value; I've also discovered the world poly pocket stockpile 🙁

I would have thought:-

Has she somewhere to move all the stuff to and sort through it in slower time.
If not then she won't have enough time to sort through things properly and so lots will have to just go to the tip.
Alternatively a house clearance place will probably end up selling any good stuff rather than junking it.

I'm just crying at the thought of useful stuff going in the skip! I'd be inclined to get shot of the actual crap & large items & trying to store the other gear, trains/cameras etc, till it finds a good home. Does the chosen charity have a shop? Not all charity shops take furniture, the YMCA here does & they have some cracking retro stuff. IIR charity shops don't take electrical goods mind so can't you give those away? I gave loads of my dads stuff away to various people.
HTH & good luck.

If she really wants to contribute to the charity, I would do this...
1-Estimate how long it would take to sort, process, sell, and deliver the 'good stuff', plus clear out the trash.
2-Figure out my hourly wage.
3-Scrap everything in the house.
4-Pay figure 1x figure 2 to the charity!

Job done!

I've faffed about with things like this, and tbh, despite wanting to reduce, reuse, recycle, at times it's just not worth it...

The tip actually recycle a lot of stuff anyway.

DrP

Where are you?
Train stuff holds an interest for me, possibly camera stuff too.

Out of pure curiosity,nothing else,and I understand about the person involved being being a good person and wanting to do it.
But if you've been named as executor,do you have a legal responsibilty to do this,or can you say you just wont do it?

Yeah, where are you based?

My step dad knows a fair bit about model trains and knows people all round the country that may be able to help.

A few pics wouldn't go amiss 🙂

All my Dad's railway books ,and there was a lot,went to our local transport museum at Amberly Chalk Pits.....they sifted through them ,kept the local relevent ones for their own libary and sold the rest at their own open days with the money being used for new projects....I know Dad would have been happy with that.
Maybe there is something similar local to you?

Find a local auction house, and invite them round to value the contents. They will be used to doing this type of thing and will identify what is saleable and what is not.

Anything that the auction house won't/ can't take can be donated or scrapped and the charity should be happy that you have made your best efforts for the estate.

As an executor appointed under a Will you have a legal responsibility to maximise the estate for the beneficiaries, if you don't you could be held liable personally. Estates left to charity are always a bit of a nightmare as they want to know the ins and outs of everything without doing any of the work. You can renounce your appointment and leave the charity to get on with it as beneficiaries (most charities will have a legacy department who can do this for them).

Hope That Helps

Opps been away & this got busy...
No 'were' (she not complaining at all just knuckling down to it) not expecting the charity to do a house clearance, as they're hardly going to take up the carpets and clear away the pure rubbish, but I find it hard to believe they won't even come round to see if they could re-cycle anything at all.
Heigh ho, they won't, so let just leave that.

As per the OP, all the "trains" are gone, it's train books/dvd's or prints that are left of the train stuff (will check out the amberley CP and the like).
The executor hasn't the room to take much if anything unfortunately, as she lives in a 1 bedroom retirement bungalow, and don't look at me as my own crap collection is huge.
Will try posting in the local village forum, to see if any locals want some of it..

Cheers all, got to get on, will read through it all again later.

When my Father passed away I hadn't realised that he had taken out equity release through a bank, they were shit, and in the end I had to strip my Dad's house in 2 days and threw 5 skips worth of stuff away.

I managed to keep about 175 film cameras, some of which I've since sold, but boy oh boy do i regret throwing some of those lovely possessions away!

When my Father passed away I hadn't realised that he had taken out equity release through a bank, they were shit, and in the end I had to strip my Dad's house in 2 days and threw 5 skips worth of stuff away.

I managed to keep about 175 film cameras, some of which I've since sold, but boy oh boy do i regret throwing some of those lovely possessions away!

Don't ever ever let your parents take out equity release, far far better to get a mortgage yourself!