Frequently asked questions

An estate sale is an organized, priced sale of the contents of a home: furniture, kitchenware, tools, art, jewelry, linens, garage contents, the lot. It is run on site over a set number of days, usually a weekend, and it is open to the public. It differs from a garage sale in scale and method: the entire household is inventoried, researched, priced, staged and marketed, and the sale is staffed and controlled. Most people arrive at one after a death, a move to assisted living, a downsize, or a relocation off-island.

An on-site estate sale usually makes sense when there is a full house of contents, the property is accessible to the public, and there is enough time to prepare: typically a few weeks. It makes less sense when the volume is small, when the building genuinely will not permit public access, or when the timeline is very short. In those cases a buyout, consignment, or auction may net more after costs. Our walkthrough exists to tell you which of those is true for your estate, including when the honest answer is that a sale is not worth running.

Plan on several weeks between the first walkthrough and the sale weekend. That time goes into sorting, researching and pricing, staging the rooms, photographing, and marketing the sale to buyers before it opens. Compressing that window is possible but it usually costs you money, because the items that need research are exactly the ones that carry the most value. If you are working against a closing date, a move-out deadline or a PCS date, tell us the date at the first conversation and we will tell you plainly whether it is achievable.

Please don't, not before someone has looked. This is the most expensive mistake families make. Costume jewelry, older kitchen and barware, tools, sewing and craft supplies, ephemera, paperwork in drawers, and things that look like junk in a garage routinely carry real value. Remove what is personal, private, or legally sensitive: documents, medications, firearms, and anything you know you want to keep. Leave the rest, including the contents of drawers and closets, and let the walkthrough sort it.

No, and most families are not. Being present is often harder than people expect: watching strangers negotiate over a parent's belongings is not a neutral experience. The property is staffed for the duration of the sale. If you would rather be there, that is fine too, but we will ask you to agree in advance on how pricing questions get handled, because a family member overriding prices mid-sale is the fastest way to stall a sale room.

Estate sale companies are almost always paid as a percentage of what the sale earns, deducted from the proceeds rather than billed upfront. National directories and industry cost guides commonly report a range of roughly 30–50% of gross sales, with 35–40% typical. Our estimated range is 25–35%, and where a specific estate lands inside it depends on volume, value, the amount of preparation and labor required, access, and timeline. The rate for your estate is confirmed in writing after a walkthrough, before you commit to anything.

Broadly: how much revenue the sale is likely to produce, and how much work it takes to produce it. A large, well-kept, high-value household that is ready to stage sits at the lower end. A smaller estate, or one needing heavy sorting, cleaning, disposal, repeated trips, restricted building access, extra staffing or security, or a compressed timeline, sits higher, because the labor is close to fixed while the revenue is not. The pricing page breaks each of these factors out individually.

The commission model exists specifically so that families do not have to fund the process out of pocket: the fee comes out of the sale proceeds at settlement. Some estates do involve costs beyond the commission, such as large-scale disposal, specialty appraisal, or additional security. Anything of that kind should be identified and agreed in writing before work starts, not discovered afterwards. Ask any company you talk to for that list in writing, including us.

A percentage-based fee means our outcome tracks yours, which is the point of the model. But it also means a very small estate can cost more to run than it returns, and no reputable company should take that work on without saying so. If the walkthrough suggests the numbers do not support a staffed on-site sale, we will tell you, and talk through the routes that remain: consignment, a bulk buyer for some or all of the contents, donation with proper documentation, or simply a different scope.

For a typical single-family household, expect a few weeks from walkthrough to settlement. Sorting and researching contents is the longest phase; staging and photography take a few days; the sale itself usually runs a weekend; and settlement follows the close of the sale. Larger properties, estates with significant collections needing research, and properties with restricted access take longer. You will get a specific schedule with dates in writing, not a vague estimate.

Pricing is set against what comparable items have actually sold for (completed sales, not asking prices), adjusted for condition, completeness, and demand in this specific market. That last part matters more in Hawaii than people expect: local demand for some categories runs well above mainland comparables, and well below for others, particularly anything bulky and inexpensive to replace. Items outside ordinary household range are researched individually, and where an item warrants a specialist opinion we will say so rather than guess.

Estate sale buyers are a real, organized audience: dealers, collectors, resellers and regulars who follow sales weekly. Reaching them means listing the sale on the platforms that audience already checks, photographing the contents properly, and describing the categories accurately so the right buyers show up on the right day. Presentation matters here: a sale that is photographed and staged well draws more buyers in the door, and attendance is what sets the final number.

This should be settled in writing before the sale, not improvised on the last afternoon. The realistic options are: prices reduced progressively over the final day, remaining items offered to a bulk buyer, donation to a charity with receipts for your records, return of specified items to the family, and disposal of what genuinely has no value. Different companies handle this differently and it is a fair question to ask each of them. On Oʻahu, disposal deserves particular attention: see the question below about bulky items.

Settlement happens after the sale closes and the accounting is reconciled. What you should insist on (from any company) is that the written agreement states the settlement window, the form of payment, and that you will receive an itemized accounting of gross sales, the commission, and any agreed costs. If a company will not put that in writing before the sale, that is the answer to your question.

A public sale means strangers in the house, so control matters: staff positioned through the property, a single controlled entry and exit, a staffed checkout, capped occupancy when rooms are tight, and small high-value items held in a supervised case rather than left on open tables. Rooms that are not part of the sale are closed off and monitored. Before the sale opens, everything personal (documents, medications, keys, anything you are keeping) should already be out of the house.

Sometimes, and the building decides, not us. Every condominium project on Oʻahu operates under its own declaration, bylaws and house rules recorded with the county. Those rules commonly govern elevator reservations for moving large items, loading-zone access and time limits, permitted move-in and move-out windows, and whether a unit may be opened to the public at all. Some buildings prohibit public sales outright. The first thing we do on a condo estate is read the house rules and speak to the resident manager, because the answer changes the entire plan, and where an on-site sale is not permitted, off-site sale, consignment or buyout are the routes that remain.

It is a genuine operational constraint here, not a footnote. Street parking in the urban core, narrow older streets in Kaimukī, Mānoa and Kailua, gated or hillside driveways in East Honolulu, and drive time to the North Shore all affect how a sale is staffed and how buyers arrive. Access is assessed at the walkthrough and it is one of the inputs to the fee, because a property where furniture has to be carried a long way, or where a truck cannot get close, costs meaningfully more to run.

Yes, and it is worth knowing early. Sustained humidity is hard on upholstered furniture, leather, paper, textiles, photographs, and electronics, and a house that has been closed up for months can deteriorate faster than families expect. Solid wood, ceramics, glass, metal, jewelry and most collectibles hold up well. The practical consequence: if a property is sitting empty while an estate is settled, the contents are not holding still, and delay has a real cost attached to it.

These categories come up constantly in Oʻahu estates and they are exactly where local knowledge separates a good result from a poor one: Hawaiiana, Hawaiian quilts, koa furniture and bowls, vintage aloha shirts, ukulele, surfboards, Niʻihau shell lei, and Japanese, Chinese and Okinawan pieces reflecting the families who have lived here for generations. Mainland price guides routinely get these wrong in both directions. They are identified and researched individually during preparation, and where a piece warrants a specialist's opinion before it is priced, we will say so.

Operationally, yes. A relocation sale is scheduled backwards from a hard date (a pack-out, a flight, a lease end, a closing), and it usually runs alongside a household that is still being lived in. For military families there is a second constraint: weight allowances are set by rank, dependency status and move type, and exceeding the allowance is charged back to you after the move, so the sell-versus-ship decision is a financial one. Furniture, appliances and bulky goods are typically where that decision gets made.

Worth knowing before you plan around it: on Oʻahu, bulky-item collection is by appointment only. A residence may schedule up to five bulky items per appointment, and metal appliances are handled on a separate appointment limited to two. Long items and bundles are capped at roughly six feet and sixty pounds, and televisions and other e-waste are not accepted at all. In practice this means a full household cannot simply be put at the curb, and disposal has to be planned as part of the sale rather than assumed.

Often yes, but the authority to sell has to be established first, and that is a question for the estate's attorney rather than for us. In Hawaii, personal property may in some circumstances be collected by affidavit thirty days after death where the gross estate excluding motor vehicles does not exceed $100,000 and no real property requires probate; larger estates generally require a personal representative to be appointed. We will ask who has authority to authorize the sale and sign the agreement, and we will wait until that is clear. Nothing here is legal advice.

Common, and much easier to handle before the sale than during it. The practical approach is to settle it while nothing is priced yet: anything a family member intends to keep is removed from the property, or clearly tagged and excluded in writing, before preparation begins. We work from one authorized decision-maker for the sale itself. Items pulled from a staged sale after pricing disrupt the room and cost money, so the agreement fixes the scope up front.

Some categories are commonly excluded from estate sales or routed elsewhere because they carry legal, licensing or safety obligations: firearms and ammunition, vehicles and vessels with titles, hazardous materials and certain chemicals, prescription medication, recalled products, and anything requiring specific licensing to transfer. Real property is separate work entirely. Where an item cannot be sold at the sale, that does not mean it has no value: it means it needs the right channel, and we will point you at it.