We tend to accumulate a lot of stuff over the course of a lifetime. And, at some point the need arises to get rid of it entirely, or substantially reduce it, downsize. It may be an empty nest couple moving to a smaller home, a senior citizen going to and assisted living or a nursing home or the estate of a deceased family member. Regardless of the circumstances, the task of going through a lifetime of things can be daunting.
A popular avenue for disposal of an estate, living or deceased, is an auction. In years past, an estate auction typically involved a crew from an auction house going through a person’s home, boxing up all of the items, loading them onto a truck and hauling them to the auction house, where an auctioneer would sort through the items and place it on tables. However, today, auctions are more likely to be conducted online.
Brent Wears with Wears Auctioneering explained the process, “Everything we’re doing these days is online. We’re not doing hardly any live auctions anymore.”
The industry has been turning over and navigating toward online for the last ten years, he said.
“Covid, obviously, had a huge impact on in-person auctions…we just couldn’t have them. So that has probably helped the online process more than hindered.”
Wears Auctioneering was fortunate, being proactive and moving toward online auctions before the pandemic forced the issue.
“We saw the light coming, that on-line’s were going to become a bigger part of our day-to-day business, so close to ten years ago, we started to do online auctions.”
Wears estimated there were maybe only one or two per year then with 75-80 live auctions.
“Back then it was all about the commodity we were selling. I remember the first online we did, it was a business liquidation, an underground boring business. The buyers for that equipment were all over the country and, if we would’ve had a live auction, it would’ve taken less than an hour to sell it because it was only a few big pieces of equipment. Nobody was going to come across the country to take a chance on buying one machine.”
All of the machines ended up sold to out-of-state buyers, he noted.
“So, your buyers aren’t always local. Your ideal buyer’ isn’t always local. Online auctions, obviously, have a much broader reach.”
Plus, buyers can look at and bid on items at their convenience and have time to research an item before placing a bid.
“The online sales were initially kind-of an oddity, but they worked. We’ve been doing about 100 online auctions per year for the last five or six years and they go really well. We go out and take photographs, we take measurements of items and as many photos as we think need to be taken of an item so the bidders can get a good feel for what it is and what it looks like. Our buyers have to buy from the photos, so it behooves us to take as good of pictures as we can, so you have a good representation of what it is.”
Nothing is ever 100 percent perfect, however.
“Sometimes people don’t read the instructions (regarding bidding, item pick-up, etc.) or they don’t look at the picture and they think it’s something that it isn’t. You’re always going to have that happen. There’s a margin of error with anything.”
With online auctions everything remains in the house until the buyer comes to pick it up at a scheduled time.
“We take pictures right where the items are sitting in the house, it looks a lot better sitting there than it would in a warehouse.”
Leaving everything at the home saves the seller literally thousands of dollars in labor, he said, and eliminates worries of damage to items during the process.
“We come back and facilitate the process of pickup. My crew, who catalogs it, we meet the buyers who bring their invoice, on a certain day at a certain time.”
The buyers are responsible for removing the items themselves, he added.
About the only obligation or imposition upon the family is removing anything they want to keep.
“It’s hands-off for them, we take care of just about everything else.”
Wears said the family can do whatever they want sorting-wise or organizing the items before his staff arrives.
“And we encourage that. Then we come in and do all the rest. We do a huge number of auctions for people who are downsizing, moving out of state, moving to a new home, an estate doesn’t necessarily mean somebody is dead, it can be a living estate.”
Wears has been in the auction business for 43 years and graduated from auctioneering school in 1979.
Auctioneers spend years perfecting their craft and their chant, the rhythmic way they call out bids during a live auction.
However, with the move to 100 percent online, point-click-and bid auctions: “It’s a whole new world. I’m getting out of practice, it’s just so different. You don’t use the skills that you’ve honed over the years.”
Now, he said, it comes down to product knowledge and a lot of that is incumbent upon the buyer to do their own research before placing a bid. For example, model numbers are provided for appliances, as well as size when possible.
A phone call or email is all it takes to get started. Wears sets up a time to do a walk-through to determine the feasibility of an auction. After that, a time is scheduled for crews to go and document the items. The process takes about two-to-three weeks with a ten-day auction and two days of scheduled pickups.
“There’s no doubt that competitive bidding will bring you not always the highest dollar, but most often the highest dollar. It’s all about who wants to buy what you’re selling at that particular day and time. But we’re talking about selling a mass of stuff all at one time and getting it all done at once. We’re not talking about eBay and selling one item this week, maybe two items next week, etc. People need to look at experience, do they (the auctioneer) have a following? Do they have the following because they’ve been at it awhile? We’ve got a pretty good following. We send out nearly 12,000 emails every Thursday to our buyer base, and that’s just the people who want to be on our mailing list.”
Wears Auctioneering- 319-624-3779
wearsauctioneering.com
Facebook– www.facebook.com/WearsAuctioneering
Brent Wears