Hiring an estate sale company is a strange transaction. You are handing a stranger the contents of your parent’s house, most of which you cannot value, and paying them a percentage of a number you have no way to verify in advance.
That asymmetry is exactly why the questions below matter. All of them should be answerable in a sentence, in writing, before you sign anything.
1. What is the commission — as a number, not a range?
“Thirty to forty percent depending” is not a quote. Ask for the figure that will appear on the contract.
Ours is 35% of gross sales with $0 out of pocket, and smaller estates carry a minimum threshold guarantee, typically $2,000, so the sale is worth running on both sides. Whatever the number is at the company you are talking to, get it as a number.
2. Is anything billed on top of the commission?
This is the question that separates two apparently identical quotes.
Staging, staffing, marketing, pricing, signage and security are either inside the commission or they are line items billed to the estate. A 30% commission with expenses billed separately can cost more than a 35% commission with nothing on top. Ask directly: is there anything I will be invoiced for beyond the percentage.
3. Who empties the house afterward — and is it included?
The single most common unpleasant surprise. An estate sale does not sell one hundred percent of a house, and the remainder is real: furniture nobody wanted, exercise equipment, partial sets, forty years of basement.
Ask whether post-sale clearance is included, what “broom-clean” means in their contract, and what goes to donation with receipts versus haul-away. If clearance is a separate quote produced after the sale, you are negotiating from a position where the house is already half-empty and you have no leverage.
4. When do I get an itemized written accounting?
Not “shortly after.” A deadline, and an itemization: what sold, for what, the commission taken, the net to the estate.
For an executor this is not a nicety. You may be filing an inventory with the St. Louis County Probate Court in Clayton, and “the sale made about eleven thousand” is not a number you can defend. Ours reconciles within 14 days.
5. Are you licensed, bonded and insured — and can I see it?
You are putting strangers and a public crowd inside a property you are legally responsible for maintaining. Ask for the certificate. A company that hesitates here has answered the question.
6. Does the contract restrict my access to the house?
Read this clause specifically. Some agreements grant the company exclusive possession of the property during the engagement, occasionally with a fee attached to the family entering.
You cannot delegate the duty to maintain the property — it is yours the whole way through — so an agreement that prevents you from entering is asking you to hand over an obligation you still legally carry. That is a hard no, not a negotiation.
7. How will you handle parking and access on this street?
A Kirkwood question more than a generic one. Streets around Historic Downtown Kirkwood and the older residential blocks near the train station do not absorb a hundred cars. Ask what the plan is: numbered entry, managed line, staff at the door, where buyers are directed to park.
A company that has not thought about it will find out during your sale, on your parents’ street, in front of their neighbors.
8. What in this house needs a specialist, and what will you do about it?
The answer tells you whether the walkthrough was real. Someone who walked the basement, the garage and the attic and came back with two or three specific items they want a second opinion on is doing the job. Someone who quotes a percentage without flagging anything has priced your house by square footage.
9. What would make you tell me not to run a sale?
The best question on this list, because a good answer costs the company money.
Not every house should have an estate sale. If the contents will not clear the cost of running one, the right service is a cleanout or a buyout, and you want to be working with someone who will say so at the walkthrough rather than after.
Before any of this: get it in writing, from more than one
Walkthroughs and written valuations should be free. There is no reason to have only one, and comparing two tells you something a single quote cannot — whether the companies agree about what is actually in the house.
And until someone has looked at it, do not clean, box, donate or haul anything. Pull out what the family is keeping and stop there. That is the only step that is genuinely yours.