Home clean outs can yield forgotten gems

DIGGING DEEP: Estate Services employees Anthony Johnson Jr., right, and Michael Garcia go through the contents of a house to find sellable items and dispose of the trash. / PBN PHOTO/ MICHAEL SALERNO
DIGGING DEEP: Estate Services employees Anthony Johnson Jr., right, and Michael Garcia go through the contents of a house to find sellable items and dispose of the trash. / PBN PHOTO/ MICHAEL SALERNO

One ingredient to a successful real estate sale is a clean, uncluttered house or apartment. Getting to that can be a challenge for sellers. Doing it quickly, or when the sale is the result of a death in the family, can be even more difficult.

Enter the clean-out company, which sends someone through a home, individual rooms or basements and attics, to separate what is valuable and can be resold, from the junk to be discarded.

Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts have several companies that offer such services.

Some are focused more exclusively on junk removal, or situations involving hoarding, which may take specialized gear. Whole-house clean outs involve a company entering a house to evaluate what can be sold, then doing so for the reusable items, and cleaning out the remainder.

- Advertisement -

Estate Services in West Warwick, which opened 20 years ago, is among the largest Rhode Island-based companies involved in whole-house clean outs.

Its process generally involves selling the furniture and other items on consignment.

If the house has more good items than bad, the employees remove the good items first, before disposing of the remainder. Cleaning costs are then taken out of the consignment sale amounts, according to owner Mike Gagnon. He typically sells the items, from his 8,000-square-foot West Warwick warehouse, under a 50-50 split.

His business comes from families who have had a relative move to a nursing home or an assisted-living facility, from attorneys representing estates and from real estate agents. The focus of clients is often on selling a house, and clearing it of its contents as quickly as possible. Sometimes they are so focused on the sale of the property they fail to identify which contents may have value, he said.

“A lot of it is time management for them, or they have no knowledge at all of what the merchandise is worth,” Gagnon said. “We find often where people start to get involved, and start getting involved in cleaning out things themselves, they’re throwing out things of value. All they’re doing is focusing on the value of the house, not the merchandise.”

In recent months, Estate Services removed furniture from a 7,000-square-foot house, in what was a consignment-only arrangement. For whole-house clean outs, the company has completed work on houses as large as 3,000 square feet. Gagnon employs eight people full time, but conducts the evaluations of furniture and contents himself.

What sells? Clean furniture of any era, collectibles and unusual items.

Sometimes, he finds gems amid the clutter. He sold a black, oilcloth doll for more than $9,000, for example. “Martha Chase was a doll maker from Pawtucket. This was part of a clean out,” Gagnon said. “We found a whole box of her dolls.” In that case, because the house needed to be cleared quickly, and the executor was in New York state, the clean out was conducted in exchange for whatever Gagnon could find in the house.

The box of collectible dolls was found behind hundreds of boxes in the house that contained fabric that needed to be discarded, he said.

Often, people call with only weeks to a closing, and need to remove items from a house, but his company is booked several months out.

Realtors say they advise sellers to not wait to clear the house of furniture and belongings. When it comes to staging, a little goes a long way.

Houses and properties look better in photos with less items inside. Buyers want to see the size of the rooms and their features, not furniture or décor.

Arthur Buttenbaum, a sales associate with Coldwell Banker in Warwick, tells his clients to make arrangements for a clean out or a consignment or estate sale before a contract is signed.

“A lot of houses are being sold by executors,” Buttenbaum said. “A mother or father, aunt or uncle has died, and they’re left with all the stuff.”

The house needs to be cleared of the former owner’s belongings, but that process can be difficult for family members, he said. It can be difficult for older residents who are moving into nursing homes, as well, he said.

“For sellers who have lived in these houses for 30, 40, 50 years, it is just emotionally difficult to realize that this is something that has to be done.”

A good clean-out service will not only remove the items, but clean the house. Buttenbaum, a real estate agent for 35 years, refers clients to Gagnon’s company.

Several companies in Rhode Island also specialize in cleaning up houses following instances of hoarding, or in general “junk removal.”

The bottom line, Buttenbaum said, is that the material has to be removed to complete a house sale.

“Whether it’s from the 1950s, the 1970s, the 1990s, if there’s stuff in the house, it has to go,” he said. •

No posts to display