Answers for estate sale operators
How do you get clients for estate sales?
Most estate sale jobs come from three places: realtors, past clients, and the people who already shop your sales. Here’s how each one actually turns into work.
Written by Kaleb Hoppe, who spent nearly a decade working estate sales. Everything below comes from doing the work, not from reading about it.
Your regular shoppers are your next clients
This is the one most companies miss. The people who come to your sales every weekend have parents, aunts, and neighbors. When someone in their family passes, they’re the first to say, “I go to this company every weekend, and they do an excellent job.”
Past clients work the same way. Your clients tend to be older, so their friends are going through the same thing. One good sale turns into the next job through a phone call you never had to make.
So don’t treat your crowd as a line to manage and forget. Keep a way to reach them. Every sale should leave you with more people who know your name.
Get in front of realtors, in person
The owners I’ve seen grow never drive past an open house. They stop, walk in, hand the agent a card, and explain what they do: when a family has to sell the house and doesn’t know what to do with everything in it, you can help each other.
Local broker meetups are worth paying for. A 30-minute speaking slot can run around $150. Tell stories from real sales, bring a big stack of cards, and you’ll walk out with real connections.
Think past realtors, too. The people who help seniors move out of their homes, including court-ordered moves when someone can no longer care for themselves, need a company they can trust with everything. In my experience those jobs are meticulous: every item gets photographed, and nothing gets thrown out without approval. Handle one right and that contact keeps calling.
Take the jobs nobody else wants
Junk houses and hoarder houses are the jobs other companies pass on. Take them, especially in the slow season. They keep your crew working, and they give you stories. A wild hoarder-house cleanout is exactly the kind of thing a local newspaper will write about, and free press is still press.
No reputation yet? Two honest ways in
Work for an established company first. It’s pretty standard in this business, and it’s the fastest way to learn the ropes. Sales in the country run differently than sales in the city, and it’s better to learn that on someone else’s payroll than your own.
Do a few sales for free. One operator I know started out doing trash-outs and realized a lot of what he was hauling to the dump could sell. He started collecting it. His first sales were free, just him and his girlfriend setting up and selling. The deal: he brought his own items, marked with a different color tag, and kept that profit. The family got everything they needed sold, and he got paid for the trash-out at the end. Take before and after photos of every one. That’s your street credit.
Bring proof to the listing appointment
Families want to know you can bring a crowd. The strongest pitches I’ve seen came with proof: years in business, sale numbers, a Facebook group the company built, and photos of sales with 300-plus people lined up outside.
You won’t have years on day one. You can have before and after photos, a few happy families, and a list of people who show up.
What about an email list?
Honestly, I think email is mostly dead. I have thousands of unread emails, and most people do. Your crowd skews older, and some of them still read email, so it isn’t worthless. But paying a service to blast emails isn’t where I’d start.
A text goes where people actually look. That’s why we built EstateSaleAlerts: shoppers text your sale’s keyword to get a spot in line, and the ones who opt in to alerts become a list you can text before your next sale. Here’s how the numbered line works.
Common questions about getting estate sale clients
Where do estate sale companies get most of their clients?
Realtors, past clients, and word of mouth from regular shoppers. Most jobs come through someone who already trusts you.
How do I get realtors to refer estate sale jobs to me?
Show up in person. Drop cards at open houses, offer to help their sellers clear the house, and look for a local broker meetup where you can speak.
How do I get estate sale jobs with no experience?
Work for an established company first, or run a few free sales and document them with before and after photos.