How to Sell Your North County San Diego Home When You Have Too Much Stuff

The House Isn’t the Hard Part. It’s Everything Inside It

I meet homeowners all the time who know they probably need to move. The house is too big now. They’re not using half of it. The stairs are getting old. The kids are gone. Maybe they want to be closer to family or just move somewhere that makes more sense at this point in their life.

They’ve thought about all of that. Then they look around the house.

Thirty years of furniture. Closets packed with clothes. Boxes in the garage nobody has opened in ten years. Family photos, china, tools, books, Christmas decorations, old paperwork and a bunch of stuff the kids keep saying they’ll come get. That’s usually where things stop.

It’s not always selling the house that feels overwhelming. It’s figuring out what to do with everything inside it. And unfortunately, you usually can’t solve that by just calling a moving company.

A mover can take your stuff from one house to another. That’s great if you actually want all of it at the other house. But if you’re going from 4,000 square feet to 1,800, moving everything just means you paid somebody to move the same problem to a smaller space.

Calling a donation company doesn’t necessarily solve it either. They may take the sofa and a few boxes. They may not take the old mattress, the giant cabinet, half the garage or the things you thought somebody would want. Then there’s the stuff that might actually be worth money.

So now you’re standing there thinking: Do we keep this? Sell it? Donate it? Give it to one of the kids? Put it in storage? Throw it away?

Do that a few hundred times and you start to understand why people put off moving.

This Is Where People Get Stuck

If you’ve lived somewhere for 20, 30 or 40 years, you’ve accumulated a lot more than furniture. There’s history attached to this stuff.

You open a box and suddenly you’re looking at something your kids made when they were seven. You find your parents’ dishes. Old photographs. Something you haven’t used since 1998 but still don’t feel quite right throwing away.

I get it. But I’ve also seen people spend an entire Saturday on one closet and barely make a dent. Then they look at the garage, the bedrooms, the cabinets and everything else and think, forget it.

So when I hear someone say, “I’m going to get the house cleaned out and then I’ll call you,” I know there’s a pretty good chance I won’t hear from them for six months. Sometimes never…

Not because they don’t want to sell. They just don’t know how to get through everything between here and there.

Don’t Clean the House Out Before You Call Me

This is one thing I wish more homeowners knew. You don’t need to get the house ready before I come over. Please don’t spend three months cleaning the garage because you think I’m going to judge it.  I’ve seen worse.

I would much rather see the house the way it really is and talk about what you’re trying to do. Where are you going? How much smaller is the next place? What matters to you? What do you absolutely want to bring? Then we can start figuring out the rest.

A lot of homeowners make this harder on themselves because they start working before they have any kind of plan. They start throwing things away, calling charities, moving boxes around and sometimes spending money on the house before we even know if any of that needs to happen.

Start With What You’re Taking

If you’re moving into a much smaller home, the first question probably shouldn’t be what you’re getting rid of. It should be what you’re keeping.

There are relocation companies I work with that can actually help with this. They can look at the new home, measure the space and help figure out what will fit before the moving truck ever shows up.

Maybe your dining table works. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe the sectional you love takes over the entire new living room. It’s a lot easier to make those decisions before you pay someone to move everything.

Once you know what’s going with you, the house starts to look different. These things come with us. Everything else needs another plan.

What About Everything Else?

This is usually where people need help.

Some things should be sold. Some should be donated. Some should go to family. Some may need to go into storage, although I’d be a little careful there too. I’ve seen people pay to store things for years because they couldn’t bring themselves to make a decision.

And yes, some things are just junk. The hard part is figuring out which is which.

A normal moving company generally isn’t going to do that for you. Their job is to pack and move. A donation company isn’t going to sort through an entire house either.

That’s why I like having people around me who deal specifically with these kinds of moves. Depending on the house, they can help sort through everything, sell what makes sense through an estate sale or online auction, arrange donations and then deal with whatever is still sitting there at the end.

You don’t have to become an expert in estate sales because you decided to move.

Some of That “Stuff” May Actually Be Worth Something

I sold a $3M home before that fit this scenerio. The bedrooms were full. The hallways were full. The kitchen and bathrooms were full. When I first went inside, I couldn’t even see much of the floor.

For most people, the first reaction would probably be, “We need a dumpster.”

Instead, my moving consultant went through it. They packed up what the homeowner wanted to keep and moved those things into storage. Then they started selling what was left through online auctions.

Over six auctions, the homeowner netted about $70,000.

Now, that is absolutely not normal. I don’t want somebody reading this and thinking there’s $70,000 hiding in every garage in San Diego. There isn’t.

But here’s what I took from it: don’t assume everything you don’t want is worthless, and don’t let somebody haul the entire house away before anyone who knows what they’re looking at has had a chance to look through it.

There may be nothing special there. But sometimes there is.

Moving Day Doesn’t Have to Be Miserable Either

There’s another part of this that people don’t think much about until it happens.

You’ve lived in the same house for 30 years. Then one morning a truck shows up, everything gets packed, and by that night you’re standing in a completely different house surrounded by cardboard boxes.

Where are the sheets? Where’s the coffee maker? Where are your medications? What box has the clothes you need tomorrow morning? That’s a lousy way to start a move.

Some of the relocation companies I work with can do more than move the boxes. They can pack the old house on stages, move everything locally and then help set up the new place.

You walk into a home instead of a pile of boxes. For somebody who’s already dealing with a pretty major life change, I think that matters a lot.

This Is Part of My Job Too

I’m a real estate agent. I’m not going to show up and run your estate sale, and I’m definitely not moving the couch. But I also don’t think my job starts the day the house hits the MLS.

If somebody wants to sell and the thing stopping them is all the stuff they have to deal with first, then that’s part of the problem I need to help solve.

I know people who can help with moves, downsizing, auctions, donations, storage, clean-outs and repairs. We may need some of them. We may need all of them. We may need almost none of them.

Once the contents are out, we might decide to fix a few things before selling. Or we might look around and decide spending another $100,000 on the house makes no sense and sell it exactly the way it is.

That’s why I’d rather be involved before all those decisions have already been made.

You Don’t Need to Have This Figured Out

If you’ve thought about selling but keep putting it off because you look around the house and don’t know where to begin, you’re probably a lot closer to being ready than you think.

You don’t need to know what happens to every chair. You don’t need to have the garage empty. You don’t need the kids to finally pick up their boxes. You don’t need an estate sale scheduled.

And you definitely don’t need to apologize to me because the house is full. In fact, I’ve been successful at securing buyers off market before the home has been cleaned out!

Let me see it. Tell me where you’re thinking about going. Then we can figure out what actually needs to happen and in what order.

Trying to solve the whole thing in your head before you start is usually what makes it feel impossible.

Thinking About Moving, But the House Is Full?

Call me before you start cleaning everything out; seriously.

I’ll come look at the house the way it is. We can talk about where you want to go, what you want to take and what probably needs to happen before the house goes on the market.

If we need movers, an estate sale company, help with donations, storage, a clean-out or somebody who specializes in senior moves, I can help connect those pieces.

You don’t need to be ready before we talk.

Jeff Toth
Founding Partner, LuxeAlly Real Estate
858.630.8997

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