Sibling and I have different approaches to clearing our parent's house - difficult!

[LindorDoubleChoc]

My mother has sold her house to pay for care home fees and my one sibling and I have to deal with getting rid of the contents by completion (mid November).

Sibling lives 1.5 hours drive away from this house and I live 2.5 hours drive away.

Sibling is 66, retired and lives alone. I am 61 and work 30 hours pw and have a dh and two adult children although one is only 20 and at University but still requires quite a bit of input in some ways.

Mum's house is small and uncluttered but still filled with most of her possessions including the larger pieces of furniture. Two of these are worth about £300 to £400 each, the rest are just fairly standard items (maybe 10 of them) with a re-sale value of maybe £20 to £50 per item being optimistic.

Sibling wants to hire a van for two days (£126) and for the two of us to clear her house in those two days, including taking things to the dump, taking things to the charity shop, then filling the van with her possessions, bringing them up to the town where we live, hiring a storage facility and selling her furniture from here on EBay or FB Marketplace.

Otoh, I have found an estate valuations company who could do the whole lot for us. They will separate out the valuable things and send them to an auction house locally. They will pack and clear the house and charity/dump/or recycle as appropriate for absolutely everything. I don't know what they will charge and it may not be covered by the value of the auctionable items but I feel it will be worth it for the lack of work involved!

For myself, anything I want to keep could fit in one small box and the back of my estate car.

The trouble is my sibling has done a lot more hours already in selling the house (DIY in getting it up to scratch, a lot more visits to our parent in the last 9 months in the care home, dealing with the sale etc). I really couldn't be more grateful to him for the effort.

But I am just utterly daunted by the prospect of those two days before the sale completes. I have to take 2 days days leave from work as they are mid-week. And then the enormous chore of selling things. He is not on social media or Ebay so expects me to handle all that.

Sorry it's long. What do people think?

It's almost impossible to sell things like that (the standard stuff) on ebay or Facebook for more than a couple of quid. I've tried ! Unless you are able to deliver. You will end up trying to store items for ages whilst you try to sell. If he doesn't believe us then list one item now on ebay and see how many people bid. It's worth paying the fee just to demonstrate this.
I'd get the auctioneers to take the valuable stuff and the rest just get British Heart foundation to take and then at least you cam feel like it's done some good?

Maybe you could reach a compromise by asking an auction house to collect the furniture and any other items they think they can sell, that way you won't be paying fees to the clearance company on top of auction fees. They are often good at knowing what they can sell. Spend some time taking things to the dump/charity shop that are manageable. In terms of eBay I never deliver anything and recently sold a very large piece of furniture on eBay and insisted they had to organise a proper pick up as I didn't want it damaged. It does take time but depending on what it is it can find it's market on eBay. It's hard to know how much stuff you are dealing with but after the auction house has collected, a couple of charity shop, dump runs etc done maybe get the company in to sort the rest?

Get your sibling to go over and photograph the eBay or FB marketplace items, take measurements. Then send them to you, and get the items collected from the house (make clear in your ad that if needs to be collected on x date) why double handle everything?

Not RTFT.
Where you live affects how quickly furniture will sell, if you are selling it from your house. Whether or not the buyer will need a van to collect it will too.

I couldnt be doing with selling it on ebay! easier to just get an auction house to come and take it all away and sell it. obviously you will just make sure all the wee stuff and paperwork is going unless ornaments etc are going too.

As with so many others have been here more than once, and there is good advice already on the work involved doing DIY clearances, especially if storage costs are involved.

You may want to check if there's a local auction house that does house clearances, and organises transfers to charity shops, disposal at the same time. They should be able to give you an indication of likely net income from that. I found that they would put lower value items in sales from their own clearance jobs, but not take similar from individuals.

Some attendance would probably be required for an estimate visit(s),
any sorting work needed pre-clearance, and attendance during clearance.

In the interest of family relationship I think a modest investment of your time would be the best course, but this would be small compared to physically emptying and disposing yourself. Good luck!

How about if you offer to meet the cost of the removals company yourself rather than split it or charge it to your mum's profits from selling the house? If you can afford it, that might be worth it for you (in terms of time saved etc) and enough to persuade your brother.

the enormous chore of selling things. He is not on social media or Ebay so expects me to handle all that.
I was seeing your brother’s POV until that. That’s not on! People who have never used EBay have no idea of the time, work and potential hassle involved. If he wants to sell things, he should find a way to do it himself.

I had to clear my mums house before selling it for care home fees. I am only in my early 40s, work and have two primary age children so was dreading it (not even mentioning the emotion involved) I’m also an only child so it was all on me.
I paid a house clearance company. Me and DH took the items that we wanted - sentimental items, photo albums, all paperwork for shredding and a few large furniture items that we thought we could sell. My DH is keen on eBay so was happy to do this thankfully.

Things I found out:-
-The house clearance people we used don’t take food or toxic items so it meant we had to clean out the fridge and freezer, kitchen cupboards and dispose of it all as well as tins of paint and cleaning fluids.
-Sorting and Shredding all the paperwork of someone who seemed to keep every letter and card they were sent from the 1970s takes ages!
-Items that we thought would sell for decent money on eBay were actually really hard to shift and sold for considerably less than they were worth (a nearly new leather sofa)
-The house clearance company were worth every penny. The time and stress they saved was invaluable.

I would definitely use a clearance company and if you want to sell the large items, maybe consider listing on eBay but make it clear to your brother that collections/delivery will be for him to sort.

Yes I could do that. I am already paying a lot of money for something that is difficult to transport but which my Mum wants me to have and which he could not make use of (think piano). Most people give away pianos now.

The clearance company (which I found and made an appointment with), do complete house clearances - absolutely everything gone, with valuable items going to a local auction. Tip runs and charity shop runs - all at one price.

If this is less than a weeks care home fees (£1700) ... then it would be worth it?

He has done more involving the house sale, but the house was in good order. He's done some touching up of paintwork, deep cleaning (which my Mum's cleaner could have done for £15 an hour), and staging the house for sale. And getting rid of a few items already using his car. He's visited DM about once every 2 weeks, I have visited once every 4 weeks.

I did the appointments with Estate Agents and setting things in motion. I did all the sourcing of care - first from a care agency and then finding the current care home and liaising with them on all of that. Plus hospital visits, everything else.

I haven't been sitting on my big fat arse these last 2 years.

I had a similar problem with my DB re house clearance after first DM & later DF died.
We both lived 1.5/2 hours away, worked FT. I flatly refused to do it, & suggested DB could keep the proceeds of whatever he could sell ! We'd already removed cash & jewellery.
We used a company, who didn't charge as the sale of the contents covered their costs.

Oh that sounds so sad and difficult @BananaSpanner .

Luckily DM was not a hoarder and a demon shredder. Infact she's shredded all sorts of paperwork that would have been useful recently!

The trouble is I know my brother has a much rosier view of his childhood and upbringing than me. Our lives were quite different - the age gap is really relevant. So I think he feels sentimental about all these things. Also, I know for a fact that he's never tried to sell anything or FB or EBay, and I have! and I know what it's like!

I would totally do that if our Mum was no longer with us @Georgyporky. But she's still here and any proceeds would go to her bank account and thence to the care home.

My thread is really all about the effort involved and our differing views on how much the effort is worth it.

I'm with you OP. Get someone in to sort the whole thing out once and for all. It will be quite distressing sorting everything out and driving it to charity shops etc. Let you brother take a bigger cut of whatever money is left over?

It's difficult. I know I'm going to be in a similar situation soon so have actually given this quite a lot of thought.

Could it be that he wants to do this with you? To have this time together and process the new phase of life? It might be worth going along with it for at least the first day so he gets that? Maybe see it as time with him rather than a clearance issue?

I just think you can't make this decision until you've spoken to the valuer tomorrow as you don't yet have all the information tbh OP. I would absolutely want to do things your way but if it's going to end up costing rather than possibly making a bit of money back then I think you're going to struggle to make a case for not doing it his way. If the valuers think you'll break even you might find he comes round to the idea once the reality of having the grunt work done for him has been highlighted. Wait and see where you are tomorrow, it might work itself out easier than you expect.

I'm an only child and had to clear out a 3 bedroom house when my mum went into a nursing home with dementia. I went through everything myself and randomly discovered £200 in cash that she'd stowed in a potato peeler machine that was part of a kenwood chef.
My mum didn't like clutter or ornaments but did like to keep all paper work including my p60's from my Saturday job in Woolworths from 1977. I spent days just shredding stuff but I took all that home to do. The British heart foundation took all of the beds and the sofa and matching arm chairs. It would have been s lot of hassle to try to sell them and I would probably have got next to nothing although they were all in good condition. They came when they said they would, and after checking the fire safety labels on them we're delighted to take them. They contacted me later to say how much they raised for the charity. As my father had a heart attack at 42 ( which he luckily survived) I was happy that they could benefit.

I completely understand what you are saying @Newgirls. We are fully in this process together and I have done my fair share of everything up to and including getting DM settled in her care home and organising the sale of her house. I think we just potentially disagree on the value of her belongings vs. the effort involved of clearing her house by mid November. I don't want to fall out with him at this stage but also I want my pov heard. So the question really is how to discuss it with him.

You can absolutely still have that time going through the personal/smaller items OP, house clearance comes in once that stage is done to take what's left.

Check sold prices on ebay
you would be surprised what 1960s and 1979s furniture sells for

What age is the furniture?

I recently got over £2000 selling my DMs clothes- mostly on Vinted.

Clearance company all the way, unless he will be doing the online selling (which you said he won't)
Clearing out my parents' house was painfully slow.

I would have thought the valuable furniture isn’t worth anything -maybe phone the auction house to check.
And estimating 2days - probably will run over that -3ofusemptied DMs house in a day but she was not well off -nearly all went to tip then a few bits to second hand shop which were both a 15 min drive away.

Very interesting

Check sold prices on ebay
you would be surprised what 1960s and 1979s furniture sells for

It depends on what it is, the condition and the brand. Ercol, G-Plan etc can do really well.