Site review: www.estatesales.net
Estatesales.net is a US-based site dedicated to estate sales. Estate sales held by individuals as well as companies are listed on the site, and the site also allows estate auctions to be listed.
For those wanting to list an estate sale, using estatesales.net is very easy. The first step is to sign up, which can be done for free. Companies and individuals can sign up to list their sale. Sales throughout the USA – including Alaska and Hawaii, but not territories such as Puerto Rico – are listed, and are categorised further by city as well as by state.
If you wish to search for sales in your area, again, estatesales.net is simple to use. Select the state you are in then refine it further by city. You will then be presented with a list of sales in the area. If no sales are on in the area, the site will let you know – and will invite you to subscribe to a mailing list to be notified about when sales are on in your area. You will also be told how many other subscribers are in your area – this is very handy for those wishing to list an estate sale, as they will know how many people will be notified automatically about the sale.
If you search for sales, you can also filter the results by type of sale. Options for filtering include estate sales, moving sales, auctions and store sales.
You can also use estatesales.net to find companies who can handle the estate sale for you if you don’t want to go down the garage sale channel. As estatesales.net is independent, it does not push one particular company over another, but it gives you the opportunity to choose. A list of handy tips for dealing with and choosing companies is included (which has pieces of advice ranging from how pricing works to “do not throw anything away before meeting with the companies”). Users are able to locate companies in their area in the same way as they would locate sales: by clicking the relevant state and then refining by city.
The overall tone of the site is very businesslike and professional and no-nonsense. Unlike other sites, it keeps things neutral and somewhat impersonal rather than cheerful and gossipy. However, it is very easy to navigate and to use. The site is attractively laid out and all buttons and menu tabs are easy to read. On the date of that this reviewer explored the site, all the links were operating without any “oops this page appears to be missing” problems.
One of the downsides is that not all sales are listed on the site. When this reviewer gave the site a trial run using a random state (Hawaii), no estate sales were listed at all in any city. For the city of Boston, only four estate sales were listed, all of which were posted by companies rather than individuals. However, all areas investigated by this reviewer had subscribers listed that would be notified of the sale, so signing up and listing your estate sale on this site is not a waste of time – the process is quick and easy (as well as free) and will help get the message about your tag sale out there.