Southern Country Services
Serving all of Southeast Texas
Call Southern Country for a Free Consultation
Consultation
Call us and we will schedule a free in home consultation. Here, we will join you in your home and provide an overview of our services. We will ask to perform a walk through of your estate to evaluate your belongings and determine if an estate sale is right for you. During the walk through, we will ask that you identify all heirlooms and items that you plan to keep.
We will discuss our fees, our timeline and answer any questions or requests that you may have about conducting your sale. We are here to assist and help you every step of the way.
Staging and Setup
Prior to the sale date we clean, sort and parse all your salable items into their respective categories. We then strategically place them throughout your home where our shoppers are more likely to find and purchase them. Next, we will stage and convert your home into a retail store environment giving our customers and buyers an enhanced shopping experience.
We take a lot of pride in displaying your items during our Staging and Setup process. We know by experience our services will provide a higher profit with fewer items leftover at the end of your sale.
Pricing: Fair Market Value
The bulk of your common household goods will be priced at (FMV) Fair Market Value. This method of pricing enables us to sell the majority of your contents while maximizing profits in the end.
There is no benefit in having a lot of residual items at the end of the sale. This is why we dedicate time to research and price your items based on the following Fair Market Value Attributes; geographical location, condition, supply and demand along with historical data from past sales events.
Tracking this data over time provides insight to price similar items for future sales. Our goal is not to price too high or too low. This gives us the ability to maximize profits with fewer items left over.
For items of higher value such as jewelry, art and antiques, we have other pricing methods and sales channels that we use to maximize profits for our clients. These items when identified are always discussed with our client up front prior to any action taken by Southern Country.
Marketing & Advertising
Online Platforms:
Online Ads are posted 3 to 5 days prior to the sale date. The ads include date, time and location of the sale along with a photo gallery highlighting the items inventoried for your sales event. The following online platforms are used to market and advertise your sale:
Facebook Marketplace
southeasttexas.com
southerncountryestatesales.com
Email Distribution Lists:
Customer email lists are sent 2 days prior to the sale. These emails provides date, time and location of the sale along with data links pointing back to our online photo gallery.
Partner Distribution Lists:
Our Partner emails target individual buyers, business owners and online vendors when items of higher value are included in the sale. These may include larger items along with jewelry, art, antiques and other collectibles that can be sold at an appraised value. Our partnerships and online sales channels have proven to increase profits substantially.
Large and small Collectible items will not be placed into these sales channels unless approved by our client first.
However, we may choose to place other Common Household Goods that are in high demand into these sale channels to achieve better pricing for our client.
Signage:
Signage is critical to every estate sale. The majority of your items are always sold within your local community and surrounding areas at fair market value. We always research, map and post our signs at the busiest intersections to promote traffic back to your estate.
Security
Securing your home, property and household goods:
We make every effort to keep your home, your family treasures and your property safe and secured at all times. During setup, we take snapshots of your home’s layout including all egress points leading into and out of your home and property. These includes storage sheds, workshops and other structures that may contain salable items.
Photos are used to determine and manage foot traffic prior to the sales event. They are also used to help implement our safety policy as described in the section below.
Security Measures:
We will verify that all access points can be locked and secured. Including all external structures that may contain salable items.
We will determine all blind spots and relocate items of value to other areas where they can be monitored. Side gates will be locked at all times and opened only to load large items from external structures.
Items of higher value will be grouped and displayed in locations that can be easily monitored. These items may be locked and displayed in a curio cabinet or displayed next to our cashiers table. Jewelry and other small collectibles will always be locked and displayed at our cashier table.
We can provide complete video surveillance of your property and home upon request. However, in some cases, we may choose to install cameras at the cashier table and other areas of interest if deemed necessary.
Any questions you may have concerning security, we can address during the Consultation or anytime throughout the entire estate sale process.
Privacy Policy:
Our security processes are implemented to protect your family’s privacy and personal identity. Southern Country feels a moral obligation to protect your privacy and identity from being compromised.
When we find any electronic devices or physical records that contains your personal information, we will place those items under lock and key and store them either offsite or in a secured designated area that will be labeled off limits to anyone entering your home throughout the entire estate sale process. At the end of the sale, these items will be returned to you. You can also pick these items up prior to the sales event.
Safety
Safety is paramount to every successful estate sale we host. Our first and foremost task when liquidating a clients estate is to keep them and our customers safe from any issues that may occur during the sale.
The moment we enter a clients home, our safety and privacy policy commences and remains active throughout the entire sale. We are constantly looking for areas of concern and items of interest as follows:
Common Household Goods:
Items and products that are either broken and are not safe to operate or use.
Items that have exceeded their life-cycle based on date-time-stamps.
Common household good issues are mitigated and resolved through our compliance and disposal process.
Home and Property:
Home and Property issues are mitigated and resolved through proper signage and minor repairs. In some cases we may close off certain areas and move your salable items to another location to provide a more safe and shopping experience to our customers. Areas of concern include but not limited too:
Lighting, Stairs, Railing, Hallways…
Ponds, Fountains, Swimming Pools, Wells Walkways…
Sheds, Garages, Driveways, Power-lines…
Clean-Out
Meet Rocky the Raccoon
We met Rocky at a sale we hosted in Nederland last year. It was a pickers dream come true when we opened up the barn and saw all the vintage items inside. However, it was Rocky’s home and he was only interested in the garbage. It was his Alice’s Restaurant. He never got arrested nor was he forced to sign up for the draft. He was just Rocky the Raccoon making his den in an old MCM dresser that was stored in the loft. We became attached to Rocky during the sale. In the end, he requested that we call the owner and send pictures of him climbing up to his den and to ask permission to stay. The owner gladly obliged Rocky’s request and granted him full immunity to his den. We left both the owner and Rocky a perfectly clean home and den to live in.
We will never leave your home in disarray. When we close out a sale, your home will be completely cleared of all items and swept cleaned.
Leftover Items:
These items will be grouped into salable and non-salable categories and placed in the garage or home for our clients to review prior to disposal. The client will always have a choice in how they want to dispose of their leftover items.
Salable items of higher value can be sold through our offsite sales channels should the client decide not to keep them.
Salable items of lower value can be donated to charity.
Non-Salable items will be disposed of through waste management. These items are considered non-functional or broken and cannot be fixed.