Before this long post, let me get this out of the way. Pls take a look/share this link with those who you think would be interested. It’s the online auction for many of the antiques that were included in the sale of the house we bought in January: https://bit.ly/2IqmHYQ
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So it’s been 2 months since we closed on our future home and I thought it’d be a good time to post an update since I feel like we’ve made some decent progress.
When I made the offer, I thought I had an idea of what I was getting into, since I’ve seen it before. Buying a house full of stuff, where there was literally no room to walk is something that is pretty normal for rehabbers. The owner emphasized that there were a lot of antiques that I could resell, but there was no way for me to know the value of everything prior to making the offer and prior to buying the house. Because there was so much stuff, I’m not sure there are many people who would take the time and money to go through all the contents to sort through the trash and valuables, without actually owning the house. In addition, he was on a time crunch. The fact that we had been in touch for over a year, it took a really long time for him to trust me and it would have taken him just as long to develop the trust of another potential buyer. I honestly had not walked through the entire house to see what was inside prior to closing. There was no room for me to go up the stairs, so I just assumed it was full of stuff. The owner understood that and it was decided he would remove any valuables prior to closing and that everything else left behind was ours.
After we closed on the house, I did emphasize to him that if there’s anything in particular that he was hoping to keep, to let me know. The only thing he mentioned was his taxidermied dog! He ended by saying to not worry about giving anything, “at this point to me, it’s a gift.”
So, normally any developer who buys a property full of stuff usually goes in with the intention of trashing everything. Getting a dumpster and clearing out a house is a quick process- when receiving quotes for the cleanout, I was getting told it would take a few days at most. But the people who walked through told me a lot of the items could be salvaged, donated or resold. I personally don’t like the idea of just trashing everything. I understand from a developer’s perspective why it’s done. There are a lot of holding costs associated with rehabbing and every day that adds to the timeline of a project affects the bottom line. Since we still needed to work on getting architectural drawings in place, there was no rush in our opinion to clean out the house. We didn’t need it cleaned until the house was ready for the work to be done, which was a few months. So it was decided that mostly my husband (with the periodic help of myself, family and friends) would spend our “open time” on the weekends getting rid of the trash and sorting through what appeared to be valuable. Not to mention, that trashing everything is so wasteful, which didn’t make me feel good. To me, the less that I could keep out of the landfills, the better.
Going through everything was definitely gross. But there were so many cool things that we found. We couldn’t possibly take pictures of everything. But there were so many moments when we’d hear each other say “WHOA, CHECK THIS OUT!!” Paintings from the 1800’s. Leather bound 1st edition books of classic authors. Sconces- lots of sconces. Lots of silver. Lots of period furniture. French antiques. Signed porcelain pieces from Japan and China. Issues of Time Magazine from when JFK was assassinated. Lots of American and Pennsylvania history books and collectibles. Persian Rugs. When we initially went through the stuff, we thought the previous owner was just a hoarder of antiques. But probably after a month, we found some letterhead and receipts and learned that he owned an antique shop. Mind you, the items have been sitting in a vacant house for a LONG time. So we weren’t sure if there was initially any value since lots of items were in bad shape. However, there were lots of items that were in very good shape. Here are some pics of a few items we found:
After feeling like there might be some valuable stuff in the house, we sent a few pics to auctioneers and antique buyers and got some strong interest. But we didn’t want to set up time with various people and have them pick at everything. We wanted to get as much out as we could at one time. Additionally, since we had an idea that the items were valuable, we didn’t want random people to go through the house- and possibly let others know so that they’d just steal everything.. I know, I am a little neurotic and think about these things! And how do we know that if we got offers on these items, that we are getting a fair price? Do we get the items appraised and then sell them off to a collector? I would imagine 1 appraiser wouldn’t be able to accurately appraise all of these items. And once they’re appraised, it would need to be stored somewhere- which would cost money every month. The financial return to do all of this would need to be worth it for us to go through a process that could possibly take months.
We were not expecting this and it was quite the process- figuring out what we do with all this stuff. Asking for referrals to connect with appraisers, antique collectors and buyers. We paid a consultant to give us some advice, who told us we probably couldn’t get much because of the condition of the items. (Insert the theme music from “The Price is Right” when a contestant loses right here.) Here we thought we had some items that lasted over 200+ years and because they weren’t preserved properly, they’d die with us! I hated that feeling. But she gave us a few names of some local auctioneers, which is how we got connected with Michael Locatti.
Cisco was the one who managed this process of sorting through the trash and setting aside the items that appeared to be of value. And after he got through almost all of it, I had to do some aggressive nudging…. I mean… nagging- to make sure we scheduled auctioneers to walk through and give us their opinion, prior to being out of town for over a week. The first person who walked through was Michael and he immediately hit it off with Cisco. Cisco called me immediately after he met Michael and he seemed overly excited. I’m thinking… “This is the first person you’ve met. We probably should talk to other people.” But a huge reason why Cisco felt he was the right person to handle all of this was he immediately felt like he could trust him is because his wife is Filipino. Ha! Really though, he could tell that Michael saw value in the items and a great communicator. I needed to get on the phone with this person and see if I get the same feeling as Cisco did. And I did. Basically we’re asking someone to go through a house full of treasures and hopefully they won’t steal anything that could potentially have a lot of value. Through his experience, we could tell that the reason he has been doing this for years and gained the trust of handling some prominent estates because he was able to establish himself as a trusted resource. It’s a huge undertaking- to gain the trust of someone and build a team that you in turn trust as well. His team has been with him for years and in talking with them, they all have really great things to say about each other.
We liked Michael’s diligence to get the items out of our house as fast as he could. After that first meeting on a Saturday, he had his crew removing stuff from the house for the 4 days following our initial meeting. He took everything that he thought would be worth it to put up for auction. Now, there are still a lot of things left at the house that we could sell off, donate or keep. We decided to keep a few items- which is quite the treasure for us! It’s really gotten me to appreciate period furniture- and how these items have lasted for over 100+ years. My next step is to find out how I could use what’s left over in a way that feels modern.
Finally, since we received this “gift” we decided that after all is said and done- we’ll be taking a portion of the proceeds from the sale and will be donating it to a charity of the previous owner’s choice. He had a lot of people interested in buying this house, who would have likely paid more, but he stuck with me. He knew what he was doing, and we are extremely grateful!
