Your mother’s house, sorted in one day.
We photograph, price and decide on every item in the house — keep, sell, donate, haul. You get one link and a check, not eleven weekends.
- Keep
- Sell
- Donate
- Haul
The move-in date is thirty days out.
There are three of you, and two of you live somewhere else.
And there is a house that nobody has time to empty.
That is the whole problem. It is not complicated and it is not going to solve itself in weekend increments.
What Sort Day is
One crew, one day, four decisions on every item in the house.
- 018am
The team arrives
A crew of ours is at the door at eight, with the boxes and the camera. You are welcome to be there. You are also welcome not to be.
- 02Morning
Every room, photographed and priced
We work room by room. Every item gets a photograph and a price, including the ones you assume are worthless and the ones you assume are not.
- 03Afternoon
Keep, sell, donate, haul
Every item gets one of four decisions, and every decision gets written down next to the photograph. Nothing leaves the house undocumented.
- 046pm
You get one link
By six you have a link to the whole house: what was kept, what is being sold, what went to donation, what was hauled. One evening of reading instead of eleven weekends of driving.
The differentiator
The Heirs’ Link
Before a single item is listed for sale, the family gets seventy-two hours alone with the house.
“It ends the argument about the dining set without anyone having to have the argument.”
- A private gallery
- Every item in the house, photographed and priced, in one place. Only the family has the link.
- Seventy-two hours
- The clock runs for three days. In that window anyone in the family can claim what they want, and claims are visible to everyone.
- Then, and only then, it lists
- Nothing goes to market until the window closes. What nobody claimed becomes the sell pile.
What it costs
$1,900 flat, and here is what else you could do with the same house.
Every option on this list is a legitimate business and some of them will suit you better than we do. This is the comparison we would want if the house were ours.
House & Heirs
What it costs$1,900 flat
How longOne day
What you are left withEvery item photographed, priced and decided. One link, and a check for whatever sells.
Senior move managers
What it costs$40–125 / hour
How longOpen-ended
What you are left withCareful, skilled work by good people. The meter runs, and the estimate tends to move.
Estate sale firms
What it costs35–50% of gross
How longThree to six weeks
What you are left withA sale run inside the house, and a percentage of whatever it brings. The house is occupied until it is over.
Junk haulers
What it costsA few hundred dollars
How longHalf a day
What you are left withAn empty house by dinner, and the resale value in the truck.
What happens to the sell pile
We list it, and we take 30%.
Twenty percent on anything that sells for more than $1,000, because the work of selling a $4,000 rug is not four times the work of selling a $1,000 one. You get the rest, in one check, with the listing history attached to the same link you got at six o’clock.
- Under $1,000
- 30%
- Over $1,000
- 20%
Now the part most companies leave off the website.
Most of what is in most houses is not worth much. The dining set, the china that was never used, the good bedroom furniture from 1987: the resale market for brown furniture is thin and it has been thin for twenty years.
If the whole house nets a few hundred dollars, that is a normal result. It is not a verdict on the house or on her taste, and we would rather say it now than at the end. What you are buying for $1,900 is the day, the decisions and the link. The check is whatever the market says it is.
For referral partners
You are usually in the room before we are.
Most of the families we work with were told about us by someone they already trusted. If a full house is the thing standing between your client and the next step, send them over. We will tell you what we told them.
- Senior living move-in coordinators
- The room is ready and the resident is not, because the house is still full. We can be in and out before the move-in date, and you get a link you can forward to the family instead of a phone call you have to make.
- Probate attorneys
- Every item in the house, photographed and priced on one day, is an inventory. You get a dated record of the contents and what they were worth, and the heirs get somewhere to direct the questions they are currently directing at you.
- Listing agents
- You cannot photograph a full house and you cannot ask a family to empty one in a week. Sort Day clears it in a day, and the seller is not the one carrying boxes down the stairs.
Questions
The six we get asked first.
What if it is more than three bedrooms?
Sort Day is priced for a house one crew can finish between eight and six. Past a certain size that takes a second day, and we will tell you which one you are before you book, on a walkthrough call. The number does not move once you have heard it.
What if the house is hoarded?
We take those houses. They are a different job and we will be straight with you about what it takes and what it costs before we start. Nobody on our crew will make a face, and nobody will make you explain it.
Do you take the dumpster stuff?
Yes. Haul is one of the four decisions we make on every item, so the broken things and the water-damaged things go out with everything else. You do not sort anything before we arrive. Sorting is the job.
How fast can you come?
Tell us the date you are working against. A thirty-day move-in is the reason most people call us, so that deadline is the first thing we schedule around rather than the thing we apologize for later.
What about the car?
A car has a title, so it does not travel with the household contents. We will photograph it and price it with everything else so it shows up on your link, then tell you the cleanest way to sell it.
Who is actually in my mother's house?
Our own crew. House & Heirs is company-owned rather than franchised, so the people going through the closets are our employees and not a rotating subcontractor. You will know who is coming before they come.