Estate liquidation in Oakland.
Sycamore handles the entire contents of a house in Oakland, from the first walk-through to an empty property. Valuation, cataloging, the online auction, buyer pickup, donation and the final cleanout run under one contract with one point of contact.
What the job covers
Most families clearing a house end up hiring twice, once to sell the contents and once to remove what is left. The coordination between those two jobs is what lands back on the executor. This is the whole thing instead: what has value is sold, what does not is donated, recycled or removed, and the property comes back swept.
- A walk-through of the property, about an hour, and a written estimate before anything is agreed.
- Anything you are keeping tagged or removed first. Small valuables secured and recorded in writing.
- Everything of value photographed, described and lotted for an online estate auction.
- Your review of the full catalog before it goes live.
- Buyer pickup in scheduled slots, with our crew present for all of it.
- A full cleanout of the remainder, then a settlement statement itemizing every lot.
Where we work in Oakland
Rockridge, Temescal, Piedmont Avenue, Grand Lake, Lakeshore, Adams Point, Crocker Highlands, Trestle Glen, Glenview, Oakmore, Montclair, Redwood Heights, Laurel, Dimond, Maxwell Park, Claremont and the rest of the city.
Sycamore also works across Piedmont, Berkeley, Alameda and the inner East Bay.
What Oakland housing stock means for the work
A large share of the city was built between roughly 1900 and 1940. Houses from that period were built with storage: full basements, floored attics, back porches and detached garages at the end of a driveway. A 1920s bungalow routinely holds more than a larger house built in the 1990s, because there are more places in it to put things.
That changes the estimate more than square footage does. The garage, the basement and the attic are usually where the tools, the workshop and the decades of accumulation actually are, and they are the parts people forget to mention on the phone.
Access is the other half of the estimate
- Montclair, Oakmore, Upper Rockridge and the Berkeley-side hills have steep, narrow, winding streets, sometimes with no turnaround and no room to leave a truck. Houses are often well above or below the street behind a long run of stairs.
- Flatland Victorians and bungalows are easier to reach but frequently have a narrow driveway and a garage set behind the house rather than beside it.
- Street parking is tight across most of the city, and parts of it are permit only.
- Every stairway between the front door and the truck is labor, and it is part of why two houses of the same size get quoted differently.
What we handle
Furniture, jewelry and watches, art and prints, tools and workshop contents, coins and currency, china, glass and silver, rugs and textiles, books and records, collections, appliances, vehicles, trailers and boats, and general household goods.
Jewelry, coins, firearms and fine art go to a specialist before they are listed rather than after. Personal papers and photographs are set aside for the family and never sold.
Common questions
- Do I need to clear anything out before you come?
- No. Sorting first usually costs money, because people throw out the things that sell and keep the things that do not. Tell us what you are keeping and leave the rest. There is more on this in what to do with a house full of belongings.
- What does it cost?
- A commission on what the contents sell for, agreed in writing before we start, plus the cost of the cleanout if there is one. The assessment is free. How estate sale companies charge explains how these agreements are normally built.
- What if there is very little worth selling?
- Then you want a cleanout rather than a sale, and we will say so at the walk-through instead of running an auction that makes nothing. Estate sale or estate cleanout covers how to tell the difference.
- Do I have to be there?
- Not for the work. You are involved at the walk-through, at the catalog preview, and at the end.