Estate Sale and Downsizing Services Editing and Proofreading Services

A family clears their mother's house and receives a cheque for eleven hundred pounds. They had expected several thousand, because the furniture was good and there was a lot of it. Everything was sold properly and the accounting is correct — but nobody explained beforehand that brown furniture sells for almost nothing, that the fees come off the top, and that four skips cost more than the china raised.

We edit what estate sale, house clearance and downsizing businesses produce — agreements and fee structures explained to families, settlement statements and their itemisation, realistic expectation and valuation guidance, unsold and disposal cost documentation, inventory and high-value item handling records, consignment and auction route explanations, charitable donation and recycling documentation, timeline and access arrangements, sensitive item and documentation handling procedures, and pre-engagement information for families making the decision. Our editors work on the statement a family receives at the end.

The settlement statement and the expectation set before it are what determine whether a family feels served or exploited, and their failure is a net figure after a process nobody watched. A family that expected several thousand and received eleven hundred needs to have been told in advance which things have value. We write these so the expectation is set at the survey with the honest market position — the categories that sell, the categories that do not, and the specific items in this house that are worth something — since a family told in week one that the mahogany dining suite will make perhaps forty pounds is disappointed once rather than betrayed at the end; so the fee is stated with its basis and worked on an example, covering whether it is a percentage of gross, a percentage after costs, or a flat fee plus disposal; so the disposal cost is presented as the real cost it is, with the number of skips or loads and their price, given that clearance is frequently a net cost and pretending otherwise is the sector's central dishonesty; so the settlement itemises what sold, for what, and what each fee line took, since a family can then see the arithmetic rather than accept a cheque; so the items that did not sell are listed with what happened to them and any evidence of donation, as this is what families ask about most; so anything found that should not be sold is described — the documents, the photographs, the medals, the letters — with what was done with it; and so the timeline is stated with when the family may come and take anything back. Statements written this way keep a family's goodwill through a disappointing number.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including agreements, inventories and family correspondence. We are editors rather than valuers, auctioneers or probate advisers, and we offer no view on values, fees or process. What we can do is set the expectation before the cheque.