Anonymous
asked:
Hello, I love your blog. So much. My question is, what is your research process like beforehand, when you are looking up locations of sales? Don't worry, I live in Oregon, I'm not trying to steal your deals. I'm just asking because I've only ever looked on Craigslist, and that doesn't seem effective. Do you draw a map? a schedule? Are you reading listings in the newspaper? Emails from auction houses? Thanks! Elizabeth

Hi Elizabeth!

Thank you so much! We love you, too!

Our research process isn’t too scientific. We mainly use estatesales.net— this appears to be the #1 place for sales to be listed in the metro Detroit area. The interesting thing is that this seems to really range by state and even part of the state. I live in the western part of this area and Erin lives in the middle, and there are more listings by FAR in metro Detroit than other outlying areas. My brother lives in Connecticut, and they do not use estatesales.net out there—they seem to use estatesales.org out on the east coast.

As far as our procedure goes… we don’t draw a map. I have a really good sense of direction/location—I’ve always lived in this general area. We just take a look at the listings each week, and then one of us sends the other a short list of the best things out there… and then on sale day, we try to plot things out by location and by when they run until. If one sale looks insanely good, we start there and the rest falls into place after that. But many times, we are making choices about what general vicinity to travel to, because we live in such a suburban area that there are just LOTS of sales each week and not enough time to travel to all of them.

Estatesales.net also has a mobile version that shows you sales based on your location, and garage sale rover is an app that is super helpful—it basically pulls together stuff on Craigslist, estatesales.net, etc., based on location. It’s how we found the Sylvan Lake city-wide sale last Friday!

For auctions, we use auctionzip.com. As far as I can tell, that’s the only place where people list auctions out here, and they can range from regular old estate auctions, to weird things like industrial cooking equipment auctions.

Great questions, and I hope that wasn’t too long-winded! Thanks for your super nice message and happy hunting!

-Sarah