Downsizing & estates
Sell the house, consign the furniture, store the rest, move what is left. One call.
A whole transition handled by one team, instead of four vendors you have to coordinate yourself while everything else is going on.
St. George · Washington City · Santa Clara · Ivins.
Normally this is four contracts
- An agent for the house
- A moving company for the load
- A storage facility for the gap
- Somewhere to sell the furniture
Four schedules, and one person in the middle making sure they line up. That person is usually already exhausted.
Make it one callThree versions of the same problem
What this covers
Senior Downsizing
Moving out of a long-held family home into something smaller, at a pace the household actually sets. The house, the contents, the storage and the move sequenced as one job rather than four.
Estate & Probate Sales
An inherited property emptied, prepared and sold — including when the heirs are in other states and nobody can be here for the six weeks it takes.
Sell and Buy Together
Both sides of a simultaneous transaction managed together, with storage covering the gap when the two closing dates refuse to meet.
Why this is one service and not four
The contents are the job
Selling a long-held home in this metro is ordinary work. What makes a downsizing or an estate genuinely hard is the volume: thirty or forty years of furniture, tools, papers and things that meant something, in a house that has to be photographed empty in five weeks.
Solve that with separate vendors and the sequencing becomes your problem. The consignment place wants photographs before it will take anything. The storage unit is the wrong size because nobody measured. The movers can come Tuesday but the skip arrives Thursday, and the house is on the market on Wednesday.
I do the real estate and I own the moving, storage and consignment businesses. Not referral partners — operations with my name on them. Which means the sequence is designed once, by one person, and there is nobody to hand the blame to when it slips.
How it runs
One plan, four moving parts
- Real EstatePricing, marketing, negotiation and closing.
- MovingOur own crews. Fourteen years of Utah moves.
- StorageFor the gap when closing dates do not line up.
- Consignment / DeliveryWhat is not coming with you, sold rather than skipped.
Moving, storage and consignment are coordinated through The Next Move Program — how that works.
Estates and probate
When the property is inherited
Two things run in parallel here and they should not be confused with each other.
The legal side. Whether the estate has authority to sell, and when, is a probate question for the estate’s attorney and the court. I am not an attorney and I will not advise you on it. What I will do is work to whatever timeline that process produces, and tell you plainly when a date you have been given is not going to hold.
The practical side. The house still has to be emptied, cleared, repaired, cleaned, photographed and sold, and that work does not need everyone in the same state. Video walkthroughs, decisions recorded in writing, and one local person doing the physical part.
The commonest sticking point is not legal or logistical. It is that the family has not agreed about the contents. Storage is what buys that conversation the time it needs without holding up the sale.
Sell and buy together
Two transactions, one household, one calendar
The gap between the two closings is the part to plan first, not the part to discover.
Establish what the sale actually funds
Whether the purchase depends on the sale proceeds changes every subsequent decision, including whether you can make an offer that a seller will take seriously.
Decide the order deliberately
Selling first is financially cleaner and leaves a gap to bridge. Buying first is easier to live through and means carrying two properties. Neither is right in general; one is usually right for you.
Price the gap before you commit
Storage for a fortnight and storage for four months are different numbers, and knowing them in advance is what makes "sell first" a decision rather than a leap.
Clear the surplus once, not twice
What is not going to the next house should never be loaded onto a truck at all. Consigned, donated or disposed of before the move, not after.
Run both closings to one schedule
Same agent, same crews, same calendar. The move-out and move-in are one job with a pause in the middle rather than two jobs that have to be introduced to each other.
The next property
Features worth checking, and where to check them
All of these are facts about a building, a lot or a recorded document — things that can be verified rather than assumed.
- Single-storey layout, or a primary bedroom on the ground floor with the stairs optional
- Step-free access from driveway or garage to the door, and door widths that clear both a walking frame and a sofa
- Lot size and landscaping matched to the maintenance you want — desert landscaping, a smaller irrigated area, or an HOA that maintains the front
- What the HOA maintains and what it charges: roofs, exterior paint, front gardens, private roads and amenities vary widely between communities here
- Garage depth against what you are actually bringing — a workshop, a golf cart, an RV, or none of it
- Grade: how steep the driveway is and how many steps sit between the kerb and the front door
- Whether a casita or guest suite makes sense, if visitors stay and a spare bedroom would otherwise sit empty
Downsizing and estate questions
Do you handle communities that are 55+ or age-restricted?
Whether a specific community is legally age-restricted depends on its recorded governing documents and its status under the Housing for Older Persons Act, and I am not going to assert it for any community on a web page. Ask me about the one you are considering and we will read its documents together before you rely on it.
What if the family cannot agree about the furniture?
It goes into storage and the decision happens later. Undecided is a legitimate state; a full house holding up a sale while the conversation continues is what causes the problem.
Is our furniture worth consigning?
Some of it usually is — solid wood, recognised makers and pieces in good condition. Heavily worn upholstery and flat-pack usually are not. Send photographs and you will get a straight answer rather than a polite one. Approved items sell on the terms set out in a signed consignment agreement.
The property is in probate. Can you start now?
Preparation work can often begin before a sale can complete, but what is permitted depends on the estate’s authority at that point — which is a question for the estate’s attorney, not for me. Get that answer first and I will work to whatever it allows.
None of us live in Utah. How much do we need to be there?
Less than you would expect. Walkthroughs, sorting and preparation run with me on the ground and you on video; signing is usually remote. The one day worth flying in for is the day the family decides about the contents.
Do we have to use all of it?
No. Take the real estate on its own, or the clearing and moving on its own. Most people take three of the four parts.
One call instead of four.
Tell me what the house holds and who is involved. The plan comes after that.