Susan Porter and her sister, Fan Dozier, picked a fine time to go into business full time.
Porter and Dozier formed Sisters Estate Sales in Fayetteville in the early 2000s just as a hobby, if that. The mother of her friend had passed away, so Porter helped organize the estate sale of the mother’s furniture and other items.
The one-time sale turned into occasional estate sales for friends and family who were in need of her skills. Every once in a while, someone who had heard about them through a mutual friend would contact Porter and Dozier.
Porter had owned the Fayetteville Free Weekly before selling to Donrey Media as the newspaper war in northwest Arkansas grew hot. She later worked for the combined Northwest Arkansas Newspaper Inc. before taking a buyout.
Porter hadn’t wanted to get into a full-time gig after leaving NAN, but a few years ago she and Dozier decided to do just that with Sisters Estate Sales. They started their venture just as the downsizing trend was heating up.
“We weren’t looking at the market or anticipating that,” Porter said. “I actually had retired and just wanted something little to do. I’m too old and I don’t want to do another business but, all of sudden, I have another business.”
Porter said estate sales have increased in northwest Arkansas, and while they’re still a seasonal phenomenon with heavy use in spring and fall, she has had to turn down estate sales because she is just too busy. This past month, she handled two estate sales in the same weekend, something she does not recommend.
A decade ago, Porter said, there weren’t many estate sales companies, and some were just ad hoc ones such as hers. Now it is an industry.
“Now there is a lot of competition in the market,” Porter said. “There are so many estate sales and downsizing companies.
“When I started the business I just did it for people I know.”
Home Sweet Home
Tara Limbird has seen the effects of downsizing in the real estate market.
Limbird, the principal broker at Limbird Real Estate Group in Bentonville, deals with some pretty big spenders in northwest Arkansas. A lot of them, she said, are looking to not necessarily spend less, but buy smaller.
“When people who have the big monster home want to downsize, the only issue is it makes it hard to sell their home,” Limbird said. “There aren’t as many people. It’s not the money; it’s just they don’t want that big of a house. They don’t want a bunch of rooms you can hide dead bodies in and nobody would know it.
“There aren’t as many buyers looking for those big homes.”
The housing crash of a decade ago contributed to the downsizing trend, Limbird said, because when people started buying homes again, smaller houses were more in vogue — not small like the closet-size houses on cable television shows but houses that don’t require maps and cleaning services.
Plenty of large, extravagant homes are still being sold in northwest Arkansas — 17 homes sold for $1 million or more in northwest Arkansas in 2017 — but the movement is toward smaller homes.
“The millennials started the trend of people who want an experience more than they want some monster mansion home,” Limbird said. “[They say], ‘Let’s just build or buy what we need, and then we’re not married to our home,’ even if they are spending the same amount.
“It’s more about why have more space than we need. Downtown Bentonville is more about living somewhere where you can hop on the trails or go to downtown.”
Millennials who buy smaller homes also don’t want to collect a lot of things. The older generation, Limbird said, may want a smaller house because no one wants to spend his golden years cleaning unused rooms and polishing knick-knacks when he can be traveling to see the grandchildren.
“A lot of people like the concept of downsizing,” Limbird said, “but once you go through the home and start thinking, ‘What things am I going to get rid of?,’ it’s a little easier said than done.”
Do I Hear a Bid …
That’s where people like Ken Warner come in.
Warner has run Ken Warner’s Auction Services for decades — how many he doesn’t like to say — in downtown Springdale. He said the downsizing movement has been a boon to auction companies, thrift stores and charitable organizations.
Goodwill Industries said its statewide donations are up this year and have been steadily increasing for the past few years. Salvation Army officials said the same thing, although neither organization attributes the donations solely to downsizing.
Limbird said that when she helps a client sell a big home to move into a smaller one that requires less stuff, she recommends auctions or estate sales to handle the overload. Having a professional come in and clean house, so to speak, relieves stress on the client.
Warner said he has held a regular Friday night auction and adds a Saturday auction when business is good. Business has been good in the past few years, and Warner said the Saturday auction is pretty standard now.
“That’s how busy we are; it has been that way for the last couple of years,” Warner said. “We’re fortunate here in northwest Arkansas because other places the economy isn’t what it is here, so we have sellers and we also have people with money who are still willing to buy.”
Warner said he has noticed that a lot of the merchandise shedding, whether through auctions or estate sales or donations, is because young people don’t want to upsize and older people want to downsize. A millennial who inherits his grandparents’ china isn’t interested in keeping it to display in a china cabinet in the formal dining room because he doesn’t want the cabinet or the formal dining room either.
“Nine times out of 10 that is what people are saying, ‘Just get it out of here,’” Warner said. “Young people are not into the formal dining rooms; they’re not into the fancy bedroom sets that grandma had. And when we talk about what grandma had, some of that is from the 1970s. It doesn’t mean it’s from the 1800s.”
Sign up for Daily E-news
