Should you take this sale? Free, no signup.
Estate sales die on the commission percent alone. A 40 percent commission on a too-small sale can still pay you less per hour than the setup, the sale days, staff pay, ads, supplies, and the cleanout hours you ate. Start with your bar (50), monthly goal ($4,000), minimum sale value ($7,500), and your commission percent (40). Pick a preset: Full house, Downsizing, or Collector, each filling estimated value, sell-through percent, your setup, sale-day, and cleanup hours, plus staff pay, ads, and supplies as editable starting points. Add any extra flat fees you charge and the cleanout fee passed to the client, or leave it at zero if you eat it. Results show expected gross sales, your commission revenue, hard costs, your hours in it, your hours at your bar, the true cost of the sale, cash after hard costs, and your true dollars per hour. Verdicts are WORTH TAKING, THIN, BUT WORKABLE, WALK AWAY, or LOSING MONEY. The should-you-take-it card checks the estate against your minimum and computes the break-even estate value at your current commission and costs. The month planner turns your goal into sales with an over-50-hours-a-week warning. No signup; runs on your phone.
Example only, not typical pricing. Full house preset at a $50 bar and 40 percent commission: $10,000 estate, 85 percent sell-through, 60 setup plus 24 sale-day plus 12 cleanup hours, $600 staff, $250 ads, $150 supplies, no cleanout fee passed on. Expected gross is 10,000 x 0.85 = $8,500; commission revenue is $3,400; hard costs are $1,000. Your hours are 96, valued at $4,800. Cash after hard costs is $2,400, so your true rate is $25.00 per hour, far under the bar: WALK AWAY. The break-even estate value is ($1,000 + $4,800) / (0.85 x 0.40) = $17,059; the estate needs to be worth about that before you walk in. A 35 percent gut commission would pay ($2,975 - $1,000) / 96 = $20.57 per hour and leave $425 on the table. The month planner turns $2,400 of cash per sale into 1.7 sales and 160 hours for a $4,000 goal. The 12 cleanout hours you ate are called out separately: price them into a cleanout fee instead.
Why does the verdict grade cash after hard costs, not the commission alone?
Commission revenue minus staff, ads, and supplies is the money your hours actually bought. Dividing that by your 96 hours is the real wage of the sale, which is what your bar judges.
How is the break-even estate value computed?
Your true cost (hard costs plus your hours at your bar) divided by sell-through times commission. That is the estate value needed, before you walk in, to clear your bar at the current commission.
What does THIN, BUT WORKABLE mean?
Your true rate lands between 75 percent and 100 percent of your bar. Take it only if the pipeline is empty or the referral is valuable, not as a standard booking.
Why does the tool call out the cleanout hours I eat?
Unbilled cleanout is the quietest leak in estate work. The card flags it and suggests a cleanout fee passed to the client instead of donating a full day.
Is this financial advice?
No. It is an arithmetic check on one sale's cost structure, for planning only. Commission terms and estate values vary widely; treat every default as an editable starting point.