Question Sell all, put in storage, keep your home?

[Neal]

No, I'm not going fulltiming right now but someday I need to de-hoard and going fulltiming even if for a short period of time may help me make that transition. Right now I can't imagine how I'd get rid of everything I've accumulated in this house over the past 20 years. It is nice keeping the house if only for storage and also an asset but that comes with the responsibility of maintaining it and avoiding any HOA threats for it being unoccupied which thankfully hasn't happened to date even with being out 7 months. I don't know if there are even rules about that but guessing there are.

For those that made the jump to fulltiming, what did you do and how did you do it? Did you put your stuff in storage? All or some? Did you have some type of sale to let people come in and take what they want? How do you handle this and any regrets?

 

[punkinhead]

We're not full time but my parents were. When they sold the house they tried hauling stuff to mine for storage. I told them "you've got curbside trash pickup same as me." I didn't want their 30+ years of accumulated stuff cluttering up my house. I allowed them to store one large tote of photo albums and stuff like that. They ended up on the road for almost 20 years. Anything they'd have stored would have been outdated and almost useless by then. Plus when they settled down again it was in a much smaller place where most of their old stuff wouldn't have fit. Unless you've got priceless antiques you're better off selling/donating rather than paying for storage. I imagine there's something very freeing about getting rid of everything.

They sold or donated anything of value then turned the house contents over to an auctioneer. Their agreement was for him to sell anything he could then he had to remove anything left over. It's great way to empty a house.

 

[Our Coddiwomple Journey]

Our transition into full timing took over a year. We sold (garage sales) / donated (local charities)/ gave away (family and friends) everything, including the cars we owned at the time. When our house went on the market, we moved over to a local campground and began selling, or giving away the furniture we used to "stage" the house. Once we had an accepted offer, we pre-signed the closing documents, which allowed us to hit the road. Once the funds were transferred into our account we paid off the new Canyon Star, Jeep, and credit cards, and by the time we landed in South Dakota to change residency, we were debt free.
This is our eighth year on the road and we'll never go back to a sticks and bricks. when it's time to leave the road our plan is to find two sites, one in the north for summer, and one in the south for winter. Believe it or not, that is becoming a harder decision than when we decided to go full time in the first place.

 

[Our Coddiwomple Journey]

Our transition into full timing took over a year. We sold (garage sales) / donated (local charities)/ gave away (family and friends) everything, including the cars we owned at the time. When our house went on the market, we moved over to a local campground and began selling, or giving away the furniture we used to "stage" the house. Once we had an accepted offer, we pre-signed the closing documents, which allowed us to hit the road. Once the funds were transferred into our account we paid off the new Canyon Star, Jeep, and credit cards, and by the time we landed in South Dakota to change residency, we were debt free.
This is our eighth year on the road and we'll never go back to a sticks and bricks. when it's time to leave the road our plan is to find two sites, one in the north for summer, and one in the south for winter. Believe it or not, that is becoming a harder decision than when we decided to go full time in the first place.

I forgot to mention that I still work full time 40+ hours a week, so that has allowed us to travel where we want and stay for as long as we want.

 

[Joe Hogan]

Having researched the storage facilities business for years, many things became obvious. Human Nature abhors a vacuum. If there is space you WILL fill it. As we all have done with our Stick and Brick homes.
Homes or Storage units will be filled with Stuff. Much of what is in storage units today is mostly old or outdated junk. This is one of the reasons will never wanted to get in that very lucrative business of owning and running a storage facility. Most Storage facility owners will just auction off the contents of abandoned or delinquent units. Nasty part of the business worse than chasing delinquent rents.
People put the most outrageous things in store units.

We moved my now deceased brother in law, wife's brother, out of an apartment in NYC where he lived for over 50+ years. Thank God he didn't have more space. You accumulate allot over your life. We moved only key items and let the rest go through sale, donation, trash.

Long way of saying, if you are considering going full time, IMHO just auction off, sell, donate, or scrap anything other than key Keepsakes.

 

[Magua]

We had a hard time “downsizing “ to go full time. It was when the Covid crisis was just beginning. As we procrastinated on which items to keep, Covid became a huge issue. No garage sales, no auctions, no anything. My daughter came home, informed us that neither she nor my son wanted anything and had no attachment to anything. She helped us unload 30 years of what I thought were treasures in 4 days. We have a climate controlled storage shed (10X15) that houses what we kept. Hard to do, but they are very thankful that they will not have to do it later in life. They have thanked us many times. Hopefully when we go back to a permanent location, we can accumulate another 20 years of treasures for them to deal with!!
Richard

 

[Russellvh]

We dreamed and discussed going full time for several years but kids, jobs etc. kept delaying actually pulling the trigger. Then in 2021 I watched our house’s value increase from a wishful $300,000. To an easy $350,000. + over just 6 months. We decided it was time.

We told the kids they had 2 weeks to come and get anything they wanted. Then we contracted with an estate auction company. They came in, tagged everything, took pictures and set up an online sell. About 10 days later the house was empty except a little “staging” furniture.

We put the house on market for $375,000. We had full bids before any postings, the realtor held a weekend open house and we accepted an offer for $415,000. 30 days later we closed.

Never regretted. We move every 2 - 3 weeks. Pretty much winters in south Texas and summers in New England area.