What it costs to sell a home's contents in Dubai
The furniture is not the expensive part. The commission is.
Everyone leaving Dubai has to turn a houseful of furniture into money in about three weeks. There are four ways to do it, and they cost very different amounts.
Selling it yourself
Free, except for your time, which is the thing you have least of in your last month. Expect messages at all hours, people who do not turn up, people who turn up and want to renegotiate at the door, and strangers walking through your home while you are trying to pack. It works, and it is exhausting.
A used-furniture buyer
The firms that will take a whole house at once pay the least, because they are carrying the risk and the storage. They are fast and they are certain, and you give up most of the value for that.
Consignment and auction
Consignment rooms and auction houses typically take 20 to 30 per cent of what the item sells for, and sometimes a listing fee on top. For genuinely valuable single pieces — a watch, a designer bag, art — that is often still the right answer, because they reach buyers you cannot. For a dining set and three wardrobes, the commission takes most of the result.
A set fee
This is what we do, and the reason is simple arithmetic. If your contents fetch AED 40,000 and the commission is 25 per cent, you have paid AED 10,000 to sell them. If the fee is set at AED 4,500 and agreed before anything is listed, you keep the rest.
It also removes the conflict. When the firm selling your furniture is paid a percentage, it is in their interest for your things to sell high, which sounds aligned until you realise it is also in their interest to push the items that carry the most commission and ignore the rest. A set fee means the cheap things get listed too.
What actually sells, and to whom
The best price for a full home usually comes from selling it as one lot to a holiday-home operator or a landlord furnishing a new unit, not item by item. They want a coherent set, they want it immediately, and they will pay for not having to source it themselves.
What is left goes to individual buyers in one or two viewing slots. The things that do not sell are donated or recycled, which is faster than holding out for a buyer who is not coming.