Downsizing: What to Sell First and What It Is Worth
Downsizing and wondering what to sell? Start with the heavy machines. Real median used prices by category, how to price without underselling, and how pickup works.
When you are downsizing, what to sell first is whatever is large, mechanical and still working. That is the whole rule. A hot tub carries a median asking price near $4,750 and a dining table near $775, and both take the same afternoon of your attention. Sell in descending order of what the thing is worth, not in the order the rooms happen to be arranged.
I help people buy and sell big household items for a living, and I get called in at the end of a downsize more often than at the beginning. By then the valuable things have usually been given away and the low-value things are still sitting there. This page is the price list I wish people had at the start: what each category is actually worth used, which ones hold their value, and how to price so you are not the cheapest listing in your county by accident.
If you want the process and the calendar rather than the numbers, that lives in downsizing tips for seniors. This one is about money.
Start with the big four, not the closets
The four categories that carry real money in a typical house are outdoor wellness, powered outdoor equipment, fitness equipment and major appliances.
People start with closets because closets feel manageable. But a full weekend on clothes and books might raise a couple of hundred dollars, and one phone call about the hot tub on the deck is worth thousands. Do the expensive things first, while you still have energy and a deadline that is far away. The small stuff can go to a donation run at the end, and it should.
There is one more reason to sequence it this way. Big items take the longest to arrange, because they need a buyer, a truck and a date. Start them early and they finish on time. Start them in the last fortnight and you will end up giving away a $4,000 sauna because the closing date moved.
What large furniture is actually worth used
Furniture is the category where expectations and reality are furthest apart, so here are current median asking prices from live listings on our marketplace.
| Item | Median used asking price |
|---|---|
| Sectional sofa | $1,325 |
| Bookshelves and cabinets | $1,350 |
| Sofa | $1,075 |
| Bed and bedroom set | $1,075 |
| Dining table | $775 |
| Chairs | $765 |
| Desk | $742 |
| TV console | $721 |
| Dresser | $615 |
| Television | $688 |
Two things stand out in that table. A sectional is worth more than a sofa, because it goes into more floor plans and it comes apart for the stairs. And the case goods at the bottom, the dressers and consoles and tables, are worth roughly what a nice weekend costs. They are still worth selling. They are not worth three months of your time.
Condition is the lever you actually control. A sofa with clean arms and no pet damage sits at the top of that range. The same sofa with a sun-faded back sits at the bottom. Photograph it in daylight, from the front, with nothing on it.
Why hot tubs, saunas and gym equipment sell better than you expect
The heavy things are the valuable things, and the reason is simple: the buyer's alternative is paying full retail plus a delivery fee for something they still have to get installed.
| Item | Median used asking price | Median retail |
|---|---|---|
| Swim spa | $16,450 | Well above $30,000 |
| Golf cart | $8,370 | $13,500 |
| Hot tub | $5,149 | $11,000 |
| Sauna | $3,876 | $6,899 |
| Cold plunge | $3,795 | $6,990 |
| Massage chair | $2,875 | $7,999 |
| Wall-mounted smart gym | $2,275 | $4,250 |
| Home gym or functional trainer | $1,425 | $2,500 |
| Refrigerator | $1,465 | $2,625 |
| Treadmill | $1,213 | $2,225 |
| Washer and dryer set | $1,025 | $1,600 |
A sauna in a garage that nobody has fired up since 2023 is worth more than every piece of furniture in the living room combined. That is the sentence most people do not believe until they see the number. The full set of category medians, updated monthly, sits in the Commonplace resale index, and the hot tub category has its own breakdown in the hot tub price index.
Which categories hold their value, and which give it away
Holding value and being worth a lot are two different things, and for downsizing you want both numbers.
Measured as a discount off what the same item costs new, the best performers on our marketplace are golf carts at about 24 percent off, e-bikes at 27 percent, lawn tractors at 30 percent, jet skis at 30 percent, and washer and dryer sets at 32 percent. Those are the things that keep their money.
At the other end, connected exercise bikes give up around half their retail price, ellipticals about half, and massage chairs just under half. Hot tubs sit near 46 percent. None of that means do not sell them. A hot tub at 46 percent off retail is still five thousand dollars in your pocket. It means do not expect a small discount to get a fast sale on those categories, because the market has already decided what they are worth.
The practical takeaway: sell the fast-depreciating things first, because every month they cost you more than the slow ones do.
How to price without underselling yourself
Price against the market, never against what you paid.
What you paid is the single most misleading number in the room. It tells you about 2019 and nothing about today. Here is the sequence that works.
- Find the category median. Start from the numbers above or from the resale index, and treat that as the centre of gravity for an average example in good condition.
- Adjust for condition honestly. Like new sits well above the median. Good sits at it. Fair sits below, and fair means something visible and specific, not a vibe.
- Adjust for age on anything mechanical. Under five years is current, five to ten is mid-life, over ten is priced as a working machine with a known repair coming.
- Do not round down to look reasonable. The most common mistake I see is a seller knocking 20 percent off a fair price so it will "move quickly", on an item that would have sold anyway.
- Leave one clear concession in the price. Buyers of large items nearly always ask for something. Decide in advance what you will give, and give that.
The deeper version of this, including how to read comparable listings, is in how to price used items to sell.
What to do with the things that will not sell
Some categories have almost no resale market, and knowing which ones saves you weeks.
Used mattresses are close to unsellable, and in many states there are health rules restricting their resale outright. Formal dining sets, china cabinets and large entertainment centres have lost most of their secondhand demand over the last decade because the rooms they were designed for are not being built. Upright pianos are usually a cost rather than an asset once you price the move. Older televisions, printers and exercise equipment past about twelve years are the same story.
For those, the order of operations is: offer it to family once, list it free for local collection, then call a donation service that does pickup. A charity that collects from the house is worth more to you than a marginally better price from a buyer who needs you to deliver.
One warning. Do not let a hauling company take a load out of the garage before somebody has actually looked at what is in it. The number of working machines that have gone into a skip because they were in the way of a moving date is the most expensive habit in this whole process.
How pickup works when you cannot move it yourself
This is the part that stops most people, and it is the part you do not have to solve.
On Commonplace, you list the item and our own crew comes to the house, handles any disassembly, carries it out and takes it away. You are not renting a truck, you are not meeting a stranger in a car park, and you are not carrying anything. One seller described listing a wall-mounted gym and having the team arrive, take it off the wall and remove it without her doing a thing. Another had payment confirmed before the crew had finished loading.
Buyers get 60 minutes with the item before they pay, which is the reason large used items sell here at all. It removes the one objection that kills most private sales of expensive equipment. The whole sequence is on how it works, and you can see the kind of thing that moves fastest on the sofa and seating category page.
Frequently asked questions
What should I sell first when downsizing?
The heaviest working machine you own. Hot tub, sauna, golf cart, cold plunge, major appliance, fitness equipment. They carry the highest value, they take the longest to arrange, and they are the items you least want to be dealing with in the final week.
What furniture is worth the most when downsizing?
Sectional sofas and good storage cabinets, both sitting near a $1,300 median. Dining tables, dressers and TV consoles land in the $600 to $800 range. Anything formal or matching-set tends to sit at the bottom.
Is it worth selling furniture or should I just donate it?
Sell anything above roughly $300 in value and donate the rest. That line moves depending on how much time you have, but below it the effort per dollar stops making sense and a donation pickup is worth more than the money.
How do I sell a hot tub or sauna if I cannot move it?
You do not move it. List it, and the crew handles removal from the deck or the garage, including the disassembly. That is the normal path for these categories rather than the exception.
How long does it take to sell large items when downsizing?
Plan on weeks rather than days for the big mechanical items, because the buyer needs a delivery date as well as a decision. Start those the day you know you are moving, and the small things will sort themselves out at the end.
The bottom line
Downsizing goes wrong when people spend their best energy on the cheapest objects. Work in descending order of value, price off the market rather than off the receipt, and hand the heavy items to somebody with a truck and a dolly.
When you are ready, list the big things here and the pickup, the carrying and the payment are handled from the house. And if the move is specifically from a house into something smaller, the space-planning side of it is in downsizing from a house to an apartment.