SOMEWHERE IN ATLANTA, A COUPLE IS STANDING IN THE KITCHEN of the home where they raised their kids, looking at 12 place settings of china they haven’t used in a decade, and finally asking themselves the question they’ve been putting off for years: What do we do with all of this? The children are grown. The dream of retiring abroad, or moving closer to the grandchildren, or simply trading 8,000 square feet for something that actually fits their lives, has moved from someday to now. The house is beautiful. It is also full. This is where Sara Schenck MacKarvich comes in.
MacKarvich is the owner of Certified Estate Sales, an Atlanta-based estate liquidation company that has been in business since 2010 and has conducted well over a thousand estate sales. What she does, in the simplest terms, is help people move forward, coming into homes at the precise moment when a new chapter is within reach but the old one still needs to be closed. MacKarvich turns what feels like an impossible logistical mountain into something manageable, even liberating. The families she works with most are not in crisis. They are in transition, and they have simply accumulated more life than they can carry into the next one.
The company handles every stage of the process. MacKarvich and her team stage the home for traffic flow, photograph and price every item, market the sale online and through social media, staff the event over several days, negotiate with buyers, and arrange for a charity to collect whatever remains. Clients walk away with an empty house, a charitable tax write-off and a check. “We sell everything from luxury watches, fine jewelry and luxury cars, down to clothing, accessories and half-used cleaning supplies,” MacKarvich says. “Estate sales aren’t just for after a death.”
The majority of her clients are simply ready for something new, such as empty nesters or couples moving overseas to fulfill a dream they’ve been tending quietly for years. Families who have already bought the smaller house, booked the flights or signed the lease on the apartment in Barcelona, and are now confronting the beautiful, overwhelming reality of what it means to actually go. “The kids are in college, and there’s simply no need for 6,000 to 10,000 square feet for two people,” MacKarvich says.
A significant portion of her business flows from real estate agents who walk into a well-appointed home and see what it could be once it’s been thoughtfully cleared out. In the $2 million-plus market, how a home presents can mean the difference of hundreds of thousands at closing. MacKarvich and her team get it there.
Her advice to anyone standing at this threshold is consistent and emphatic: don’t throw anything away. “Usually, after a real estate agent comes through a home, they tell their clients they have to declutter,” she says. “But don’t just start boxing things up and taking them to Goodwill.” What looks like an accumulation to an untrained eye can be worth thousands of dollars to the right buyer, and MacKarvich has seen families inadvertently give away or discard items that could have funded a meaningful portion of their next adventure.
Determining what something is worth is where experience proves irreplaceable. MacKarvich describes her approach as a hybrid one, drawing on established pricing resources and research while relying heavily on judgment that comes only from years in the field. Google Lens and other AI tools have changed the landscape of estate sales, she acknowledges, but technology has its limits. “Context matters,” she says. “AI can help us be more efficient, but we rely on personal experience. AI can be very wrong and cost the client thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. You need a human with experience to ensure it’s correct.” Even something as specific as the zip code of a sale can shift what a piece will command on a given day. For rare or particularly valuable items, MacKarvich taps a network of specialists and auction platforms to connect sellers with the right buyers, sometimes shipping pieces across the world.
For people sorting through a home they’ve loved and filled over many years, deciding what to keep can be unexpectedly emotional. A piece of furniture that’s been in the family for 30 years doesn’t stop meaning something just because there’s no room for it in the new place. MacKarvich approaches this part of her work with a philosophy that is both practical and kind. If something is truly sentimental, keep it. No sale price compensates for the regret of letting go of something irreplaceable. But for the items that live in the gray area, she offers a useful solution: set a minimum. If it sells, everyone walks away happy. If it doesn’t, you take it with you.
She is also careful about the ethical clarity of her team’s operations. “Nobody on our staff is a reseller; nobody has a booth; we don’t have a warehouse; nobody is on eBay,” she says. “That’s a conflict of interest.” It is the kind of detail that might seem minor until you realize how easily it could go the other way, particularly when a home contains items of significant value.
After the sale concludes, Certified Estate Sales does something that separates it from most of its competitors. Rather than handing the family a list of charities to call and leaving them to manage the aftermath, MacKarvich has maintained an exclusive, decade-long relationship with a men’s addiction recovery program. The day after the sale ends, the organization collects everything that didn’t sell, takes it to their thrift stores and uses the proceeds to fund their recovery work. Last year, that partnership helped 31 men fund their recoveries. Nothing goes to a landfill. Even broken furniture gets repaired and given a new life. For families who care about where their things end up, it is a meaningful final chapter for everything they’re leaving behind.
Interestingly, something is happening in the broader culture that MacKarvich has watched with real satisfaction. A new generation of buyers, millennials and Gen Z shoppers who grew up skeptical of big-box stores and hungry for authenticity, has discovered estate sales as both a pastime and a philosophy. They show up for the curated character of a well-staged home, post their finds on TikTok and treat the hunt itself as a social event. With furniture tariffs creating backlogged orders and longer wait times for new pieces, well-made vintage furniture has become genuinely desirable rather than merely affordable. “No brick-and-mortar store can replicate the urgency that an estate sale inherently brings,” MacKarvich says. “People are looking for well-made, high-quality furniture at a good price. Many shoppers would prefer something pre-loved to something from a big-box store, and estate sales are where they hunt and gather.”
For anyone who has been eyeing a new life just on the other side of a very full house, MacKarvich’s message is straightforward: The stuff that’s keeping you here doesn’t have to. Call her before you start filling boxes for Goodwill, before you rent the dumpster, before you spend a weekend hauling things to the curb. Let someone who loves this work take it from there. “We’d rather you call too soon rather than not soon enough,” she says. *
Robin Howard is a freelance writer in Charleston. See more of her work at robinhowardwrites.com.
