Executors in Creve Coeur almost always ask this question with a deadline attached — a listing date, a closing, an out-of-state flight, a sibling who can only be in town one week. So here is the timeline honestly, including the parts that are not in our control.
The short answer
The sale itself is a weekend — about three days. From the first walkthrough to a cleared, broom-clean house is typically 7 to 14 days once the sale is on the calendar. The itemized written settlement is reconciled within 14 days after the sale closes.
What that answer leaves out is everything that has to happen before the sale can be scheduled at all, and that is where the weeks actually go.
What happens before the clock starts: probate
Contents generally should not be sold before the estate is opened with the St. Louis County Probate Court in Clayton and you understand what inventory you will be filing. This is the single biggest determinant of when an estate sale happens, and it has nothing to do with the sale company.
The useful move here is to decouple the two. A walkthrough and a written valuation can happen while probate is still opening. It costs nothing, it does not commit you to a sale, and it hands your estate attorney a valuation document for the filing — which means the moment the estate opens, the sale can be scheduled instead of started from zero.
If you take nothing else from this: book the walkthrough early, run the sale when you are cleared to.
Week one: walkthrough, valuation, plan
Someone walks every room including the basement and garage, flags anything that needs a specialist look, and puts a valuation in writing. You get a plan with a date on it.
You do one thing in this window: remove what the family is keeping. Do not clean, do not box, do not haul. Sorting is the job you are hiring out, not a prerequisite you have to finish first — and items removed before valuation cannot be put back into an inventory filing.
The setup: two to four days in the house
Staging is the part people underestimate. Contents come out of every closet, cabinet, drawer and shelf, get grouped by category, and get individually priced. Tables go in. Locked cases go in for jewelry and small valuables. Signage, access, and a parking plan for the subdivision get sorted.
A well-lived-in Creve Coeur house — forty years of accumulation off Mason Road or near Olive Boulevard — takes longer to stage than a downsized condo. That is the main variable in this window.
The sale: three days
Day one is full price, and it draws dealers, collectors and the people who track sales seriously. Prices step down on a published schedule across the following days so the last day clears rather than lingers. Staff stay in the rooms throughout and entry is managed.
You do not need to be present for any of it. A large share of the estates we run belong to executors who are not in Missouri.
After the sale: clearance and settlement
Clearance happens right after the sale, not weeks later — donation with receipts for what a charity will take, haul-away for the rest, until the house is broom-clean and ready to photograph.
Then the accounting: an itemized statement of what sold, for what, the 35% commission taken, and the net to the estate, reconciled within 14 days. Nothing was owed out of pocket at any point.
What actually makes it take longer
Three things, in order of how often they come up.
Waiting on probate. Covered above, and usually the largest block of time by a wide margin.
A piece that needs a specialist. If something in the house genuinely warrants an outside appraisal, that appraisal runs on the appraiser’s calendar. It is almost always worth waiting for — the alternative is pricing by guess — but it can add a week or two.
Coordination across siblings. Deciding what the family is keeping is the one step nobody else can do for you, and it is the step that most often sits untouched for a month. Doing it in one visit, together, is worth more to the schedule than anything a company can promise.
If you are working against a hard listing date
Say so at the walkthrough and say the actual date. Sequencing a sale, a clearance and a photography appointment backward from a fixed date is a normal request. What does not work is discovering the date after the plan is set — that is how a family ends up paying for a rushed cleanout on contents that would have sold.