- It is estimated every New Zealander is hoarding $1200 in unused items
- Deceased estate clearance businesses are popping up across New Zealand to deal with these items after a person dies
- In the United States, estate clearance sales have increased 650% since 2006
Some call it junk, others name them prized possessions. Either way, it’s no secret New Zealanders are taking on more and more stuff, and leaving it to their loved ones to deal with when they pass on.
It’s a problem Leon and Tania Hartnett decided to address about five years ago, starting Invercargill-based deceased estate clearance business Helping Hands.
Leon came across the business model through helping a friend in Dunedin clear an estate in the southern city.
“He got a job down here, and I ended up managing it with his crew from Dunedin who drove down. And I thought ‘this is insane, people are driving from Dunedin, two and a half hours away, to clear a house’,” he said.
Rather than sending items to landfill, the Hartnetts provide a personalised service – donating items to charities the deceased person supported, cataloguing, delivering or storing items the family may want to keep, and selling on other items for families to make a profit.
Alongside this they also prepare the house for sale, which involves waterblasting, painting and staging houses when required.
Each “job” takes about two weeks.
Similar businesses were popping up all over the country, Leon Hartnett said, the difficulty was in classifying what exactly they were.
“It is a business that is increasing all over New Zealand... it’s hard to classify what the business is, it’s not really estate services, because that’s more the legal, but there are four or five businesses in Auckland alone that are doing the same thing, and at least one in Dunedin,” he said.
“And there’s growing demand for it, people are accumulating more items, and items are more disposable.”