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HOUSEHOLD GOODS FLA USA INTO AB CANADA


FULLTIMEWANABE

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You guys in the past have always given me sound advice and thoughtful guidance and right now in the depth of all our offloading and other things I'm just afraid I'll make a wrong financial decision so look to hear your thoughts on maybe what you would do or have done in this regards. Hence herewith why I've been tossing and turning for almost 4 hours unable to get to sleep, so got up to write you.

 

Slowly but surely we appear to be getting everything wrapped up to go FT, but boy oh boy is it getting more stressful instead of easier as we'd hoped. One rental sold in Canada (about 10% lighter than we'd hoped for :(, Verbal Offer tonight on Fla home, which brought up the following discussion in this household and to be honest brain is so mushed right now, trying to coordinate way too much to list here, suffice it to say I've got way too many knives in the air right now. Can't think for the life of me what's the best/most sensible thing to do. Sell it all or try and bring back to Canada for kids, as what they'd pay new here would be way more than what we could sell it for down in Fla.

 

The furniture in our Fla home looks and is for all intense and purposes like brand new and good quality. From what I can gather we'd only get pennies on the dollar selling it on Craigs List, irrespective of guest beds having had less than 40 nights slept in them, and the furniture to accompany. Consequently, our daughter and son-in-law are thinking about bringing it all back to Canada and that's where several dilemmas are popping up.

 

a) If we bring these items into Canada would we have to pay duty and GST on them or are they classified as personal effects and exempt being household goods. It's not as though we moved out of the country in their context so ...... Tried calling their 1800 numbers and a nightmare to get to talk to anyone for concrete clarification, albeit I will try again tomorrow.

 

B) Reading the importing website it states based on what we paid, but that was 5+ years ago and they most certainly aren't worth that today in any shape or form on a second hand market, so how do we provide proof at the border of value on second hand sofas, beds, chairs, tables accompanying furnitures etc?

 

c) Initially we thought of towing a 16ft x 8ft trailer (C$800 for 2 weeks rental) behind our totally emptied Southwind, but we have no clue what the weight of two leather sofas, two leather loveseats, two king size and two queen size mattresses plus 4 dressers with mirrors above, 4 headboards, two footboards and frame works, 7 pub height bar chairs, two not overly heavy coffee tables, solid dining room suite with 8 chairs inc carvers, Master Bed Footboard 6ft Ottoman, and maybe 20lbs of dismantled other bits. All the linens, crockery etc we would just box up and stow in the empty bays of the RV, and the Durango will have some room for two or three of the bedside cabinets as that will be towing back the Seadoo. No appliances just a small stereo system and two flat screen TVs to bring back. Oops almost forgot, we've got two kayaks as well to transport back, that'd be easiest in the RV.

 

OR....

 

d) Fly 4 of us down to pack up and get a one way Uhaul Rental Truck from Sarasota to AB for over C$3500 plus gas and hotels/motel stays driving back this Van and the Durango plus Seadoo.

 

Any Canadians been here and done this or what would you do in our situation. We want to help the kids out if we can obviously, and our youngest actually picked all the furniture when house in Fla was built so it's right up her alley to replace our 15 to 20 year old stuff here on acreage for when they take it over and we've flown this coop.

 

Decisions, decisions, decisions.

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You do have my empathy as we have not forgotten the decisions and choices that we went through back in 2000 when we went out on the road. The only thing that I can add to your thoughts is that I see no estimate of the cost to you in both time and work if you move things back to Canada. I really wonder if it makes sense to spend that much to move your furniture. Have you checked to see what the cost would be to buy similar furniture locally, to then compare that cost to the costs of bringing what you have back? And remember that lightly used or not, it is still used furniture.

 

Good luck! My only advice is to not let this overwhelm you as it won't really matter in a few years anyway! :)

Good travelin !...............Kirk

Full-time 11+ years...... Now seasonal travelers.
Kirk & Pam's Great RV Adventure

            images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQqFswi_bvvojaMvanTWAI

 

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The truest words as always in your last statement thanks Kirk! The ideal would be someone like the showing request today that wants to buy it turn key, and asked me how much we want for the furniture. Now to that end, I haven't a clue what's a fair price.

 

Based on the truly and honestly like never used condition, how much percentage of the initial paid dollar would be a fair asking price? if it doesn't go with the house what percentage or how many pennies on the dollar is fair to ask on say Craigs List. Value your input here folks, as struggling to find like for like on Craigslist easily for a comparison as used really is looking used or low end quality on there I'm finding for the most part, and of course it changes every few hours as more gets added.

 

Thanks as always folks.

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Go on Craig's list and EBay and look for similar items to determine how much you should ask. Post on Craig's list as long as you can, lowering the price $5 to $10 each week. Have a moving sale and advertise in advance what furniture you have in local newspaper. Give things that don't sell or that you have an attachment to to friends and family. We are in the same position ourselves and completely understand the "brain mush" comment. Soon ready to be done and out on the road! When you are at the point you need to get moving, find a place to donate it to where you can take a full tax deduction. For albatrosses that no one wants to pay for and you don't want to move or store, do a Craigslist "free stuff curb alert" and set it outside on the curb. Generally it will disappear w/in 24 hours. Don't expect to get full value but do go for fair value and consider what it costs in rental vehicles and gas to move things when making PS - most moving companies can give you a weight estimate based on "rooms of furniture."

 

We have given a bunch of day-to-day household items to a couple of young college grads who are just getting started. They were thrilled to receive our extra dishes, pots and pans, glassware, rugs, etc. made us feel good and helped them get started with setting up a household. Think outside the box and you will find lots of great ways to downsized without feeling bad. Remember, whatever is left you could have to pay to have hauled away. Happy trails!

2010 Volvo VNL 670 D13 500 HP Ishift - "THOR"

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2012 Smart For Two - "Loki"

 

Ron & Shelley Johnston, pilots

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In my very limited experience lightly used often goes for half the new price. Sometimes only 1/3. Even less if you let an estate dealer sell them for you.

 

For me the hassles of packing and moving it would not be worth doing, though. If the kids who want it are willing to do all that it would be different.

 

My daughter and I did move some antiques for her former in-laws but we were headed that direction anyway and they helped pay the gas so we just put some semi-fragile things (mostly glass front cupboards) in the back of the Grand Caravan I owned then for our trip back home. They appreciated not having to move those in their open pickup trucks.

 

Linda Sand

Blog: http://sandcastle.sandsys.org/

Former Rigs: Liesure Travel van, Winnebago View 24H, Winnebago Journey 34Y, Sportsmobile Sprinter conversion van

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We're planning to get an Estate Sale person in to give us quotes as buying the whole lot off us and reselling themselves or selling as an estate sale. The figures typically branded verbally sight unseen at 15cents and 30cents we are personally finding rather shocking based on condition. It will be interesting to see how much he quotes in writing when he comes out in a couple of weeks or so time. He actually said most pickers will then sell them in stores at 80cents on the dollar. We live in hope of the ideal world being that whomever purchases the house wants all the furniture, turn key so to speak and offers around 50 cents on the dollar which for ease all around would be the best thing for us for sure.

 

Thanks so much for your feedbacks, Craigslist as I've said before has pricing all over the place for similar items so I didn't find that very helpful to us for assessing pricing right now - the resale market value sure is low compared to up here on Kijiji in Canada we have found thus far.

 

FWIW in case any other Canadians are interested, I finally managed to speak to a really great CBA guy today who said, as long as we are out of Canada 48 hrs (which we will be as it's a 4 day drive each way at minimum), then we shall be entitled to exemptions of $800 x 4 in value and if we provide a list of items and approximate value and ideally some back up ads to support that value or a quote it's likely we'll end up paying little to zero GST (we are permanent residents in a zero PST province). Anything over and above $3200 of value folks will have to pay GST and PST on that and if anything built overseas ie; not in Canada or the USA, we have to pay an additional 9.5% import duty.

 

Well that's one exercise now almost complete hopefully. Alas tonight it appears our new solar system not working properly is going to keep me awake, battery power was zero when checked today and we don't know why when nothing being used. Ho hum, another "challenge" to add to the every increasing to do list. By the time we do finally get on the road I'll just need to sleep for a month or two to catch up (LOL).

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battery power was zero when checked today and we don't know why when nothing being used.

Unless you disconnected the battery there's likely several things "being used"--any monitors/alarms, anything that resets itself, anything with a lighted display, anything with instant on, etc. It's amazing how many phantom loads are out there when you finally track them all down.

 

Linda Sand

Blog: http://sandcastle.sandsys.org/

Former Rigs: Liesure Travel van, Winnebago View 24H, Winnebago Journey 34Y, Sportsmobile Sprinter conversion van

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Unless you disconnected the battery there's likely several things "being used"--any monitors/alarms, anything that resets itself, anything with a lighted display, anything with instant on, etc. It's amazing how many phantom loads are out there when you finally track them all down.

 

Linda Sand

Not meaning to take this off topic but in response: Bless you Linda, yep after countless hours racking my brain, googling all different terms, finally ascertained that when the kids came back 4 weeks ago from a weekend trip, they switched the rocker switch for a battery disconnect above the door, and left the inverter on which in turn kept the new residential fridge going, and the batteries weren't taking in any charge whatsoever.

 

Before the new solar and battery bank install we had the old gas/ac auto switch fridge, no inverter to speak of and just 2 house batteries with a direct trickle charge from a small solar panel so when we switched that battery disconnect off in the past, between trips and winterizing it kept them charged (those batteries lasted for years and years and we never topped them up ever, even in our frigid winters set up that way).

 

Well you don't know what you don't know, and we know now we need to keep that rocker switch in the on position even when in storage - just hoping we've not damaged the 8 new batteries bought last year too too much. Reached about 48% charge (397AH) today from zero yesterday when discovered. Reckon the CO & LP detector plus fridge were pulling down about 35/40amps per day so falls in line with days switched off. Fingers crossed new batteries not ruined! We never stop learning that's for sure.

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The ideal would be someone like the showing request today that wants to buy it turn key, and asked me how much we want for the furniture. Now to that end, I haven't a clue what's a fair price.

 

Based on the truly and honestly like never used condition, how much percentage of the initial paid dollar would be a fair asking price?

That is exactly what we did when we purchased our present home-base. A couple from Houston built and furnished this RV port home with the intention of slowly converting over to travel out of this community about 150 miles north of Houston. But life events intervened and the result was that after furnishing the house almost completely they never moved in and stayed in Houston, putting this one up for sale complete with furniture. For us that was perfect since we had sold our home and all in it some 11 years before and were in need of everything. What the couple did was to go through their receipts and basically they sold the furnishings to use for half price, or that was how they told us that the arrived at their lowest acceptable price. Of course, this was a cash sale which avoids a lot of costs for the seller with no mortgage involved so they could afford to take somewhat less. It is important to remember that if the buyer does mortgage the property to purchase it, the mortgage folks will not allow any increase in loan amount based upon it being furnished.

Good travelin !...............Kirk

Full-time 11+ years...... Now seasonal travelers.
Kirk & Pam's Great RV Adventure

            images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQqFswi_bvvojaMvanTWAI

 

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