I recently moved into a new apartment that has a washer and dryer included in the place.
I obviously didn’t need my old washer and dryer and I had nowhere to store them, so it was time for me to sell the set.
I thought about using Craigslist, which is where I bought the set for $85 back in 2008. However, Craigslist can be a pain because you never know how long it’s going to take to find a buyer.
Luckily a friend of mine knows a guy who buys and sells used appliances. I gave this guy a call and asked him to give me a quote on my washer and dryer set. I sent him a few pictures and he responded with an offer:
$150!
I might have been able to negotiate and get a little more out of him, but I honestly would have taken $50 for the set. Heck, it even kind of leaks. I called it a deal and we set up a time for him to come pick up my appliances.
That’s a 75% Return on Investment
I bought a washer and dryer set four years ago for $85, and probably did hundreds of loads of laundry in them, and then sold the set for a 75% profit. How? Because I obviously bought them at well under market value.
While this may sound like a one-off situation, I’m sure it happens all the time. When people want to get rid of something in a hurry, they are willing to take very low prices just to get it out of their house.
The guy who sold me this set four years ago had just bought a new washer and dryer and needed to make space. He took a really low price because he wanted them gone IMMEDIATELY. Heck, he was so anxious to get rid of it he even delivered it to my apartment for me!
I Think This Happens Often
I actually did the same thing with my old bedroom set. I paid about $400 for my bed, dresser and nightstand from Ikea four years ago. I tried to sell it for $175 but didn’t get any offers, so I eventually dropped the price to $100 because I wanted it gone THAT DAY.
The guy who bought it also ended up taking a bunch of other furniture that I wanted to get rid of, just because he was willing to haul it away. I didn’t want to bother with selling it or throwing it away, so I just gave it to him.
He probably ended up with over $600 of furniture in pretty good condition for just $100.
You Can Make Your Living on Craigslist
There are people out there who actually make their living from buying low priced items from motivated sellers and re-selling them at market value. J.D. Roth from Get Rich Slowly highlights one of those people here.
If I were a handy man and had a truck, I would probably spend a weekend or two seeing if I could make some extra bucks buying old appliances. Unfortunately I had to get help mounting my TV to the wall and can’t fit much of anything in the trunk of my Camry.
I guess I’ll just have to settle for buying cheap stuff that I want and keeping it.
Readers: Have you ever considered trying to make extra money off Craigslist or eBay?
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Kevin McKee is an entrepreneur, IT guru, and personal finance leader. In addition to his writing, Kevin is the head of IT at Buildingstars, Co-Founder of Padmission, and organizer of Laravel STL. He is also the creator of www.contributetoopensource.com. When he’s not working, Kevin enjoys podcasting about movies and spending time with his wife and four children.
Possible, but think of the gas that you spend driving to places and picking stuff up, not to mention you know there would be a lot of times where you’d drive to get something only to find that there’s no way you want to take it with you. You might have to get storage assuming you can’t just flip everything right away, so there are carrying costs with all that. I suppose it could work but there are a lot of other variables that come into play than the simple math you outlined that I think you’d probably be wise to ponder.
I was going to sell my extra dryer on craigslist when we moved into our house, but had not gotten around to it (we had an extra washer, but that leaked pretty bad and I hadn’t gotten around to looking at it). But as soon as I was ready to list the thing, the dryer in the house had the heating element go out. So I got lucky and already had a spare!
As far as trying to flip items, I probably wouldn’t do it, because I don’t have the time, space or desire to do it.
A buddy of mine does this with his salon he owns. He buys bulk jewelry (like belly-button and ear rings) for pennies and re-sells them for way more. He isn’t going to get rich doing it but it does bring in a lot of extra money. He also does a lot of giveaways to help bring in customers.
Haha, I don’t know about “investing” but I do hope to sell our washer and dryer for as much as we paid for them on Craigslist after 6+ years of use. I bet we could do the same for a couple other sticks of furniture as they don’t seem to show any additional wear. So glad we bought off Craigslist to begin with!
On a related note, here is an article I read recently on making your own detergent and 20 other tips to save money on laundry:
http://www.moneytalksnews.com/2012/05/18/make-your-own-laundry-detergent-and-other-tips-to-save-on-laundry/
Thomas Nitzsche
ClearPoint Credit Counseling Solutions
I just got a new dryer but it was because my old one has a broken timer and no longer dried well. It was 20 years old and now I am going to try to make a few bucks off of it on craigslist. We’ll see if I can’t get a decent deal by waiting for someone who knows how to make it work halfway decent.
In The Netherlands the government department responsible for collecting tax-money uses software to perform automated scans on people trading second hand goods online and fines them for tax-noncompliance when it deems these transactions to be for financial gain (ie. if it’s not personal belongings you already had) since they want that to be taxed as income.
Just something to think about since I doubt this will be different anywhere else.
I have been selling our extra stuff on Ebay for the last month. I have even started looking for deals on the stuff we will need for our new home – a refrigerator and washer and dryer are on top of the list, lol.
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A unique way of making money indeed! I wonder if you could actually make a living buying off Craigslist and reselling on eBay! What do you think?
There is also a good number of people that buy broken washers, dryers, or lawn mowers, fix whatever is wrong with them, and then resell for a profit. Many cities have a spring cleaning day where once a year the city will haul these items away from the curb at no charge to the owner, and this is a good picking strategy. Unfortunately, my town does not do this, or I would do this work as a side income.