Sell Used Furniture for Cash And Make The Most Money Following This Guide

All good things must come to an end, including your ownership of your used furniture. After years of use, said furniture might’ve been worn down a bit; over those same years, your income and standard of living might’ve increased as well, thus you might be looking to replace your old furniture for some sleek new pieces.

But don’t just toss your furniture in a dumpster or on the side of the road; you can sell your used furniture for cash if you know where to look.

As you know, furniture is quite expensive. At one point (probably in college or right after graduation), you needed some furniture, ANY furniture, even if it was cheap and in not-so-great condition.

Well, someone else is currently in your old bargain furniture-hunting shoes. They’d love to take your old furniture off your hands for a good price.

By selling your used furniture for cash, you’re not only helping someone else out, but the cash boost from selling your furniture can cover some of the costs of your new furniture.

Flipping Furniture

Flipping items is an extremely simple and low-cost business model. You buy a used item at a good price, fix it up, and sell it for profit.

People do this with cars, houses, antiques, and similar items. If you don’t have used furniture of your own, but are looking for a neat side hustle, flipping furniture could be a good source of side income.

As you’ll see, some places where you can sell your used furniture are geared more towards someone looking to engage in this kind of side business.

Best Places to Sell Used Furniture for Cash

Your options for selling used furniture for cash used to be limited to the physical: host a garage sale, find a family or friend who needs it, or just throw it out completely.

While those methods work, you won’t get the best deal for your old furniture. Plus, your market will be much smaller without the reach of the internet.

So you’ll want to look to the internet for good places to sell your used furniture. Websites that you can sell your used furniture on are a dime a dozen, but we put together a list of some of the best below; keep reading to see where you should sell that furniture.

1.) Craigslist

Craigslist is the mother of all sites that facilitate buying and selling old stuff locally (as well as almost anything else you can buy/sell/trade online). Tons of people use the platform, making it a great place to sell your own used furniture for cash.

Creating a listing is quite easy; it only takes a few minutes to create a complete listing for your furniture, and no need to worry about paying seller fees either because it’s free. Once you create the listing, interest buyers can email you via a temporary Craigslist email to protect your real email.

Arrange a date, time, and method of transporting the furniture, and you’re good.

What will sell here is good photos and a killer description. The process might be easy, but you should spend a good few minutes honing these parts of the listing. Photos really sell the product, but sometimes people need a descriptive and slightly entertaining description to push them over the edge.

Now, remember that Craigslist is completely anonymous. You should take some precautions for your safety:

• Meet in daylight – Meeting with a stranger anonymously is best done when everyone can see. Meeting in a public place maximizes your safety, but that’s not always doable with furniture, so at least schedule your meetup while it’s light outside.
• No secluded locations – You can meet at either of your homes, but don’t go inside their’s nor let them inside yours
• Buddy system – Bring a friend with you if you’re uncomfortable going alone.
• Bring your cell phone – Just in case.

A good buyer will understand why you’re taking these precaution and won’t be weirded out by you adhering to them.

2.) Facebook Marketplace

Facebook Marketplace is basically a Facebook-exclusive version of Craigslist. Sellers can list items for sale in the marketplace, and buyers can browse items and reach out to sellers if they find something they like.

Listing your furniture for sale on Facebook Marketplace is just about as fast as listing it on Craigslist. Upload your photos, write a good description, determine your pricing, etc.

Also like Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace is free to use and you incur no fees for selling items.

Facebook Marketplace’s main advantage over Craigslist is safety and security. You need a Facebook profile to use it; this means you can vet buyers to a degree beforehand to ensure you stay safe.

Still, you should follow the same safety precautions with Facebook Marketplace as you would with Craigslist.

3.) Facebook Groups

Another place on Facebook where you can sell your used furniture is in a buy/sell/trade Facebook page. These pages consist of people looking to buy and/or sell certain items in their area based on what types of items the group is about.

Find a furniture buy/sell group in your city, and you’ll already have a market for your furniture.

However, make sure to follow the rules of any group you join. Breaking their rules can get you banned from a group, eliminating your chances of selling to anybody within.

Alternatively, Facebook Marketplace lets you cross post your listing into Facebook groups relevant to your item (in this case, furniture) so your posting can be in several places at once.

4.) Shopify

Shopify is one of the top E-commerce platforms, providing thousands of entrepreneurs and sellers a simple way to build a storefront and sell their items. While you can use it to just offload furniture, Shopify costs money (plans start at $29 per month) for you to be able to sell anything, so it’s better if you’re selling furniture as a side business.

That being said, Shopify does give you a 14-day free trial where you can do everything involved in setting up your store, short of actually listing and selling items.

As for actually selling your furniture, Shopify lets you build an actual eCommerce storefront. You get to customize your store’s look and everything, or pick a pre-made template if you want to get selling more quickly.

From there, you just list your items for sale and then acquire buyers.

Most Shopify users draw in buyers by running Facebook and Google Ads, both of which cost money. Of course, Shopify has a suite of analytics tools so you can improve your marketing and sales efforts.

Once again, Shopify is best used if you’re serious about running an online furniture flipping enterprise.

5.) Bonanza

Like Shopify, Bonanza has you set up a storefront in order to sell your products. However, it’s pretty simple to use. Plus, it’s integrated with Google – your items will be seen by a much larger audience thanks to this integration.

Bonanza does not charge you listing fees, but they charge a commission on your furniture sales. This fee will vary depending on the price of your furniture and your chosen method of advertising.

6.) Letgo

Letgo is completely dedicated to facilitating the buying and selling of used/secondhand goods. There are no fees or commissions taken; all your earnings are yours.

You know how good photos are huge drivers in your sales success? On Letgo, visuals take precedence over everything else, so excellent furniture photography will be of the utmost importance.

In fact, Letgo actually presents sellers’ listings in a photo gallery type of arrangement: your primary picture of the item is displayed prominently, with what the item is and its location displayed below it. Spend extra time to nail the perfect primary photo for your listing, as that will drive the clicks to your product.

Speaking of clicking on your item, Letgo buyers that view your listing can see any other listings you have for sale. Makes for a great opportunity to sell more of your used furniture.

To take buying and selling on the go, Letgo has a mobile app that you can create a complete listing from. Since you’ll likely be taking product photos with your smartphone, the mobile app makes creating your listing and uploading your photos that much easier.

7.) Offerup

Offerup is a free classifieds site that makes listing your used furniture for sale extremely straightforward. Signing up doesn’t take long; once you have an account, Offerup claims you can list your item for sale in as little as 30 seconds. Listing an item is completely free, too.

Of course, you’ll want to do some pricing research first before you fire away with your Offerup listing. But even when you set your price, Offerup allows buyers to counter your offer right on the site (hence the name Offerup).

Another unique feature of Offerup is the paid advertising. You can spend money to boost your listing into the top 50 results for a certain period of time (usually 3-7 days), maximizing your listing’s reach.

The cost of this paid advertising depends on your item’s value and the time period you’d like it to be promoted.

Offerup’s got a mobile app too; like Letgo, you can take your furniture selling with you wherever you go.

8.) Etsy

Etsy is commonly thought to be an eCommerce platform only for artists and other creatives to sell art, handmade goods, and similar items. However, you can sell your furniture on Etsy as well.

Now, you can’t just sell a plain old, worn out couch. Your furniture will have to be unique in some way to garner any interest. You are, after all, competing against people who are making their own furniture by hand.

But anyways, you’ll need to open an Etsy shop to start selling your furniture on Etsy. Don’t worry, opening your store doesn’t take long.

Once you open your store, simply follow their guidelines for selling and list your items. Each listing will cost you $0.20, and you’ll pay transaction and payment processing fees upon a sale. Factor these into your Etsy finances.

9.) Chairish

Ever heard of a consignment store? You bring an item to the store that you want to sell. The store lists the items for sale and sell them for you; in exchange for this convenience, the consignment stores take some of the proceeds as commission.

Chairish is essentially an online consignment store for vintage furniture and other items. They offer several selling plans to choose from, ranging from a casual consignor plan (good for those just getting rid of furniture) to their Elite plan (better for more serious furniture sellers).

Each plan comes with a different commission rate for selling your furniture; they’re all relatively steep (aside from the fact that listing an item is free), but Chairish handles everything aside from listing the item, which is your job. If they approve your listing, then you just wait for the item to sell. You’ll get paid after their 48-hour return window closes.

And don’t worry: Chairish says they only experience a 2% return rate, far below the 10% industry average.

Unsure how to price your items? Chairish has a resource called the Chairish Pink Book that guides you on how to price your vintage furniture.

In case you’re interested, Chairish lets you sell a number of other items like

• Jewelry
• Rugs
• Decor
• Lighting
• Art

10.) Apartment Therapy Bazaar

Apartment Therapy is a large lifestyle blog focused on apartment interior design and decor. Naturally, they have a marketplace for cool furniture and other pieces called the Bazaar.

Listing items is free. You can then pay $1 to boost your listing if you want to expand your reach.

Apartment Therapy’s Bazaar has a cool integration with Etsy that lets you import your Etsy store’s listings into the Bazaar so you can sell on both platforms at once for no extra cost. If you’re an Etsy seller, you can tap into a whole new market by selling on the Bazaar.

11.) AptDeco

AptDeco specializes in top name brand pieces of furniture. You’ll make a good profit on here if you have any pieces from places like Pottery Barn, La-Z-Boy, or Crate and Barrel.

Listing your furniture is free and only takes a few minutes. However, they do take a cut of your profits for themselves.

AptDeco is only available in the NYC metro area, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Boston. If you aren’t in or near these east coast hot spots, you may have to consider another place to sell your used furniture.

12.) 1stDibs

Have an antique piece of furniture? 1stDibs might be the place for you to sell it.

1stDibs is an online marketplace for antiques, fancy accessories, art, and other similar items. Your vintage furniture will earn you a LOT more on this site than selling it somewhere.

However, that comes at a cost. Because the items sold on 1stDibs are so valuable, it costs a lot more just to list an item. Rather than pay a small listing fee to list your furniture, you have to pay a monthly fee; when you sell the furniture, 1stDibs takes a whopping 15% commission, as well as a 3% card processing fee if a credit card was used.

1stDibs overall is a great site for a very niche market. If you don’t fit this niche, try another site.

13.) Trove

Trove’s a great place to sell not only used furniture, but art you no longer want or need.

Listing your items on Trove doesn’t cost anything. They’ll take 10% commission out of your sale proceeds, but that’s much less than some of the competition on this list. You’ll also owe a credit card processing fee if you accept payment via credit card.

Trove buyers can search items via ZIP code or city, so you’re more likely to find a buyer in your area. This makes selling the furniture easier, as you might be able to meet the buyer in the middle or at your house and not have to pay extra shipping costs.

14.) Sotheby’s Home

Sotheby’s Home is an online consignment store catering to people with high-end designer furniture they no longer need. Due to the nature of their market, Sotheby’s Home is stringent about the value of the furniture you sell: any furniture you plan on selling must retail for a minimum of $1,000.

On top of that, they take half your proceeds as commission if you consign less than 20 items, and 40% if you consign 21 or more.

Sounds hefty, but Sotheby’s Home takes more of the selling burden off your shoulders by promoting your items and working to match you with interested buyers.

Designer furniture isn’t easy to sell due to its value, so this is a great service to have, even if pricey.

15.) eBay

In discussions about selling items online, one of the first places that pops into most people’s heads is eBay.

And for good reason.

Whether you’re flipping furniture as a side hustle or just trying to offload some old couches and tables, eBay has a massive buyer population, many of whom will readily buy your furniture for the right price.

You can sell an item on eBay one of two ways:

• Fixed price
• Auction

Fixed price listings are your traditional method of selling an item. You pick a fixed price; if a buyer is interested, they contact you to learn more about the piece.

Fixed price listings might be better for a furniture flipping business, given the pricing consistency. It’s also the preferred method for common or lower-value items, like an inexpensive couch or coffee table.

Auctions let you set a base price and a bidding time frame, then multiple interested buyers can put in their bid for the item. When the bidding period runs out, the highest bidder gets the furniture.

Auctions work best for rarer or nice items, as there will be much more demand for these items. However, even if your furniture isn’t something special, you might be able to squeeze more cash out of it with an auction listing.

eBay does have a few seller’s fees that you can learn more about at their site, so make sure to incorporate those into your pricing.

16.) NextDoor

NextDoor, as implied in its name, is all about connecting with your local area online. It’s not explicitly meant for buying and selling items, but that’s one of its main functions.

For example, you can list your used furniture for sale so your neighbors can see it. This saves you the time of telling your neighbors about your furniture or putting up flyers around the neighborhood.

To grab more attention from buyers, NextDoor lets you throw a discount on your listing.

Naturally, NextDoor has a nice mobile app for enhanced selling convenience. 

Parting Tips for Selling Used Furniture

Before selling your used furniture, you should do a few things to maximize your profits.

• Clean the furniture/repair any minor damages – Clean furniture looks better. Not only can you command a higher sale price, but your images will catch more eyes, making selling the item much easier on your part.
• Take great photos – Looks sell, as we just mentioned. Good photos can make the difference between silence and several buyers banging down your door to get your used furniture. Take your photos during the day with a high-quality camera, and make sure to grab several angles so potential buyers can visualize the furniture piece better.
• Research similar items – Look up pricing for similar items selling near you to gauge what you should price your furniture at. Some of the sites we mentioned like Craigslist or eBay are good places to look. You can either match the price of similar items, or price it slightly above those items and leave room for negotiation. There’s always a chance someone will take it at your first offer, earning you a few extra bucks.

Apply these tips in your selling efforts and you’ll maximize the cash going into your pocket.