Folks who are moving often hold garage sales to get rid of their unwanted stuff. But after that, they’re usually in a quandary: What do we do with the rest of the things we no longer want or need?

Often, there are people in town who will haul away your leftovers for free, or for a small stipend. Typically, these are professional dealers who will comb through what they take away to find a hidden gem or two that is worth more than you ever realized.

But there are lots of other choices. For example, you could skip the yard sale altogether and hire a “discard and donate” firm to help you whittle down your stuff. These companies help you evaluate what to keep. Then they take what you want to discard, donating it on your behalf to local and national charities. This will reduce your packing and transportation costs -- so much so, the outfits maintain, that it will save you money even after paying their fees. Not only do they help cut moving costs, they tend to make the old place more marketable by removing the clutter.

One such firm is Relocation Remedies of Pittsburgh; another is Home Sweet Home in Palos Verdes, California. Both work primarily with corporate relocation clients, but will also work with individual homeowners -- the former nationally, and the latter in and around Los Angeles.

Neither company would offer an example of a typical mover’s savings, saying that there are simply too many variables involved.

How much you save, says Home Sweet Home’s Jeff Heisler, depends on whether you are moving across the street or across the country, and which carrier you choose. Daniel O’Neill of Relocation Remedies adds that savings also depend on family size and the size of the house you are moving from.

Heisler says people who have a tough time deciding what to get rid of benefit the most from firms like his. Otherwise, people tend to take it all with them in the hope that they’ll find the time to sort and discard things after unpacking -- which, of course, they rarely do.

“Sometimes it’s just too hard, so getting a pro to come out is very helpful,” he says. “It’s less overwhelming.”

If you’re sorting through things yourself, the first step is to determine what you want to keep. These questions can help: Do you use the item regularly? Does it have sentimental value? Are you saving it “just in case”? Do you have more than one? Can something else replace it?

Your next step is to call local and national charities and ask about donating. “The cost is low to get a charity to come out and pick up your unwanted items, you are giving back to your community, and you get a tax deduction,” Heisler explains.

Likely, many local charities would be glad to help solve your moving dilemma. As one example, A Wider Circle in the Washington, D.C., area, collects furniture and household items and gives them to families and individuals transitioning from homelessness.

There also are many national charities you could call, including Goodwill, the Salvation Army, the Purple Heart Foundation and Habitat for Humanity, which backs locally owned and operated ReStores.

Here are a few other options:

-- Working through Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA), Pickup Please (pickupplease.org) helps all veterans by taking almost everything you want to give away. The group will collect your donations within 24 hours of your call; all you have to do is bag or box your items and leave them at the curb. If requested, they’ll leave a tax receipt. Collected items are sold to private companies, with the proceeds used to support VVA’s local, state and national programs. (All veterans are served, not just those from the Vietnam era.)

-- Dress for Success (dressforsuccess.org) passes on new and gently used business clothing to women looking for a new start in the workforce. It looks for business-appropriate attire such as suits, shoes, handbags and unused cosmetics and jewelry. Local affiliates accept donations only once or twice a month, so do your research.

-- Are there some extra coats in your “discard” pile? Use them to jump-start a neighborhood coat drive. One Warm Coat (onewarmcoat.org) provides tools and resources to hold a successful coat drive. Coats are distributed to children and adults in need in the communities where they were collected, without charge, discrimination or obligation. Since the charity’s inception in 1992, it has helped volunteers hold more than 27,000 coat drives, resulting in 5 million coats given away.

-- Cell Phones for Soldiers (cellphonesforsoldiers.com) collects used phones and tablets, sells then to a refurbisher or recycler, and uses the proceeds to purchase prepaid calling cards. The cards are distributed to active-duty personnel and veterans.

-- The Lupus Foundation (lupus.org) operates in only a few cities, but is growing. The group will take clothing, shoes, bedding, curtains, housewares, jewelry, toys, small appliances and tools, but no furniture. Donated items are sold to for-profit wholesalers, with the proceeds used to support programs for individuals with lupus and their families.

It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it can cause a seller and buyer big headaches.

We’re talking about damage done to a property after a contract is signed but prior to closing.

Perhaps the moving company broke the stair spindles when they were carrying the seller’s large dresser down. Or maybe there was a small kitchen fire -- or worse, damage from a major storm. Or perchance a final walkthrough prior to closing revealed damage that wasn’t noticeable when the house was full of the seller’s belongings.

Most standard state and local contracts address this issue. Unfortunately, says National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) General Counsel Katie Johnson, all contracts are different in how they handle the situation. The next steps depend on the language of your specific deal.

In Florida, according to Meredith Caruso of state trade association Florida Realtors, standard contracts contain a risk-of-loss clause which states that if the cost of restoration does not exceed 1.5 percent of the purchase price, the seller must restore the property and closing should proceed as per the contract.

If the cost of repairs exceeds 1.5 percent of the price, then the buyer has the choice of taking the property as-is along with a 1.5 percent reduction in price, or having their deposit returned. If they take the latter option, all parties are released from the contract.

In Colorado, on the other hand, the standard contract says the seller is liable for the repair or replacement of the damage with items of similar size, age and quality. Either that, or the seller can offer the buyer an equivalent credit. If the work is not finished on or before closing, the buyer has the right to terminate the deal or take a credit, not exceeding the purchase price, for the cost.

These are known as force majeure clauses, provisions in the contract that allow a party to suspend or terminate their obligations when certain circumstances beyond their control arise, making performance inadvisable, illegal or impossible.

Sometimes a list of possible events is included with these clauses: war, riots, fire, flood, hurricane, typhoon, earthquake, lightning, explosion, strikes, lockouts, slowdowns and government acts that prohibit or impede any party from performing their respective obligations under the contract.

Both buyers and sellers would be wise to look for a force majeure clause in the contract they are signing, NAR’s Johnson advises. It may or may not be labeled as such -- in the Florida contract, it’s called “risk of loss”; in Colorado, “damages, inclusions and services”; in Texas, “casualty loss” -- but it’s important to find it.

If it’s not there, the attorney suggests, you should negotiate up-front how these situations should be handled and include the agreed-upon details in the contract. In the absence of such an agreement, you’ll be left to the mercy of narrow common-law contract doctrines, which often leave one party or the other highly dissatisfied.

Your state’s Uniform Vendor and Purchaser Risk Act may also come into play, according to Johnson. These laws spell out who bears the risk for damages: the buyer, the seller or both, and at what percentage.

Of course, you can always renegotiate after the fact. Remember, everything in real estate is negotiable, right up until the moment you sign your name on all those documents at closing.

A force majeure clause should address a list of events the buyer and seller want covered, what happens when an event occurs, which party can suspend performance, and what happens if a listed event continues outside a specific time frame.

If the air conditioning fails, the seller should be responsible since they still own the property, says Patricia Beck of RE/MAX Properties in Colorado Springs. But if the house is damaged by flood or fire, the parties might want to make the buyer obligated to close if the damage is less than, say, 10 percent of the purchase price. If they want to bail despite such a clause, they could lose their earnest money deposit.

If the damage is greater and repairs cannot be made promptly, the buyer should be able to terminate the deal, Beck adds. But if they decide to proceed, the seller should be required to transfer any insurance proceeds to the buyer at closing.

Unfortunately, not every event can be foreseen. Take this possibility described by Dale Ross of the Dale Ross Realty Group in Katy, Texas:

If the house floods for any reason -- broken pipe, failed water heater or rising water -- and the insurance claim is substantial, the house might fall into a high-risk insurance situation. That means the buyer might have to pay up to four times the normal amount for homeowner’s insurance “for about two years or until the insurance policy returns to a normal price,” Ross says.

This fact alone could cause a buyer to want to back out. So could a reappraisal by the buyer’s mortgage company, if not because of a possible delay in closing, then because the new value ascribed to the house is so much lower than the original appraisal that the lender will no longer be willing to finance the place.

No financing, no deal.

A good number of buyers have been robbing their piggy banks lately, hoping that paying cash will help them beat out the competition for any decent houses still left on the market.

According to ATTOM Data Solutions, a national property database, the percentage of cash sales reached its all-time high of 42 percent in the first quarter of 2010. That’s compared to 28.2 percent in this year’s second quarter. In 2017’s third quarter, ATTOM says that cash buyers accounted for 27.2 percent of all single-family home and condo sales -- up from 26.7 percent in Q3 2016. It was the second consecutive quarter with a year-over-year increase following 15 consecutive quarters of year-over-year decreases.

Black Knight Financial Services sets the high-water mark even higher: 45.4 percent in Q1 2011, compared to 28 percent in Q3 2017.

Lots of people have been raiding their bank accounts, stock portfolios and even their IRAs at a pretty good clip. With a little-known program from Fannie Mae, however, cash buyers can reclaim a good hunk of their money. It’s called the Delayed Financing Exception. It’s “a widely undiscovered, yet very useful, program because it provides buyers with a broader range of financial choices,” says Chris Carter, a loan officer and real estate agent with Geneva Financial in Naples, Florida.

Normally, cash buyers have to wait a minimum of six months to refinance their purchase and retrieve some of their money. But with the Delayed Finance Exception, you can refinance right after closing -- no six-month wait required.

Carter says the exception “works best when done within three months.” That’s because the Internal Revenue Service has a 90-day limitation for you to claim the loan as “property acquisition” financing. Without it, you won’t qualify for the deduction for mortgage interest.

As of this writing, the mortgage interest write-off is still deductible when itemizing. But it could be trivialized under tax reform proposals now being considered in Washington.

There are plenty of reasons why you might want to pull your cash back out of the house. One is that a house is a relatively illiquid investment. Sure, you can buy and sell real estate, but doing so often takes months. Stocks and bonds, on the other hand, can be bought and sold in a matter of seconds.

Also, any money you have tied up in the house is not available to make other investments.

Another reason is leverage. A basic principle of investing in real estate is to use borrowed money to own property, putting less of your own cash at risk. The technique increases the rate of return on your money.

And then there’s diversification, another basic investment primer, which allows investors to spread their money among different investments, again reducing risk.

Delayed financing can be used for personal residences, vacation homes and investment properties. The loan amount must comply with loan-to-value ratios of other cash-out refi programs, typically 70-80 percent of value. And it can include closing costs and prepaid fees, as long as the loan-to-value limit is maintained.

The interest rate must be compatible with that of other cash-out refi loans with similar ratios and transaction specifics.

But there are rules:

-- The six-month time frame begins on the closing date of the original cash transaction and ends on the funding date of the delayed funding refi. “This means that the full application, underwriting and final approval must take place” during that time frame, according to Carter.

-- The original deal must have been an “arm’s length” transaction: Buyer and seller cannot be related, either personally or in a business sense, and must have acted in their own individual interests.

-- The closing statement from the cash deal must show that no financing whatsoever was used.

-- Funds for the cash purchase must be fully documented, sourced and “paper-trailed.” If any part of the purchase price comes from a deal on another property, that loan must be paid off first from the proceeds of the delayed funding.

-- There can be no outstanding liens. Any lien must be paid off before closing.

As you can see, this isn’t simple. That’s why Carter suggests working only with loan officers who understand delayed financing, have done several deals and can get you to the finish line well ahead of time.