Here's Exactly What Furniture Retains Its Value The Best Over Time

PSA: That West Elm couch you're obsessed with is totally worth the splurge. Should you ever have to sell it, you'll make around 70 percent of your money back. Take it straight from Kalam Dennis, the co-founder of AptDeco, who has spent the past four years seeing thousands of gently-used furniture items sell on the site. With AptDeco, you can buy or sell used home goods without the headache of figuring out how to get it home from the sellers — or to the buyer — because they have a delivery team who handles that. Even better, the site is filled with items from cult-favorites like West Elm, CB2, and Restoration Hardware.

Since the company launched, Kalam's been entrenched in what furniture sells fast — and what truly retains its value. Here, he breaks down what, exactly, makes a piece valuable, along with the 18 most popular items on AptDeco that "sell like hotcakes."

How do you determine the value of the furniture?

When we talk about the value of an item, the first thing is the likelihood of that item selling. In general, furniture when it's resold usually sells for around 70 percent off of the original price it was paid for. That's just the average ... Depending on the brand, the age, the condition — all of those things can really sway in a dramatic fashion either way.

What brands sway dramatically with a high resale?

We basically have six brands that really stand out for us. I'll segment them by what we'll call accessible brands, mid-point brands, and higher luxury brands. So on the accessible end, there are two brands under Wayfair, All Modern and Mercury Row. They are really popular and they really retain their value. The second one might be surprising, it's Urban Outfitters. They have really, really cool furniture, and it sells at an extremely high rate and holds its value because it has such a great style to it.

In the mid-point it's CB2 and West Elm. They're super popular, with an extremely high turnover rate. [They sell for] 30 to 35 percent off of its retail [price], so it holds its value really well. In terms of higher-end brands that hold their value, it's Restoration Hardware and Herman Miller.

What items would you say sell the fastest?

Dressers. Always any type of dresser, those are the things on our site we can never have enough of. Any CB2 or West Elm or Restoration Hardware dresser will be gone in one or two days. I'd also say nightstands, dining tables, and sofas. Sofas are extremely popular, so when you have those crossing of the brands, they're going to sell. Coffee tables too — those are always sell.

And what items would you say don't have great resale value?

When it comes to art and decor, there's less uniformity. People have different artistic taste, so it gets really personal. Even beds. The bed is a personal space, and you should get one you love, but in terms of the ability to hold its value, that's probably one of the areas where I think you have to be more flexible in terms of resale price.