Q: Can't move or delete certain apps from /Applications

I am in the middle of doing a "spring clean" of my Mac and part of that means removing rarely or never used apps from my Applications folder.  Many of these I'd like to transfer to a separate folder in my Downloads folder, which would later be copied to an external drive in case a use need ever occurs, others I simply want to delete.

A number of them pop up with the following message (using PathFinder):  This item is not movable.  You don't have sufficient permissions to move the item xxx.  Skip - Authenticate - Stop.  Granting permission in PathFinder does nothing - the app remains in place.

If I try using Finder, the action creates an alias at the new location.  If I try to trash it in the Finder, I have to grant permission.  It gets moved to Trash then I move it from Trash to my target external drive and again I have to grant permission.

Now I have several dozen such apps and I'd like to streamline this process to allow me to simply move the app to a temporary folder on my boot drive, then move that entire folder to the external drive later.

I'm comfortable using Terminal if that's what it takes.  Or is there some CLI that will grant me the permission needed to complete these deletes/moves without the added folderol that OS X saddles us with?  There must be some way to judiciously override Apple's mother hen approach to Application organization.  I can't even move an app out of the Applications folder?  Give me a break!

Thanks for considering this.  Any help or links to advice would really be appreciated.

I'm using a late 2012 Mac Mini, OS X 10.5.