Killer probate deal - need advice

[Dustin S]

Hi!

My partner and I opened escrow on a property with a seller who was contacted through my partner's direct mail campaign. ARV is $400K, 10K in repairs, purchase price is $285K. We were told by the seller that he and his ex-wife owned the property as Joint Tenants. The ex-wife died a few years ago. As I understand as joint tenants, when one owner dies her interest is transferred to the surviving owner. An affidavit was filed giving the seller 100% ownership of the property.

Here's where it gets messy, title found a judgement that states "the recorded affidavit of death of joint tenant recorded on (date) is vacated. The subject real property is awarded to the decedent, and to her ongoing estate, and to the respondent as to one-half as tenants-in-common." According to the judgment the seller didn't even show up to court. Seller claims he doesn't know anything about it.

So where we stand now it looks like the property will now have to be probated. There is one surviving heir and when he gets wind that the seller is selling us a 400K house for 285 he's probably going to want to shop for a better deal.

I'd love to hear some ideas. On thought I had was to try to buy the sellers interest in the property at a deep discount.

-Dustin