Probate Leads

[Sharon Vornholt]

In my city, our probate leads are published in the newspaper at the same time each month. I am finding that even in some big cities, folks are still having to trek down to the courthouse.

I was wondering, where all of you "probate investors" get your leads?

[Ben Julius]

Dallas records can be looked up on the court's website by date without a case number or reference number.  There's a drop down box that will allow you to choose to search by date.  From the Dallas County & District Courts Case Information page, use the drop down box to select "All County Probate Courts."  Next, click on the "Court Calendar" link.  Finally, at the top of the page, use the drop down box to select "Date Range".  That should get you where you need to be.

[Andrew Herrig]

All Dallas county probate cases start with PR. When I look them up, I search by PR* which will show all probates. 

[Rob Daszuta]

If anyone is in need of probate leads in Worcester county Massachusetts, please give me a call. I visit the courthouse almost every day and pull quality leads directly from the case files. 508-925-0676

[Jason Hatfield]

Originally posted by @Sharon Vornholt:

@Mikhail Sazonov

I don't mail to them. Like Rick said most of the people continue to live there.

Sharon

Hi Sharon.  I'm wondering approx. what percentage of your probate mailings convert to leads (calls) and what percentage of those leads convert to deals?  Also, do you have a # or a guess for how many letters produce a call on the first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth mailings?

[Sharon Vornholt]

@Jason Hatfield- No matter what group of motivated sellers you are mailing to, approximately 85% of your deals will come at or beyond the 5th mailing. This is true with probates. In fact a whole lot of those folks don't take action until around the 1 year point. You have to start mailing as soon as the notice goes out though. I have bought houses after just 1 mailing. You just never know when someone will get motivated to sell these properties. Each group of these sellers (you have a new group each month) is different. You are looking for those sellers with properties that won't be sold on the MLS ie distressed properties.

Sharon

[Jason Hatfield]

Originally posted by @Sharon Vornholt:

@Jason Hatfield- No matter what group of motivated sellers you are mailing to, approximately 85% of your deals will come at or beyond the 5th mailing. This is true with probates. In fact a whole lot of those folks don't take action until around the 1 year point. You have to start mailing as soon as the notice goes out though. I have bought houses after just 1 mailing. You just never know when someone will get motivated to sell these properties. Each group of these sellers (you have a new group each month) is different. You are looking for those sellers with properties that won't be sold on the MLS ie distressed properties.

Sharon

Thanks Sharon.  That's a big help.  

I was just quoted $285 per 1,000 contacts with a 2,000 contact minimum.  Does this seem fair?  Also, this list also includes email addresses.  Have you done any email marketing with your lists? Was it effective? 

[Curt Smith]

I've been buying lists for some time.  Bought leads from those sites put PPC ads on the right side of your browser, sell now...  

It probably has been said in this thread but it's so important it bears repeating.

** if you can click and buy a list, so can someone in Australia, China, California, Canada. **

My rentals get post cards from all over the country.  LOL  Poor investors,, litterally.  Wasting their yellow letter money.

I get post cards from California all the time.   I've called back sellers and they say they have a stack of letters an cards 1" thick.  Probate sellers probably will get 2"s because everyone says they are good leads, and everyone around the world buys the same list.  Notice that those list folks don't say how many times they've sold that list?   Some Probate list sellers do limit to 2 agents and 5 investors +/-.

I have read threads in this forum on lead ideas that have few competitors mailing the same folks.  The general rule is: the more difficult the seller is to find, the fewer folks will be contacting them.    This is why door knocking, going the court house and getting a list of eviction notices and the landlords.  Driving for tall grass and using public records to find the owner, then skip trace to get their current address and phone number.  This is hard work and each skip trace costs time and money.

Here's a new BP thread that talks about standing out amoung a 1" stack.

Standing out.

[Sharon Vornholt]

@Jason Hatfield-  Where are you buying that list?  Is that probates? 

You can get AO's a listsource for about 16 cents a lead or less so I'm assuming they are probates.  That doesn't sound right to me.

Sharon

[Jason Hatfield]

Originally posted by @Sharon Vornholt:

@Jason Hatfield-  Where are you buying that list?  Is that probates? 

You can get AO's a listsource for about 16 cents a lead or less so I'm assuming they are probates.  That doesn't sound right to me.

Sharon

I have two bids from two providers for AO's.  Click2Mail quoted me about $0.07 per lead for address only.  No Email or phone #'s.  The other company (name escapes me) is quoting $0.20 for Address, Phone & Email 

[Sharon Vornholt]

Jason - that price per lead sounds good, but I wouldn't want to have to buy a set amount of leads.

Sharon

[Jason Hatfield]

Thanks Sharon.  I added some additional filters and they were able to nail it down to 2,400.   For $500 they will give me name, address, email and phone # of all 2,400.

I set the filters to AO in specific zip codes with at least 3 bed/ 1 bath valued between $50K and $300K with at least 50% equity who have also had filed an eviction, have a public record, back taxes, etc in the last 12 months.  Also added pre-forclosures.   Sound like I'm on the right path?  

I'm also looking for a strategy on how many to drop and when.  I could do all 2,400 at once or divide them into four groups and do one a week on a rotation.  My concern is dropping too many could give me too many leads to filter through and become overwhelming.

[Geode Pratt]

I love this probate thread. It's exactly what I'm looking for right now. As I read, I'm trying to put the suggested steps into practice, but I have a couple of questions.

I've found a probate record (Register of Actions) on my county website. It is simply an application to determine heirship, but it lists the decedent, and living relatives. From this info, I researched and found the decedent's property, and the names and addresses of his mother, brother, sister, etc. Now, I'm assuming this is not actually what I'm looking for, as it is basically a court communication log and does not actually establish an heir.

Am I too early in the process? Don't have the correct record? Or should I market to these family members anyway?

Thanks for all the great advice!

[Jason Hatfield]

Geode,

You'll want to make contact with the person who is the final decision maker for the Estate.  Some states call them the Executor while others call them the Personal Representative.

[Rick H.]

@Geode Pratt A single property that's on your radar?

Typically, the Registry of Actions is just as it sounds; an official record or log of documents filed in a inarticulate court. Not usually the same as the county recorder's records do keep them separate in your mind.

I've watched people debate the 'is it too early' stuff here on BP for a long time. It's never too early or late (ethically or morally) because someone has decided to deal with stuff in order to receive current or future benefits of a property. 

The issue has more to do with getting the right message in front if the right person at the right time and stimulating them to take a certain action like call you. Many people ask the mail piece to do too many things when it's better IMHO to focus in a single action. Therefore, the question becomes, 'What's the job of this letter or postcard?'

Big challenge of newbies: focusing on a single fish. There are many fish in the ocean. I suggest you decide which ones meet your qualifications and work a short list of six; no more, no less. 

You might have to mail many hundreds of pieces to narrow down to 6 prospects, however.

[Joe Krevinghaus]

I live in Cape Coral FL and I go down to the Lee County courthouse regularlay to pull probate leads. I look for homestead exemption filings which tells me the property in exempt from all creditors and is able to be sold. This is an internal computer system and I'm able to see pdf's of the court docs which list the heirs names and address. I just enter them into a spreadsheet. Then at home I maile merge, print, fold, stuff, lick, stamp and off they go!

[Account Closed]

Originally posted by @Sharon Vornholt:

In my city, our probate leads are published in the newspaper at the same time each month. I am finding that even in some big cities, folks are still having to trek down to the courthouse.

I was wondering, where all of you "probate investors" get your leads?

Would happen to have any information pertaining to the nature of deals you encounter through the probate route? Any significant margins?

[Rick H.]

@Account Closed Here's the simple truth: most probates are not distress sales and don't reflect bargain prices sufficient to carve out a wholesale profit. There, I've said it.

After something approaching 2,000 probate deals in 25+ years, I can say that with confidence.

You are looking for motivated sellers in order to buy equity (or potential cashflow) at a discount. If you approach directly from a probate list, you'll need to filter out the unmotivated from the motivated. 

If you approach from the other end, such as foreclosure lists, for example, a certain % will also be probated or pre-probates. 

Its how you identify these leads and target your well-crafted message that makes the phone ring and it's if you can convert them cost effectively in order to monetize.

[Account Closed]

Originally posted by @Rick H.:

@Account Closed

From the 2000+ probate deals that you referenced, on average, what sort of discount (% of market value) do you or anyone who typically utilizes this route see? That was sort of the type of information I was trying to get. There usually are many things that could make a property distressed or not. Death, usually may be a contributing factor -- based on the financial condition of either the deceased or whoever the heir is/are.

[Sharon Vornholt]

@Greg F.  - Like @Rick H. said, most probates won't be distressed homes.  It's a numbers game no matter which niches you work in.

Sharon

[Julio Vasquez]

Great Post! In my city they are published on the clerks website, so I hired this guy to build an script/data scrapper that grabs all the cases to an excel sheet, I then cleaned them up to be mail merged. It takes some time to clean up but it's worth it.

Good stuff,

Julio

[Daniel Paloscio]

Does anyone know if the notice to creditor in Pinellas County or Hillsborough County Florida have to be posted in a specific newspaper, or can the personal rep post in any paper they like? I just recently realized that some papers other than the paper I've been getting my data from have small Public Notice sections. It makes it pretty difficult to get all the data when its spread out across different papers, especially when some of the papers only have 1 notice to creditor.

[JP Moses]

Originally posted by @Barima Opong-Owusu:

Are there any sound companies that you can pay for probate lists. I already use a few for absentee owners and tax liens, but I haven't found 1 for probate yet.

 I've done probates off an on over the last 15 years. Looking back many of my highest profit margin deals have come from a probate situation, so I recently ramped them back up again. 

I used to do it all manually (or have someone on my team do it), which in our area means getting the estate info from the daily news, then cross referencing it with our local probate court website to get the executor's mailing address, then sending them a sequence of 4 letters, about 6 weeks apart each. 

Today I use the nice ladies at PostalImpact.com to handle it. They're pretty awesome. They do all the research to get the leads, remove duplicates, and manage my entire 4 letter campaign. They don't actually print the letters, but I use YellowLettersComplete.com to do that, so now our probate campaigns are truly turnkey with zero involvement from me. just the way I like it. 

You'll always save money doing probate lead gathering, filtering, merging, printing, mailing and campaign managing yourself. But I've got much better things to do and these ladies rock it out.  

Later.

[Rick H.]

Originally posted by @Daniel Paloscio:

Does anyone know if the notice to creditor in Pinellas County or Hillsborough County Florida have to be posted in a specific newspaper, or can the personal rep post in any paper they like? I just recently realized that some papers other than the paper I've been getting my data from have small Public Notice sections. It makes it pretty difficult to get all the data when its spread out across different papers, especially when some of the papers only have 1 notice to creditor.

 This is an example of a post that needs its own thread. Hijacking only creates confusion.

Suggest you re-post and inquire whether probate notices to creditors requires publishing in adjudicated newspapers in your area.

[Darmi Parikh]

In IL you can find it from county dept. or we get it from Pvt public record company but it is very expensive.

[Reddrick Whatley]

How do you go about getting probate leads