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?

[Luigi Ontiveros]

I'm planning on going to the courthouse to extract some probate leads myself.

What should I look for and write down when I'm looking at the file in order to send them a letter?

[Account Closed]

Interesting question. Petitions to administer estates require publication in an adjudicated (?) paper in CA. So you have to know which paper that is in your county. In some counties, it's the biggest city's main newspaper. In one of my farm counties, there is a legal paper that's only legal notices and it's expensive to subscribe. Some Superior Courts have their indexes and calendars online now, so you can see the names of the cases. But you still have to work backwards to figure out if the estate has real property.

I'm pretty sure that none of the few dozen "probate deals" I've done came from a "probate lead". In every one I can think of, there was always another distress or target that generated the mail marketing or the first call. Vacant, abandoned, code violation, foreclosure, out of area owner, taxes, etc. Sometimes, the heirs and/or the execs. have completed all the court work and they are ready to sell...and my letter arrives in the mail. I love those. Sometimes they've hit a wall with infighting or court appraisal issues or debt issues and those involve problem solving. Those are still fun, but take longer. I've done a few much harder, riskier deals where I find all the heirs, pay up front for assignments of interest in the estate and hire the attorneys. Those are hard core and not recommended for anyone in a hurry and without a lot patience.

[Sharon Vornholt]

@Luis. You just need the name of the decedent, the address of the property they owned, and the name and address of the executor/PR and you are ready to go.

[Sharon Vornholt]

@Marie - I was just speaking with someone this morning about the difficulty in getting probate leads in CA compared to other states.

After hearing so many stories from others, I am really grateful that they are so easy to get here. And, they are FREE!

[Mark Pedroza]

Here in Ca, all probate files in Sacramento county are on line.

https://services.saccourt.com/publicdms/Search.aspx.

If you don't have a case number ( even though it's required) you can search by department (129) and then by event date (required) where you can advance that date 30-60 or 90 days.

The case number your interested in would display as 34-2012-00123080-PR-LA-FRC (LA- Letters of Administration) or 34-2010-00073822-PR-PW-FRC (PW) Probate of Will - Letters Testamentary.

After the number 34, note the #'s 2010 and 2010 which refers to the year. For the year 2010 there's a catalyst going on PLUS the PR is representing the estate instead of an attorney.

You can also market to SP-Spousal Petition, TR-Trust Proceedings, DS-Petition to Determine Succession To Real Property, LA-Letters of Administration (again probate without will) etc.

I'm also working Placer county (6 miles away) where yes I have to request the file number's.

Once in awhile on any given weekend the Sac tech's will do maintenance where the server will be down. GGGrrrrrrr.

[Mark Pedroza]

After the number 34, note the #'s 2010 and 2012 which refers to the year.

[Sharon Vornholt]

Mark - Our probates are online if you know the name of the decedent. What I want to see, is a list of everything filed the previous month in probate court. I can get that out of the newspaper. I know that I'm pretty lucky to be able to get these.

[Account Closed]

Sharon Vornholt The list that is published in your paper: is it a list of all probate actions for the previous month? Do you then work backwards from the decedent name to determine if there is any real property? In my farm, easily half of the probates initiated or wills filed in any given month will not have real property or will have property in areas over 100 miles outside my farm areas that I'm not interested in. The Central Valley of CA has a couple of the largest counties in the US and there's tens of thousands of of ag props and junk desert/mountain parcels. In fact if I take out spousal petitions for owner occupied props, I'm left with a handful of probate leads per month.

Have you ever looked at your past deals to correlate if the probate lead was the main or only motivation for the seller? In my experience, out of area NOO (tax mailing address different from property address) and/or various lien/debt issues gets me to the same people as my supposed "probate" targeting. I've been looking at the concept of targeting lately. If I am blanketing an area with marketing, and assuming the message was solid and covered all bases, targeting wouldn't be necessary. Just a theory, but it's got me thinking.

[Sharon Vornholt]

Marie -

I have someone that pulls the decedent up on the PVA to verify that there is real property. In my area, there are never as many as half that don't have property.

Even if they are listed as living in a nursing home, we still pull them up. A lot of those people still have property that they own. I usually end up with 60-85 leads per month. (We remove all of the ones that have spouses too). Some of these folks will list the house as it will just be too nice. But then again, if it sits on the market long enough, I will get a call when they have finally become motivated.

I live in a city that is smaller than yours. We probably have less than a million in population including nearby counties. I personally get good results from probates. They have a house they don't want; they just want the cash from the house so they can be very motivated. I also target absentee owners which are a great source of leads for me.

[Account Closed]

Sharon Vornholt If you're in the Louisville area, you're in a major metropolitan area by comparison. I'm work in giant land area, not population area. My farm cities are 350K and 100K. I also work a few small desert towns of 10K each. I would work more in Los Angeles County if the traffic were manageable, but it's not, so I drive 50 miles farther but it's 3 times faster to get there. :)

[Sharon Vornholt]

@K.Marie Poe. I see your problem. Do you work absentee owners too?

[Barima Opong-Owusu]

Does anyone know if it is possible to go to the courthouse to get a list of current probate cases and search for the ones that have property then find out the names. It sounds like a long process to go with names then find which ones have property.

[Michael Quarles]

Yes. They'll be on a clipboard. At the very most ask the clerk at the counter for it. However K Marie has a great point on if real property is involved.

[Alison M.]

Here in the DC area we have a couple of choices. The DC newspapers publish everything needed for DC residents, and you can get it on their web sites if you're willing to sift through.

Outside DC, the major county courthouse records are also available on-line with the required information. Some have free access, others require you pay a subscription fee. Just depends on how much time and money you want to spend to have access from home.

I looked into hiring a courthouse runner to gather probates but at $75 an hour that was a non-starter :-).

[Sharon Vornholt]

Alison Miller. No way. Isn't there a mom that would like a part-time job that she could work around her schedule?

[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.

[Sharon Vornholt]

Not in my area, but I know there are some in other areas. You might ask that question in one of the forums specific to your city and state.

Sharon

[Arcinio Arauz]

So all probate leads are public information? That is..who's the PR, decent's name and any property owned... right? If that's the case I can outsource someone to go and get the info for me at the probate office.

[Sharon Vornholt]

Arcinio- Yes. They are public information. Once you call the probate court, you will know what their procedure is for getting them in your city. It is different everywhere. You may not actually need to go to the courthouse.

Sharon

[Takeya Hill]

Enjoyed this discussion! Probate is actually of great interest to me, along with absentee owners and tax-lien properties. Thanks for sharing this.

[Shawn Bowen]

I love that I've found a group that does so much with probate like myself. I will chime in anytime to help and answer questions the best I can.

[John Horner]

I am from the Columbus, Oh area, and sorting through leads at the courthouse is the only way to get the executor or personal rep, and it is tedious work. They are still on an old dos based system and you have to go through one by one and get into each record to pull the property address as well as the executor. I would love to know of a better way. I have heard of people using usleadlist.com, have any of you had good luck with this company?

[Brian P.]

The question was where do you get the leads. Of course the probate files are number one but in one area I was working for awhile about 1 in 4 were not probate properties. I found them working the obits. Now you don't need to contact them at this point, and yes it is normally way to soon. But to get the lead info ready for when it is time is good.

Why were they not in probate? Some had just not opened one yet, and some were in trusts, or in joint tenancy, and avoided probate. The investors limiting themselves to only properties listed in the probate file were not seeing them.

The other thing is many avoid property occupied by a living spouse. I know that is a good policy sort of but many times you have well meaning relatives or friends telling them the house is to big or whatever. My father in law was a Met Life agent for 51 years and he told me he liked to check in with policy holders spouses and see how they were doing, and would invite many over to dinner. He said the number one complaint he got was they regretted selling their home and I made it a point to bring that up to surviving spouses. I did not do it to try to buy, I did it to help them out with the info and to take it into consideration. Of course every once in awhile I would get a call from one who decided it was time to move but that wasn't my true motivation, you just can't later un-sell a house. And of course once in awhile I would get a call from a ticked off relative who had plans for the money they thought they could get their hands on.

[Yu L.]

@Sharon Vornholt, I listened to your podcast, that is very informative, thanks for sharing. You mentioned that you have a series of letters you send to probate leads. Can you briefly describe the difference in the series of letters? And how long you wait in between letters?

Also, when you reach the last letter in the series, do you go back to letter #1 or you just keep sending them the last copy until there is a deal or they ask you not to or property sold?

[Sharon Vornholt]

Yu Lam- The first letter expresses my condolences and briefly tells what I do and how I can help. In the next letters, I just change that up a bit. I will say something like "I'm just checking in to see how settling the estate is coming" etc. I send the letters (5) one month apart, then I will check the database against the tax assessor's site to see what has sold. Then rinse and repeat this process until the houses have been bought by you or someone else.

Sharon