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Probate Leads
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?
You need 4 pieces of information to work probates; the name and address of both the deceased and the executor/PR to work probates.
Once you have the address of the deceased, you can look on the tax assessor's site to see if that address comes up. If there is no property listed, I will look it up by name. It takes a bit of detective work at times. Many times if the deceased is listed as living in a nursing home, there will still be property in that person's name.
You have to figure out how to get those 4 pieces of information, and that varies from county to county (there are more than 3000). Looking through wills is very time consuming. I hope this helps.
thank you @Rick Harmon , @Sharon Vornholt , @Mark Pedroza
In MA the Probate and Family court records can be searched online(very limited). You can find the deceased, petitioner, personal Rep and that is about it. I then search the decedents name on google with obituary. I then find out if they are married and more importantly what town they live in. I then search their town assessor's info to see if they own property if they do then their on my list. I do this while I watch the Red Sox game. the whole search takes about 5 to 10 minutes.
@Paul Sorgi What database do you use to find these? The only one that I know of is the newspaper public notice database.
Originally posted by Paul Sorgi:
How many do you do Paul? Even at only 5min you are putting in over 41.5hrs to screen 500 leads. That is just screening so I assume you would have actually have a much smaller list as you won't find properties on all of them.
Not killer but that is going to take a while to compile.
@Shaun Reilly you are absolutely right. It is time consuming but isn't going to the courthouse? Which I can't get to anyway because I work full time. My main DM is absentee owners and I am just starting to compile a probate list for my initial campaign.
@Justin Silverio here is the link to court records.
http://masscourts.org/;jsessionid=442AF118736C9532F78BB901893B2774?x=kH2zzLWJdlwOybL*9oqwUVzfKn76IV1rlYKZ*N5MRZrc8zaTo5gbctBEgxiOPRQP
Originally posted by Paul Sorgi:
http://masscourts.org/;jsessionid=442AF118736C9532F78BB901893B2774?x=kH2zzLWJdlwOybL*9oqwUVzfKn76IV1rlYKZ*N5MRZrc8zaTo5gbctBEgxiOPRQP
FYI Justin don't get excited about this. It sucks! It LOOKS like you should be able to search all the cases in a time period in any town and it will have lots of information.
Since the town isn't even something they list in the record that filter doesn't work, doesn't even seem to filter by county (Even though you chose which counties court to look at) and no information on the contact for anyone even though there are fields for it (Other than some attorneys)
Pretty much it is only useful in that you can find the name of the deceased and know they are in the process before looking for the Obit. Which is basically what Paul said he is doing.
I've tried to use this site in the past but either I'm not using it correctly or the data is not up to date. Here are my steps:
- Select Probate & Family Court
- Select Essex County
- Select Case Type
- Enter Date of 1/1/13 - today and Andover as the town
- Result - no matches found
Am I doing something wrong?
Originally posted by Shaun Reilly:
Originally posted by Paul Sorgi:
http://masscourts.org/;jsessionid=442AF118736C9532F78BB901893B2774?x=kH2zzLWJdlwOybL*9oqwUVzfKn76IV1rlYKZ*N5MRZrc8zaTo5gbctBEgxiOPRQP
FYI Justin don't get excited about this. It sucks! It LOOKS like you should be able to search all the cases in a time period in any town and it will have lots of information.
Since the town isn't even something they list in the record that filter doesn't work, doesn't even seem to filter by county (Even though you chose which counties court to look at) and no information on the contact for anyone even though there are fields for it (Other than some attorneys)
Pretty much it is only useful in that you can find the name of the deceased and know they are in the process before looking for the Obit. Which is basically what Paul said he is doing.
Ah, that makes sense based on my results. Looks like the method I've been using is probably the only method of getting accurate and timely information.
Originally posted by Justin Silverio:
- Select Probate & Family Court
- Select Essex County
- Select Case Type
- Enter Date of 1/1/13 - today and Andover as the town
- Result - no matches found
Am I doing something wrong?
Do the exact same thing but select all towns and you will get results.
Unfortunaetly I think you are getting every result in the state (I might be wrong but I'm not convinced it was even sorting by county, but I might be wrong on that).
Originally posted by Shaun Reilly:
Originally posted by Paul Sorgi:
http://masscourts.org/;jsessionid=442AF118736C9532F78BB901893B2774?x=kH2zzLWJdlwOybL*9oqwUVzfKn76IV1rlYKZ*N5MRZrc8zaTo5gbctBEgxiOPRQP
FYI Justin don't get excited about this. It sucks! It LOOKS like you should be able to search all the cases in a time period in any town and it will have lots of information.
Since the town isn't even something they list in the record that filter doesn't work, doesn't even seem to filter by county (Even though you chose which counties court to look at) and no information on the contact for anyone even though there are fields for it (Other than some attorneys)
Pretty much it is only useful in that you can find the name of the deceased and know they are in the process before looking for the Obit. Which is basically what Paul said he is doing.
@Shaun Reilly I did not make it sound easy did I ? :-)
But if your starting with Public Notices this maybe one step less. Is there a better way? I am open if your sharing.
Originally posted by Paul Sorgi:
Originally posted by Shaun Reilly:
Originally posted by Paul Sorgi:
http://masscourts.org/;jsessionid=442AF118736C9532F78BB901893B2774?x=kH2zzLWJdlwOybL*9oqwUVzfKn76IV1rlYKZ*N5MRZrc8zaTo5gbctBEgxiOPRQP
FYI Justin don't get excited about this. It sucks! It LOOKS like you should be able to search all the cases in a time period in any town and it will have lots of information.
Since the town isn't even something they list in the record that filter doesn't work, doesn't even seem to filter by county (Even though you chose which counties court to look at) and no information on the contact for anyone even though there are fields for it (Other than some attorneys)
Pretty much it is only useful in that you can find the name of the deceased and know they are in the process before looking for the Obit. Which is basically what Paul said he is doing.
@Shaun Reilly I did not make it sound easy did I ? :-)
But if your starting with Public Notices this maybe one step less. Is there a better way? I am open if your sharing.
Hey Paul, no you did not make it sound easy. :)
What is annoying is that the court system webpage there LOOKS like it is really powerful, but then there is just no information. When you look at it you think you can drill stuff down really far and that there will be all sorts of contact information. Then in reality they don't even say what town people are it!
But if it was easy everyone would be doing it right?
Originally posted by Shaun Reilly:
Originally posted by Justin Silverio:
- Select Probate & Family Court
- Select Essex County
- Select Case Type
- Enter Date of 1/1/13 - today and Andover as the town
- Result - no matches found
Am I doing something wrong?
Do the exact same thing but select all towns and you will get results.
Unfortunaetly I think you are getting every result in the state (I might be wrong but I'm not convinced it was even sorting by county, but I might be wrong on that).
After sifting through numerous records the County search seems to work.
I do use a narrower date range to limit the number of records.
My disclaimer is that I have not been researching probate very long and I was searching for a way to do it from"home" and this is what I have come up with. I am always open to refining my methods.
Originally posted by Shaun Reilly:
Originally posted by Paul Sorgi:
Originally posted by Shaun Reilly:
Originally posted by Paul Sorgi:
http://masscourts.org/;jsessionid=442AF118736C9532F78BB901893B2774?x=kH2zzLWJdlwOybL*9oqwUVzfKn76IV1rlYKZ*N5MRZrc8zaTo5gbctBEgxiOPRQP
FYI Justin don't get excited about this. It sucks! It LOOKS like you should be able to search all the cases in a time period in any town and it will have lots of information.
Since the town isn't even something they list in the record that filter doesn't work, doesn't even seem to filter by county (Even though you chose which counties court to look at) and no information on the contact for anyone even though there are fields for it (Other than some attorneys)
Pretty much it is only useful in that you can find the name of the deceased and know they are in the process before looking for the Obit. Which is basically what Paul said he is doing.
@Shaun Reilly I did not make it sound easy did I ? :-)
But if your starting with Public Notices this maybe one step less. Is there a better way? I am open if your sharing.
Hey Paul, no you did not make it sound easy. :)
What is annoying is that the court system webpage there LOOKS like it is really powerful, but then there is just no information. When you look at it you think you can drill stuff down really far and that there will be all sorts of contact information. Then in reality they don't even say what town people are it!
But if it was easy everyone would be doing it right?
Well it is a Government website did you really expect it to work? :-)
Originally posted by Paul Sorgi:
After sifting through numerous records the County search seems to work.
I do use a narrower date range to limit the number of records.
My disclaimer is that I have not been researching probate very long and I was searching for a way to do it from"home" and this is what I have come up with. I am always open to refining my methods.
Yeah it is better than nothing if you are looking for a way to be able to do the work at night or on the weekends.
Good to know that at least the County part works!
Maybe I should start targeting Dukes County to keep the numbers low. :)
Totally off topic but this reminded me of a funny segment I heard on the radio the other day. They were talking about all the issues with the ObamaCare website and how we all need to give him a break since everyone's first website has problems.
They then were saying how the poor guy was probably up in the middle of the night trying to install a twitter widget on it.
Regardless of political offiliation or thoughts on that program I thought it was pretty funny and had this image of the President cursing out his laptop at 1AM because he can't get it to let him Like the page on FaceBook. :)
Originally posted by Justin Silverio:
It is actually a little scary how fast you can rack them up when you spend way too much time on here. :)
That @Shaun Reilly
- He really does talk a lot doesn't he???
and @Shaun Reilly was concerned about spending to much time researching probate leads Congrats on the big 500!
Hi there,
I am just getting started in the probate ring of real estate. I called the County Office in my county here in SC. I was transferred to three different people, then finally on to the probate court office and they told me there was no such list as a probate list.
Did I word something wrong? Is this possible or am I just not talking to the right person? Anyone else run into this?
Thank you for any help!
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Tony Gatto - Don't forget to think like a court clerk.
They are not employed to provide "leads" or "lists" to real estate marketers. They are employed to be custodians of important public court records. Period.
Since what you desire is to create a list of people who are in charge of open probate cases, or perhaps probates that have settled and real estate distributed to heirs or beneficiaries, ask how you can access information concerning the persons involved in these cases. It may be online, or limited info may be online, however it is most certainly offline and the physical files archived at or near the courthouse.
Court clerks don't typically provide lists. That's your job to compile or find someone to do for you. Also, while thinking like a court clerk, rumor has it that most all like chocolate. Fortunes have been made using this widely known --but little used -- technique.