Finding Sellers with Messy Titles in Real Estate Wholesaling

[Joshua Alcantara]

I’m looking to move out of the current "red ocean" of real estate wholesaling and focus on helping sellers with problematic titles, such as liens, divorce issues, probate, quitclaim deeds, etc.

All my previous high-value assignment fees came from working with sellers who inherited properties without a proper deed. In those cases, the title company guided us on the necessary steps to resolve the title issues, and we did whatever was required to close the deal. However, I haven’t closed on those types of deals in a while. I’m not focused on volume, but rather on maximizing the assignment fee per deal, compared to doing multiple smaller deals to achieve the same result.

My question is: Where can I find sellers with messy titles? I’m in the Greater Seattle area—would paid ads work for this niche?

[Joel Bongco]

Quote from @Joshua Alcantara:

I’m looking to move out of the current "red ocean" of real estate wholesaling and focus on helping sellers with problematic titles, such as liens, divorce issues, probate, quitclaim deeds, etc.

All my previous high-value assignment fees came from working with sellers who inherited properties without a proper deed. In those cases, the title company guided us on the necessary steps to resolve the title issues, and we did whatever was required to close the deal. However, I haven’t closed on those types of deals in a while. I’m not focused on volume, but rather on maximizing the assignment fee per deal, compared to doing multiple smaller deals to achieve the same result.

My question is: Where can I find sellers with messy titles? I’m in the Greater Seattle area—would paid ads work for this niche?

Aloha Joshua,  I deal with clouded/messy titles often and it's not my first choice as its froth with a lot of time, costs and risks.  The patterns that I often see are the following  1. Pre-foreclosure - homeowners are desperate to avoid foreclosure and they quitclaim deed the title to some XYZ organization , person, or to a lawyer that specializes in foreclosure defense. Regrettably the end up with a greater mess.  2. Probate - is good - however the more heirs the greater the possibility of a contested probate.  There is typically one or more heir that feel he or she deserves more then all the other heirs because the took care of auntie or uncle and  hires an attorney to contest the probate.  Thus more time, money and risk.  3.  Divorce - its easier if the house is in the divorce decree otherwise you need to play mediator between parties to come to an agreement.  Clouded titles are often uninsurable from a title insurance perspective.  To clear it, you often have to do an expungement or a quiet title action via a lawyer which gets expensive quickly.   If you are looking for messy titles -  just following the Notice of Defaults, Affidavit of Death, Pre-Probate,  Divorce Decrees  on PropertyRadar or Propstream.