Using Probate Data for Power Marketing and Driving for Dollars

In this episode, Probate Mastery’s parent company Magnum Opus Project announces new course offerings, plus a free webinar on Driving For Dollars hosted by David Pannell. Bill and David dive right into probate real estate Q&A.  David introduces his dealmachine driving for dollars strategy and shares his trick for marketing to leads cheap.  Bill, David, and Stephen discuss probate marketing frequency, probate mailers vs. cold calling, and how to be more effective with text message marketing for probate leads.  Bill offers great insight on how to find accurate probate leads and find a probate list provider that best suits your real estate business.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

1) EARN has launched! Promotional pricing available for a limited time: Learn how to stop relying on lead lists and earn attorney referrals now

2) FREE CLASS: Driving For Dollars and Deal Machine best practices with David Pannell 7/5/2022 at 6pm EST with live Q&A. Stream link

3) Probate Mastery LITE: You can now take the Probate Mastery course without all the bells and whistles with Probate Mastery LITE! Check out pricing and membership options here

Make sure you’re in our Facebook Group!

Probate Real Estate Certification Course

• Streaming Options
• Episode Segments
• Links and Resources
• Episode Transcript
• Get Certified in Probate

Podcast Episode #73 [Live Probate Coaching]

Get Certified in Probate Real Estate

Episode Segments for Driving for dollars, probate marketing, and probate data sources

Resources & Additional Links for this Probate Coaching Session:

RESOURCES:

• FREE TRAINING: Probate Fast Track
• Take Chad’s Probate Course and get Certified in Probate Real Estate
• Facebook Group: Estate Professionals Mastermind Group
• Probate Mastery Alumni Group (For students of the Probate Mastery Course): Probate Mastery Alumni Group 
• Probate and Pre-Probate list providers
• Try Propstream Free
• Book a marketing strategy consultation
• Book a coaching session with Bill Gross
• ISA and voicemail courier service for probate calling
• Try All The Leads automated Probate Leads & Marketing System
• Bill Gross’ Probate Weekly Content: ProbateWeekly.com

RECENT CONTENT:

1. Episode 71 Live Real Estate Coaching: Cold calling pre-probate vs. probate leads, DNC numbers, and role play (probatemastery.com)
2. Ask The Expert with Bigger Pockets Henry Washington: Finding real estate deals in 2022 with BiggerPockets Henry Washington (probatemastery.com)
3. Probate Cold Calling Tips: Common real estate objections and example script for handling them https://youtu.be/0b4U0k0quYk

FOR THIS EPISODE:

• Register/Replay David Pannell’s Driving For Dollars class: YouTube or RSVP on Facebook
• NEW COURSE: Learn how to EARN real estate referrals from Estate Attorneys, without buying leads or managing expensive marketing campaigns! EarnAttorneyReferralsNow.com
• Probate Data Sources: Bill’s List: https://billgross.exprealty.com/resources/probate-data-sources
• Affordable resource for filing probate: ez-probate.com

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: Driving for dollars, probate marketing, and probate data sources

[00:00:00] 1) New course for networking with estate planning attorneys

Hey, I’m bill gross and I’m the LA probate expert. But today I’m hosting our probate mastery call. Chad Corbett formed probate mastery as a tool to help people real estate agents and investors alike learn probate, how to build a business, make more money and how to build wealth as an investor as well.

And to build sustainable businesses. We do this every Tuesday at 12 noon, Pacific time, 3:00 PM Eastern. It’s also on probate mastery.com. We have past episodes and snippets and good material there as well you should check out. And it’s also posted on the YouTube channel, another social media.

So hope you see it there. Oh, I see Chad. There you are Chad, how you doing man? Where you at? I’m in my new place in West Virginia. So, thanks. Uh, I’ve finally got, got this is the last probate house I purchased. Finally got it done. 

 Thank you guys for taking care of me taking care of everybody while I was out. Uh, You guys probably noticed by now, that yesterday we announced a new course that we pre-launched: EARN attorney referrals now or EARN. Excited about this cuz for the first time we’re bringing more and more community members in to produce the course.

 This is being co-produced with some of our members, some of our real estate professionals, and bill gross. You’re one of those. Lina Ara is both an attorney and a real estate brokerage professional. And then we have a panel of practicing estate attorneys with over a hundred years of combined experience.

And they’ll be co-teaching the course with us. So really excited to do something a little bit different I think the most valuable thing we could do for you guys right now shows you how to get more deals with less money and less effort. And, you know, as we taught in probate mastery, it’s a two-prong approach.

One is marketing directly to the families, but more importantly, is building a long-term pipeline of attorney referrals. So that’s really what this is about just going long-form on what we touched on in session two of probate mastery. And, as far as I can tell, this will end up being maybe 10 hours of content, including the attorney input and the attorney teaching. the idea behind earning attorney referrals now is to teach you how to quickly do the right things in the right order to get attorneys, to pay attention to you. I’ve personally coached people for years doing this, and I’m happy to say I have at least a 90% success rate with people in their first attempt.

 One of the most fun things for me in coaching has always been people coming back like, oh my God, it worked. And you guys have seen it on this call. I mean, we saw I think it was Zach that did it a couple of months ago,

So we’re gonna go deep and try to show you guys how to get, you know, more deals for less money. I’m excited to have, more than just me participating. And I think I see there’s Katt put in the chat box, the link EarnAttorneyReferralsNow.com. And there’s a prelaunch price.

but also there’s an additional feature, additional opportunity have if they sent for the prelaunch, correct? Yeah. So between now and July, between now and Thursday, you can buy the course for $250.

From there, the price will go to 300 as we finish the product. And on July 21st, we’ll have a live attorney Q and a panel. So anyone who purchases between now and July 21st will be able to show up and interact directly with the attorney panel. You have an opportunity to talk with the attorneys after you’ve taken the course, we felt like that made the most sense. So on July 21st most of the attorneys will be there. One is going to be on a fishing trip in Northern Ontario, but the rest of the attorney panel will be there to answer your questions directly.

 So the idea would be to give you 10 days to get through the course, really kind of show us what your blind spots are or what you need more of on the 21st, we can cover that and then we can come back and add whatever we need to to the course. 

So, at that point on the 21st, it’ll go to a retail price of 500, just like probate mastery. And that’ll be the price going forward. 

And I, I don’t know how everybody else feels. I think the market will shift later in this year, early, or early in the following. I think there’ll be a stalling period. It might not be a massive collapse, and prices will go to hell.

Like they didn’t know eight, but I think you’re, you’re gonna see sellers sidelined cuz they still want their perceived equity, and buyers sidelined because they think prices are gonna fall. And that’s that, that dangerous winter in the real estate market, right? 

 That’s when I built my career in probate was in one of those periods, like 2000 11, 12, 13, In the Virginia market, just nothing was moving. Days on market was like 97 days on market.

So with probate you know, that doesn’t tend to be the case. They’re more, the price to market and they want to get it done. And if we can get you connected with attorneys where you can taper off your marketing budget and ramp up your activity on building the long-term attorney pipeline of deals.

 It’s it’s timely. This course is timely considering the market cycle we’re in. And there’s a lot of other stuff I wanna talk about David. And I just, I don’t wanna let too many cats out of the bag, but we’re paying attention to the macroeconomics and the market conditions and we’ll be releasing courses accordingly.

And you know, I, I thank bill personally, but this is huge for me that Bill’s ability to. This call over and be here for you guys, cuz it gives me a chance to step back and, and create, get some of this stuff out of my head into courses. 

So thank you for being here, bill for everybody. And thank you guys, for staying engaged. Well, thanks. I appreciate the compliment and, I enjoy this. I enjoy doing this call, and just a reminder, I’m not a, I mean, I do coaching on probably mastery more like a, I think for fun.

We added me on there, but the truth is I’m a full-time real estate broker. I’m a practitioner. This is what I do. And so when I share with you my input, this is I’m just showing you what I do in my business in Los Angeles. And it’s a. In honored to be able to give back to the community by helping me get launched in my probate business three and a half years ago.

So, well, great. 

[00:05:41] 2) Building a distressed property list with Driving for Dollars

So you guys all know David Pinel. We will send an email out with the full details later, but we just scheduled an event for next Tuesday at 6:00 PM Eastern.

So July 5th at 6:00 PM. Eastern David is going to teach driving for dollars best practices kinda share, you know, the way he’s been using more modern technology to help him build his list. That’s next Tuesday at 6:00 PM, but David feels free to elaborate as much as you’d like. 

Yeah. So, just wanna be well-rounded in your list.

If you’re working your probate contacts by calling them and you’re sending selective mail, or you’re sending a mass mail, you’re gonna go on appointments and you’re gonna see other houses that are distressed in the neighborhood. And the tool we use is the deal machine. So I wanna talk about how you’re gonna just build your list and build your mailing list.

and you think about a business. You have inventory on the shelves and your inventory is gonna be these distressed properties. If you’re focusing on these, like we have the last five years, probate turned that on for us: pre-foreclosure, probate, distressed properties, everything takes about nine to 10 months, but we’ve made just a little over 200 grand from the deal machine alone as a list. So. Yeah, the results are there now. And one of my best flips of all time we got from DeaMachine. And that was in February. So I wrote out the principles that we use now that have made it successful.

I will share it with everybody next Tuesday. Dun dun dun dun done drama. then I perform my stunts too. I mean, it’s just about having a list of houses. When I think about the market when I got into real estate, I just wanted to be a luxury real estate agent, man, it would be nice if I could list that million-dollar property. If I could just… forever I had the $305,000 house. My first listing, over $300,000 in Keller, Texas on my real estate sign as a transparent house in the background to remind me how long it took. And I think it took. Technically five years to get a listing at that price point, cuz my market hovered around 175, 200, and then I, all of a sudden get a call from the principal of Keller, Texas to list the property cuz he keeps seeing me on internet.

But go back to my point is that you need, you need lists to prospect to. If you’re buying probate leads, you’re buying pre-foreclosure leads, you’re gonna be in these neighborhoods. And if you just allow yourself to get lost for one or two hours and write down all those houses that would look like they need some work and you’re gonna focus on getting more distressed property appointments.

It’s perfect. It’s gonna, you know, it works for us. It gets us out in the market, too. 

Exactly. Well, we’re in the business of selling houses and meeting people. So we gotta meet people out of our office and sell houses. We gotta go see the house to sell. You’ll find a lot of those are probate too.

There’s a lot of overlap between driving for dollars and probate. When I first moved to Roanoke, David and I were talking about this. I would get on my motorcycle with just a notebook and a pen and the tank bag. And every time I saw a house, this was before we had apps like propstream or deal machine.

But I would just write down the address and then I would come back and do a direct mail campaign. And what I noticed through buying that and my we buy houses leads at like internet leads. The majority of them were either probate or inheritance anyways. And that’s actually what led me to target that list and that is what ultimately led me to figure out, quit thinking about yourself and, you know, craft an offer that’s valuable to them. 

There are so many houses in probate that are sitting vacant and they’ll continue to sit vacant sometimes for years. Until they meet the right person who can help them out of the probate quicksand. So it’s not a probate-specific call, but it’s certainly relevant cuz there’s a ton of overlap. A lot of those empty dilapidated houses are because someone got emotionally stuck or they’re fighting in the family or that’s just, they became overwhelmed and just quit.

They just checked out. So. In my experience, it’s, it’s a great list. And I would venture to say that at least 60% of it in my city was, are vacant houses are probate. 

Yeah. And our goal is to have 12,000 of those houses on our list. So, in July, we’re gonna send about 20,000 post or not postcards, but hand handwritten invitation cards out to some of these properties that we’ve collected.

Can we talk about why you think so small all the time and never take action. Yeah, no, yeah. You know, it’s, I, I go back and forth on mailing and it’s, it’s mainly because it’s capital and intensive, but I’ve found that these distressed properties if we just send them an invitation card But I’m trying something different this time.

And I’ll talk about it next Tuesday, but we’ll highlight it. I’m gonna invite them to send me referrals. I’m gonna not to ask them for their house that’s distressed. I’m gonna send them an invitation of $2,500 as a referral. As a realtor, I can’t pay them more than 50 bucks in Texas, but if I’m gonna buy the house, I can pay whatever I want.

So I’m gonna send them an invitation to find me a friend or family member to give me a referral. So my referral list just blossomed to 4,200 houses in the invitation-style card. And I’ll report back to you guys in September how many houses I buy. Nice. Awesome. I see a question hand up Ele from south Florida, your hands.

Go ahead and with her. Hi guys. Hey, hi guys. How are you? Great. Okay. this question goes to David. You mentioned the invitation card. What exactly do you tell them? What do you refer to about the invitation card? Is that within your program?

Yeah, it’s part of the pivot agent. So that’s what we’re gonna lean into too I think you have access to that, but the card’s real simple. It’s Hey. They have a distressed property, it’s in that estate name or that family’s name.

And all I’m asking them to do is to give me a referral to somebody that may have a similar property. If they don’t wanna sell their house, maybe they know somebody that does wanna sell the house and I’ll pay them 2,500 bucks. That’s it. Two sentences on the invitation card. That’s it don’t overthink it.

Okay. That’s one, it’s like a Twitter, 160 characters. Okay. And briefly. And the second question is about the quality of the data because I do have access to data that I can import into DealMachine. Can I do that? No, no, I would skip trace it, but then hire like skip matrix or someone or batch leads to run your data two seats, but data is only good.

In my opinion, data is only good if it’s more than five years old in that house. So I, if you have a list that is, is probably newer than seven to 10 years, I just said five years, but fewer than seven, 10 years, you probably have wrong numbers. Okay. Cause I’ll tell you, I back you up about targeting this, pre-foreclosures.

I got one listing now and I got like, you guys like you and Chad! I’m being, getting on my workout hands and going knock out their doors. And I’m been getting contacts. Nice. I mean, it’s, it’s not like you’re gonna get 12 listings a month. I’ve probably. Maybe two to three. I’m not trying to get those 10, or 12 appointments now a month.

Like I used to. If I get two to three good cash appointments, that’s gonna be, oh, that’s, that’s a lot of money if I buy the houses. It’s a lot of money. Great. El, thank you so much for the questions. Any of the questions for Dave on his program before we let him go or let him take him off of that.

No. So again, that’s July 5th. That’s next week on Tuesday, 6:00 PM. Eastern time, 3:00 PM. Pacific time. The link is in the chat box. We’ll probably be in the description if you wanna participate in that. Love to have you, David, thank you for offering that to all of, our team members. Welcome. Fantastic.

Okay. I do have, I did get one question, a couple questions off of the prob alumni group I thought were interesting.

I thought we would talk about is Ryan, are you on the call today, 

[00:13:40] 3) The truth about mailing and calling probate leads

Ryan? I don’t see one, the call. He said, what? This is a question that, that we get a lot. He said, what did the day-to-day observations say about when the probate process someone might be willing to want to start the process of selling the home?

I know that it’s likely different for many people, but I was just wondering if there might be a trend. So of course, a trend. it would be hard to Quantify cuz what, what period you talking about, but I can tell you today, one of the advantages of having the probate data is calling another is analyzing the data.

I think it makes me smarter in my market. I’m sure it’s different in different states in different counties. So, right. I’ll give you my answer in LA county, which is it’s interesting. The average property is sold two years from the initial probate filing. Another question might be, and I’ve never done this date of death to filing and the day of death to filing to sale.

And I would say that you know, just anecdotally the average is probably six months to nine months, whereas legally should be less than that. Many don’t get filed for years because somebody doesn’t know somebody doesn’t care. So I think that we, we all very hung up on being first. I think being first is great.

But I also would say being the one there when they’re ready to decide, there’s no way really to know. And so any marketing you do in probate, you have to have a long tail game as well. You can be the first, you can bombard them on day one, with the postcards and phone calls, you can show up at the door, and you can sky right over their house.

You can kidnap their children at gunpoint, but if they’re not ready to sell for two years, you, you pull that energy into something that can’t be sold. And, I would encourage you to have some sort of methodology to keep in touch with these people. So when they decide two years from now, if the bell curve, the fat part of the bell curve is gonna be a year to three years I’m sure. In, in LA, for sure it is that you’re, that you’re there for that business as well. Does anybody else have any other, any other data? Or you’ve been at this for a while, and you’ve noticed different trends. You know, that’s where the CRM comes into good playbill is it’s not, it’s average. I just closed the deal. That was six years old in my system. Mm-hmm and um, she never responded to anything that we sent her, nothing. Text messages, market reports.

But, I met her at Starbucks and she said I was the only person that always gave her accurate information on the market. And I looked at her and I said, I know I’ve been hoping you’d respond. And you haven’t. She’s like, well, I just don’t respond to people. I don’t know. And then she reached out, she reached out at 3:00 PM.

I was trying to take a nap and she reached out and said, Hey, will you call me about my two houses? I’m ready to sell. And uh, by gosh, five and a half years, man, that was probably one of the first probates lists I bought from the other company. So well, but I think what you’re saying is you turned yourself from somebody she didn’t know into somebody she felt she did know through your process, right? Yeah. Definitely. Someone she could rely on. Absolutely. Yeah. She didn’t know you, but she, she went from, she didn’t know you, but she didn’t know you, but she thought she did. Right because you created an introduction in a way that she was willing to accept.

And so again, marketing always is about people are, doing business with people they know and like, and trusting or not gonna do business with strangers. You have to make yourself somebody they know for them to work with you. So good job. Yeah, it was, it was two contacts over six years. So crazy. I have a, my best case is a $2.1 million double-end deal.

It’s an attorney referral, but the case has been litigated since 2016. So they filed probate six years ago. And I don’t, you know, looking in the details whether they wanted to sell or not decided to sell later or not. I can just tell you that nobody is still calling from there’s. Nobody who bought the data in 2016, who’s still calling them every 90 days.

Right. But, you know, I’m, I’m their person because the attorney brought me another deal. So you have to have a game plan, I think for long-term telling. So the answer Ryan, I would say to you is you both had, and, and I get the same kind of question ever asks, how do you space out the four letters you can share yours, David, what you do, but I will just say it varies every market.

There’s no science to that based on your budget. And I don’t care how many letters you send, you better have a game plan for leads to go two, three years, four years, five years, or else you’re just throwing some of that money away. David, how do you space out your mailers? Well, we Make contact with the person.

So it’s, it’s a smaller mailing list to get them on our list. Cause we want a good email. There you go. We wanna make sure the contact number’s good, but if we also know that data is good and it’s, there’s a voicemail at the end of that, the name of the person that is running the estate we’ll technically send them something every quarter, like that invitation card or a postcard.

Or a market report or every six months a text message saying, Hey, I’m still a realtor. If you need my help, just something. So it reminds ’em that we’re here. 

So yeah, as a general rule, I wouldn’t mail something to somebody that I wouldn’t, I’m not calling. I wouldn’t call somebody I’m not mailing to. It’s my strategy.

So you see spacing out for letters. You might have four initial letters if you’re gonna. You might, if you meet them, you might send everybody you know a postcard every quarter, every six months, every. But you better, again, you better have a game plan, pass four letters, because if all you’re chasing leads, you get with four letters.

You’re just leaving too much of, you know, I don’t know if you know the term mathematically, what a bell curve is. The majority of leads are gonna be again. Maybe I say it differently in LA than in other markets, but I can just tell you the average is probably two years that there’s plenty of business. One year to three years out, that if you only get, send a card a month, you’re not gonna be in the game with that person when that, when that time comes. 

Yeah, and it, and if for some reason you don’t have the capital, one of the best things that we did, in the beginning, asked them if they got our letter and we never send them a letter, we just asked them, did they get our letter?

And they say I think so, cuz they were getting 22 to 30 different letters from people, right? Even the pre-foreclosures. Did you get my letter? And that would automatically loosen up the conversation. It changes it from, I just wanna buy a house and he said they sent me something. Let me look for it. All right.

Well, if you sent, if you gimme your email, no, no. If you share, share your email, I could just share the letter I sent you. So it’s easier to find it. And then that gets you into a conversation of nice and kind. Then you trying to get something from someone. So may I send you something very powerful. May I resend it to you?

[00:20:04] 4) Probate data sources: Where to get probate lead lists online

Very nice. Outside question on the pro mastery from Khalid and he said that he’s in probate mastery. And he was listening to last week’s call. And I mentioned data from two different sources. He asked what sources I use. So I think I said this last week, but I just wanna repeat, that there are data providers that are different across the country.

There is a national couple. Some work certain regional areas. Some aren’t available outside other areas. I like, for example, probably money is available in most of the populous counties in California. Not available outside of our state, but it’s a great source.

It’s a great tool. On my website, I have a list of all the data sources I’ve experienced. And if you come across somebody that I, that I’m not aware of I would love for you to send me their information. And I would love for you if you wanna write up a Kind of a summary or a review of it so I can share information naturally.

I’d love to have a, my goal is to have a list of all the data across the country. I put in the chat box, a link to my website, and a page of probate data sources that I do have. So I would say that Chad used to work for all the leads.com and I have to, you know, plead a little bit of ignorance. I don’t know the exact relationship if any, still, but all the leads I think I would say is a high-quality data sources.

They have marketing, They do mailers and letters and such. They kind of put that package together as a done for you almost package. It’s not cheap, but their marketing material is good.

I use their trifold for example. So I think they do a good job. But there are other ones and I would say nationally foreclosures daily is a national firm. They have probate daily as their product, but foreclosures daily are the website. And another one that I would say is national. If you have a hard time finding data, is successors data.com successors S U C C E S S O R.

D a T a.com. I don’t get any kind of money from any of these companies. I’m just looking out for those of you in smaller counties, successor data would be one you look at. And they have a couple of different brand names. They use they’re a data company, and that’s just one of the brandings they have for probate. So those are the sources I use probate money dot. And I use probate daily for closures daily.com for the data I use prob money.

Cause I like to look up the cases. They have kinda pretty little reports I can send to people that I like. And then for probate daily is more the actual raw data. I can get more cases and, I do a lot of analysis with the data that I pull. But again, I’m in a big market. I’m in Los Angeles. It’s a little different than some of you in other places.

Okay. Hopefully, that handled the data question. And then before I go on, if you’ve been through probate mastery and been through Chad’s coaching and are successful if you built a business that you think other people would aspire to do something like that, we’d love to do interviews of, agents who are successful to you know, just to, you know, promote your business, promote probate mastery as well.

So if you’re interested, reach out either the chat box here to Katt. Forward to me, and we’d love to schedule an interview, and then we’ll post it on social media. If you’re not doing videos, if you way to get started with that as well. But we’re looking for anybody who’s been appropriate mastery and built a good business that you think you’d be of assistance to people who are starting on launching their business.

Cause we’ve got a lot of people who, you know, start and struggle a little bit and we wanna encourage them to keep pushing through. I think you’re gonna find the next, you know, 60, 90 days are gonna be challenging. But if you do more than you’ve done before, you’ll get through the other side and be worth more to you because it’d be less competition.

So it’s worth putting those efforts through and we wanna help people along the way. So you’ve had that success you can share with us. Okay. I know I’ve talked a lot today. Questions, the goal of this call is to be questions and answers and implementation strategies for those of you who are building your business. Who’s got a question I can help you with, or the team can help you with today.

[00:23:39] 5) Probate attorneys and JV partners in South Florida

Ele, you’ve got your hand up. I’m sorry. Didn’t didn’t yes. Thank you, bill. I don’t know who in the panel today is an investor that is interested in doing a joint venture in South Florida, Southwest Florida. So just reach out to me. So if you’re an investor interested in investing in Southwest Florida, uh, what cities are in Southwest Florida.

I have Southwest and Southeast, but right now there are two properties. One actually in Southeast. And the other one is in Southwest Florida. Cape Coral, Cape coral. Very nice. Very good. Coral Springs. And coral Springs. I used to do business in coral Springs.

I used to work in Boca Raton and Coral Springs was the factory for Burrow which was the big computer company, a big government contractor with the big mainframe computers in those days. And so, they were our best customer was Burrow Corp in Coral Springs. Good. Let’s see, Felicia I see your hand up.

Let’s get you unmuted. And how can we help? Hi, bill. How are you doing today? I am great. How are you? I’m well, thanks, Ele. Can you give me your information about your project? Can you put it in a chat box in Florida? Yeah, go ahead and, and send your information to Felicia if you would, to contact info. 

And then for you, bill, I was looking at your link on your website.

It’s very nice. And I just wanted to know, could you elaborate on like all of the little things that you have, like you have foreclosures daily, and I see all the leads, but then you have a lot of other contact sources there. Is this the information for us, or is this the information you just have on your website about the services you use?

And what type of services are they? If we wanted to do something similar in our workplace, you mean the probate data sources. Yeah. That’s only for your area, that’s only local to your area, correct? No, no, no, no. I mean, I’m trying to accumulate national. There’s a, there’s one source on there.

I think that’s only in Florida, for example, Antique Aster is only in four counties in central Florida. You know, my goal is to be the central resource for probate real estate. The United States. I’m building a national team. You know, I’d love to have, a team member in every state in every county.

So one way I do that is by offering service and being of information to other agents. So I just, as I’ve been approached by, and also I have my call, I do probate weekly.com on Thursdays, and also being on this call. I get approached by vendors. Oh, we have the great greatest data. We have this, we have.

And so I, I just share the fact they exist. If I’ve used them, I might put a brief comment, a couple of ’em interviewed on a YouTube and I’ll link to that as well. So I’m not like a magazine reviewing everybody, but I just wanna share whatever experience I do have.

I’m willing to share. And I would say the same to you if you. You know, work with any of these companies and have a negative experience or positive experience or missing a company, send me the information. I’d be glad to update, my list. But I just made it to be a resource. I get asked this question, I think every day.

And so I just said, you know, I’ll, I’ll create a page and I’ll just put ’em all in one spot and make it easy for people are interested. Thank you. Thank you. Good. Okay. Other who else has a question? My phone number is on my, is on my website. But if you wanna call or text me three one oh two one oh zero zero zero eight three one oh two one oh zero zero zero eight.

We go to my website and get information there as well. Okay. Thurman Cohen, hand up. Let’s get you unmuted. Let’s see you are unmuted. How can we help you? How are you doing today? I’m doing great. Good, good. I’m actually in New Jersey, but my brother is in Florida and he has a friend that’s going through probate and

talking with him. It seems as if the attorney for the estate doesn’t have a clue. so can anyone recommend a good probate attorney for south Florida? So let me just answer your question. I can, and then we’ll also have other referrals there, thank you, for sharing that. So the first thing I wanna say, and I think most attorneys would agree with me is you’re a real estate agent.

Yes. Okay. I’m a broker associate in the business. So I say this, I would say 90% of realtors are not competent and that’s my professional experience. Right. And, and half of ’em haven’t sold anything in a year, at least. If you just go through the MLS statistics and in the next, you know, 40% sold one or two houses and don’t know what they’re doing.

And I think the same’s true with attorneys in probate, specifically in Los Angeles county. Again, this is where I use the data. When I download the data set of probate filings, 90% of cases are filed by attorneys who’ve done one probate or less in the prior 12 months. So how good can you be if you only do one probate in 12 months, the rules change all the time.

So whatever rules were there last year are not true today. Whatever rules were pre-COVID are different today. And I see fundamental errors all the time. Now, if an attorney by definition, you’re educated and smart. I’m not knocking that, but so when you say to me, this, my experience and, and anybody else can share theirs, nice.

The customers are not happy with the Now they picked the attorney because they either Google searched him. That guy spent money on marketing, or he did a great job, their incorporation or the divorce or their DWI. They trust them. They like him or her, but they’re not a probate attorney. And probate is a very specialized business.

I equate probate to attorneys like VA lenders. You can have a great lender, but if he doesn’t do VA loans, 80% of the time, he’s no good in VA VA loans in my professional experience. So the fact you have the experience is not uncommon. It happens all the time. And so as a result of that, we wanna either have a Rolodex of good people in the area to help us or have a fall fallback position.

So I’ll give you two in Florida. One of my favorite attorneys is Al Nick Nicoletti. He’s been on this channel as a guest. He’s been, on my channel as a guest. He’s a fantastic attorney. Mention my name. He’ll give you extra special support. He’s a fun guy. He’s all over YouTube, very educational Al Nicoletti

he’s based, I think in Jacksonville with an office in Orlando, but covers statewide. He tours. He focuses on real estate, real estate investors and tours, and the state real estate investment associations. The second fallback position I would offer you is in any area, we don’t have an attorney to refer somebody. Cause I find all the time people will put into a chat into a, a group. I’m looking for an attorney in whatever Waco, Texas, and a people put names in there. And those attorneys may or may not be probate attorneys, which is a mess. It might be good. People might be smart. So I’ve used a service E Z hyphen probate.com E the letters E and Z hyphen probate.com.

I would say they’re kind of like the legal zoom of probate. That’s their specialty. They were just bought by trust and will.com, which is a company that does estate planning online. Very inexpensive. Your customers spend a lot less money, but more importantly, they’re high-volume operators. I find my customers are happier than they are with the average attorney, with the average.

Now, by the chance, I’ll send them to a better-than-average attorney. But if it’s a simple case that they’re gonna do on their own. For an extra 650, they get all the forms. They get professional advice. And I think it’s 1250 S or a concierge. If they need an attorney, they’ll, they’ll put one together at the end, but because they do a high volume, I find the customers get a better experience at the end.

Somebody also mentioned Sylvana Rosende is another attorney I think interviewed this channel and is also, whom I have no personal experience working with. Great gal. I mean, and, and, and her heart comes from the right place and we’ve had other team members who’ve worked with her as well. So you can try that.

The problem is when you refer somebody to somebody you don’t know, it’s tough, it’s a tough referral. What I try to do is send a video link and say, Hey, I, I don’t know them by sending them. And they seem to have the right kind of heart in the right kind of place, EZ-probate used, you know, I wanna say scores of.

My customers have been happy with that overall. So that’s my best recommendation. As I said, a couple of people mentioned Sylvana Rosende she’s great. She’s in Miami. Does anybody else have any other recommendations if you have any other Florida attorneys you wanna recommend to Thurman hit the chat box, you either make it public or private and feel free to share with him and we can help him.

Okay. Does it help a little bit, Thurman? It does. Thank you much. Okay. Well, thanks. Thanks for being on Steve. I see your hand up. Let’s get you unmuted and how can we help you?

[00:31:43] 6) Probate leads companies compared: How accurate is the data?

Hey, I just wanted to do a follow-up from last week. And I had a couple of questions about it. So I started making calls. Doing the leads through US probate leads is kind of interesting. They are based in Utah. But they have no Utah customers like no one is buying Utah data at the moment. And I talked to all the leads and they only.

One customer, most of our probate leads are in salt lake county, but you, you have a hundred plus filings. All the surrounding counties are anywhere from four to 14 a month is what these companies say. = I could talk a little bit about my calling experience and relate to some other cold calling things.

But the first question is how accurate would you say these lead companies saying, oh, well we only get, you know, this number. Leads a month from this county, right? Uh, I, I guess I’d like your feedback on that. So again, my only personal experience is in LA county, but I’ve used a couple of these different companies and I can tell you that I’ve taken, I subscribe to two, so I’ve downloaded both and compared, and they both miss some, you know, that’s what happens.

So, in LA we do have some online available, and I also pull the online case data and have a virtual assistant try to find and fill in the blanks. But you’re, you’re right to ask the question. I think I would approach it though differently, I would say you might not wanna be able to miss one or two.

A month isn’t an issue, but you might wanna dig deeper and go to the older ones that are not yet sold. If I was in salt lake county, I would wanna pull back a year or two of data and then obviously cross out those that are closed out and sold already. And the ones that are not find a way to go deeper with them.

That would be my approach just for what it’s worth, but my guess is you’re right. Both of ’em have used have both of ’em all sources are gonna miss a certain number of ’em for various reasons. They’re they have employees who go to the county and are inconsistent, and I’ve seen that happen over and over, you know, with the sources that I use for sure.

[00:33:40] 7) Texting probate real estate leads (Probate Marketing Ideas)

And this is what I’ll, I’ll compare to the cold calling

Seem to experience the course is people don’t pick up the phone. That’s just the the the world we live in, which is fine. I get that. So I figure, Hey, if I have, you know, two listings out of a hundred leads, that’s pretty dang good. In today’s day and age. You know, two to five is always my opinion. And I think I mentioned it in the post I made, and this is the question.

Other lead sources. I, I have a CRM text and email campaign and I’ve gotten a couple of listings just through text, cuz they just would never answer the phone. But gosh, they answered a text message. Because of the sensitivity of probate, I am a little nervous about just, you know, doing some blind texts out to them.

I didn’t know if you had any insight on that. 

I, I wouldn’t approach these any differently than I would FSBOs. So yeah, I think are just, are you, Steve L Hughes? I see you’re Steve here. Is that you? Or is that somebody else? Yeah, Steven Hughes. That’s correct. Yeah. Yeah. I would say that texting and as a former E expired listing specialist, I would not be hesitant to call people worrying because they’re on probate.

I think I, when I hear people ask the question, it just tells me they haven’t called probate leads yet, because they’re just not that different, frankly. Some of the expired somebody died and you’re caught you’re blindsided when that happens. Right. So, and in some cases, we call enough. They, they did the night before I’ve had that happen.

I mean, that just happens, right. People die. And if you just call the next day random expired. That’s part of life. And I think, you know, we wanna be good people. We wanna be sensitive and understand that that said, I, I don’t like I’ve not had S experience texting or voicemail drops. Now. I also live in LA where it’s a very competitive market.

And I think people are more comfortable kind of yelling and screaming than they are probably in salt lake city from my personal experience being in salt lake city. So, I really would be hesitant to answer the question for you, but I will say to you, that I don’t do any testing of strangers. If somebody refers me to a lead, I’ll text him, or I’ll do a voicemail drop, but I wouldn’t do that.

Or unless it was somebody that I was referred to. I knew personally that’s me and ETS in Los Angeles. And again, I think people are more polite in SA in Utah than they are in California.

I seem to have gotten good feedback. I have no interest in voicemail drops ever for a lot of different reasons. I don’t think they worked. I think people have wised up to it, but with text, I feel like it’s pretty honest. And you know, now legally you, you have to give them the opt-out where’s that does that.

If you call in text right after the call, that might be a little different. Right. I think that that’s different than just texting blindly. I think you call somebody and you don’t leave a message. You know, generally, when I cold call, I teach people to hang up before the fourth ring. And so often people wonder what the call was and if you call and then text, Hey, I was just calling and you can copy and paste the same text over and over again.

I think that’s, that’s a little different than mass texting people. I think it’s a little different, but again Be careful and have the opt-out and such. Okay. Okay. So let’s see. Renee asked, is that Renee, Renee? I wanna say my Renee is that that’s a little personal, I guess. Is that Renee K from Angeles?

[00:36:51] 8) Paul Horn’s probate training and data reviews

It’s is that my Renee? It is your Renee. Have I ever used Paul horns if I subscribe to it? Paul Horn for those in California, Paul Horn is the most prolific probate attorney in LA county. Several cases. He also did the certification class that California association realtors use for people who wanna get certified through his system.

I would say he does a great job, a better job than Chad does in terms of the actual. Law and procedures in California, but he has nothing really to help you with, as far as how to turn that into business, he doesn’t get into that come from the emotions and the idea of a vendor list and creating value for customers.

He’s just an attorney, a good one. No, in terms, of probate and will teach you the process. So I would say it’s good. Place to go to learn about the probate process from a man who’s an expert and it’s a cheap certification, but I don’t think the problem you’re gonna have at the end of it. And, and they approach me and I’ve done some marketing with him on some calls as well.

The problem is you’re gonna walk away from that saying, well, how do I get business? And when help you, if you’ve been through, you know, probably mastering, you’re doing. I think it’s a good tool to learn, and I did it that way. But that, I would say it’s a challenging as far, as he also sells data probate money.

Yeah. The data is his data and I subscribe to it. I like it, he has a neat little thing where you can find a case and there’s a nice little PDF and I use it often to send to attorneys or customers or investors or whatever. And it’s just quick, easy, and fast. And I think for it’s like nine, nine bucks for.

500 leads a month. And so the data’s good. I think he does a good job again, to go back to the question I had before, though, when I compare his data to the other source, they’re missing some of the questions they’re missing and the other sources as well. So their data in terms of the data set, I don’t think is necessarily any better, but I like his offering in the way he presents it.

And like I said, I’ve subscribed to two sources. So I don’t use them for data. I use him more to look up files and send a quick report to somebody. Okay. Thank you. My pleasure. Okay. And then who’s that James asks, how can you connect with me? And you can call me, you can reach out on my website feel free and time on bill gross at ex P on social media or my number’s (310) 210-0008.

You’re welcome to call or text me glad to reach out and help you. Okay, other questions we got about another five minutes or so, who else has a question challenge or problem in probate space? I see the hands up and I think I have one more question. So

[00:39:22] 9) Resources and books for learning your local probate process

Matthew asked questions I found interesting. He asked. What books have you read on the subject of probate real estate? This is New Hampshire. Okay. So, what I’d say is he asks a question:

what books do you have you read on probate to learn? And I’ve read a couple. I, I keep handy the probate code book in California. They sell the actual probate code the attorneys would have, and as a practitioner, I’ve bought it and I’ve read their relevant sections. To me, a lot is not relevant.

Particularly the seller real estate is great. Book looks expensive, it’s like 90 bucks or something, but I’d also urge you to Google search probate attorneys in your city, in your state, and to learn from them as well. And I go, I’ve gone into webinars. I’ve met a, it’s a great way to meet them.

And if you don’t ask them for referrals, you just go on for learning more about probate, because each state has slightly different laws and slightly D. Verbiage. If you learn the verbiage appropriate for your state, when you talk to attorneys, they’re gonna get that you’re professional and then each county has local rules.

And so you really wanna learn the local rules to be up to date on what’s done. And it’s amazing the information available. I, I encourage agents to Google search probate and then the county you’re in. So probate whatever. Chebe county hooks that county new Vernon County, New Jersey, and you’ll find your local probate court and some have minimal, but some have more extensive, you know, frequent last questions and forms.

And in LA county we had classes pre-COVID. We had classes they don’t have now. They can go to the law library across the street from the courthouse. So there’s a library re-research available for us today in the probate space. But as far as specific books, I would try to zero in on your state first.

And county second and master that material more than any national book about executives. I just think that those, that, that process is a little overrated from, for my money. 

 I think that the easiest way, the easiest way, literally going through the county, reading all the documentation, that that’s the beginning plus it’s the same thing that Chad recommended.

Yes. That helped us a lot. Exactly. That there’s no shortcut to that, but if you do that, you’ll learn so much that that’s what I start. That’s what launched my business going to court and then mastering what was available for free on the court. Okay. I don’t see other questions. Again, you’re welcome to go to the probate mastery alumni group on Facebook and post any questions there.

And I, I look at those regularly and either try to answer ’em there or save them if they’re really good for this call. So that’s a great tool for you as well. You can reach out to me. I’m in, I’m in the probate master alumni group regularly, but if you wanna call me directly, you have my phone number or website.

I’d love to help if I can. Also just a heads up. Well, let me go. Chad’s launched the earn pro program on how to earn referrals, and attorneys, and you have special pre-launch prices. Good for another day or two. Uh, I’m part of that program. I’m recording on July 6th. I’ll promote it more next week on July 6th, the week from Wednesday.

My segment in that group is how to network at the courts. And then Dave Pinel talked about driving for dollars, and how to do that effectively.

And that call is next Wednesday, but again, all this available and the probate mastery, alumni group, hope to see you guys there. And just a reminder, I’m bill gross. I host this probate mastery call every Tuesday at 12. noon pacific time 3:00 PM Eastern time and love to help you guys be more successful in your probably business.

If I can help in any way. Let me know. Thank you, guys. Thank you so much and have a great week.

Learn more about probate real estate certification and how to find probate real estate opportunities through Probate Mastery



About the Author