Making cash offers fast, solving problems with probate real estate deals, and wholesaling ethics

Welcome everybody to the weekly probate mastery group coaching call. Didn’t have a theme prepared for today, so we’ll just jump right in. How can we serve you long time? No, see, I’m glad to see you on the call again. I just have a little bit of a scenario to put forth to everyone, another tenant issue in California, but this one’s unique.
I just had my first interview as a listing agent with the PR. He’s interviewing another agent. Who’s been in the business 22 years. He does have a tenant who’s there. That really technically is a tenant by default. She’s been there 44 years. The decedent was a friend of hers, a sister friend, and basically gave her a verbal to say, you’re welcome to stay here.
And there was no lease agreement and of course no rent. So this woman now believes this is my home. This, you know, that’s her mindset, it’s her house. And she wants to buy it, but she is not going anywhere. She wants to stay. It’s in the city of LA there’s rent stabilization, ordinance rules.
So various things around tenant buyouts and essentially the tenant buyout under the rent stabilization ordinance. They have to put on there that even if they signed the agreement, they can back out of it within 30 days, they don’t have to sign the agreement. They have to have just cause evictions, but this guy, she doesn’t pay rent.
So is, does RSO apply? The tenant protection act of 2019 for California essentially says it has to be a just cause eviction, which there are 14 causes for eviction and selling is not one with an exception. But with that said it excludes duplexes if the owner occupied the property during the period of tenancy, which technically is true of the decedent.
So my question is, it’s almost kind of like it’s one or the other. And both I and one of my attorneys recommended cash for keys. I told him to discuss it with his attorney to see if she should do cash for keys. But the question becomes is she protected RSO? And ultimately, I think it’s going to end up going to eviction.
And so he’s really just frustrated because of the cash price where he would net about 300,000 from an investor. And if he did some renovations and, had her outta there was able to get it vacant and did renovations he’d net an extra $250,000. So it’s just a scenario of what I’m dealing with right now.
I presented a great service option. Everything that I put down, I learned from probate mastery. I learned from all my back, he’s interviewing somebody else, but I just want your thoughts. Anyone’s thoughts on how to provide additional value to him, to secure the listing, but also. You know, what are we looking at in terms of what should we do, I want to go back to the beginning and ask, was she there with hostility, meaning, but a legal term.
Has anyone ever asked her not to live in the home or to vacate the home in those 44 years? No. Okay. Because if they had, she could argue adverse possession and with 20 years of hostile occupancy, she could win that case. So just to make sure that that’s the case, that she can’t prove that she was knowingly there after being asked to leave because then she could probably win an adverse possession case against the seller and actually.
I appreciate that. I looked into that in the state of California, the only way to win an adverse possession if you’ve been in possession of the property for more than a year is if you have paid taxes on the property directly to the assessor, which she has not. So here it’s just hostile use for more than 20 years.
When the seller knew the hostile use, if they’re there for 20 years and they can apply for adverse possession or they can, you know, take the asset. So I’m glad that’s off the table.

Do you have contact with the tenant? So I have not yet.
It’s a five-bedroom, two-bath home, beautiful property. She lives upstairs. The nephew lives downstairs. The nephew is the petitioner and both he and this woman were the ones who were caring for the decedent until she passed. So he effectively moved in there and he said he doesn’t even talk to her, even though she lives upstairs.
But I told him that I can, on his behalf, once he hires me, I can certainly represent him in his stead to talk with her, the tenant, and or the tenants. You’re thinking in the right direction, cash for keys is probably the best way to do this, but what I would want to know before I made her an offer is where can she move to, can she afford rent if she stays there?
does she have an income? I don’t know if you know the answer to any of these questions, but these are the answers I would want before I made her a proposal because it’s just to say she does have a fixed income. You may find a landlord buyer that would want to buy that if she will sign a lease.
If she has no income, the way of qualifying. Nowhere to go, then it’s more challenging. Cash for keys doesn’t mean much when you don’t have anywhere to take your stuff, right? And in that case, I usually go to the housing authority and I help them get a HUD voucher. The question was, how can you provide more value to him?
One thing you said is once you have a signed agreement, you’ll start communication with her. I would go ahead and start communication now, and that’ll get that when you have the listing. But is there something in California law that I’m not aware of that won’t allow you to communicate with a tenant, even though you don’t have an agency relationship with the petitioner?
No, that’s not a problem. It’s more of protecting my time, but I hear what you’re saying.
It’s providing value to get the listing. I will add this though, Chad, and to everyone listening. So I do know a lot because I did what Chad coaches in the course, and had some substantive conversations with this guy over the last three weeks. this woman, she’s a teacher, she’s a substitute teacher.
She works during the day. She has a family. That’s willing to give her the money to buy the house. She has already identified a realtor. She wants to work with to buy it. And I asked him and one of my attorneys even said, why doesn’t he just sell it to her? Wait a minute, you’re talking about the tenant, right?
Yeah. And, and I’m not sure why he doesn’t want to just sell it to her. Cause that would be the easiest solution. But I think he’s thinking that she doesn’t want to pay full price. She even said I’ll pay off the, it was under a reverse mortgage. So of course, it resulted in the death default foreclosure response. She bypassed him, went to his brother, and said, I’ll give him a loan and he, I can be the lender and he can just pay me the note. And of course, I know what she was trying to do. She was trying to get ahold of the property so that he couldn’t sell it to anybody else.
Where does that reverse mortgage foreclosure proceeding stand? The attorney stopped it. So you’ve got an injunction? Yeah, the probate attorney took care of it. Yeah. So they’re not going to, they aren’t going to do anything for another year just about, yeah. So that’s, this it’s a complicated situation, but I think you’re right.
I think providing more value, which is my goal is to say, Hey, I’m willing to go ahead and have a conversation with her on your behalf and present these options. However, given that we have a question mark, as to the competing laws of the city of LA RSO, is she under that rent stabilization ordinance?
Do we have to give her a tenant buyout or is it under the exclusion of the TPA act? Which says there is no just cause for this property, he can just do cash for keys offer. The problem is given her disposition of this as my home, after 44 years, which I get it 44 years. Yeah. You’re thinking at your home, most likely she’s going to refuse either and he’s going to have to move towards unlawful detainer and eviction, which is going to take a lot longer to handle. Yeah. So let’s
step one. I want you to focus more on her being the buyer. Let’s see if we can get her to be the buyer. So if she’s capitalized and there’s a way to do that, can, can she afford it? Does that person have proof of funds? And we can trust that they are the lender and this can close. If not, can the deed be split?
Can the property be condominiumized and can you carve off what she can afford and then sell the other half like you can sell both sides, but sell the condominium that she would live into her you could. Use that financing she has lined up and then sell what’s remaining.
You can do the construction work. And sell what’s remaining on the open market as another condominium. That’s an option. Um, May not be feasible, may not be possible, but if I had a holdover tenant and I knew I was going to have a hell of a fight on my hands, and I knew I could condominiumize it I would split the deed, I would renovate the, my part of it then you know, sell it as a turnkey rental with one unit that needs turned.
is it duplex on city records already? You know, it’s a duplex on record. It’s a cure. There is no second unit. It’s all 1, home. Why it’s duplex on the record tells me that they may have done an addition at some point, because there is a den in the back.
I don’t know how it got zoned to duplex, but at some point it was, but it no longer is in terms of. Are there two meters? There, I think there are two meters. As a matter of fact, I have it on video. I did my whole video walkthrough today. So yeah, I believe there are two meters. So depending on the code and I know California is moving back toward allowing duplex and condominium visitation to create, you know, more affordable housing.
So the timing might be right for something like that. I would call the code office and say, Hey, we’ve got a, you know, we’ve got a situation where there was a death. We don’t want to make, an existing tenant homeless, but she would like to buy it. But only part of it. Will you guys work with the seller and see what you can learn there?
It’s probably half an hour of talking to code enforcement to see if it’s, even if that’s even possible. But pretty much guarantee the other agent’s not going to bring that to the table as one of the options. So even if it takes up some of your time, it’s going to impress the seller. He’ll see how proactive you’re being and that you’re, you’ve turned over every stone.
Yeah. I think he already senses that as well. I mean, I gave him a laundry list of things I can do in a beautiful presentation that I sent over to him and did a wonderful CMA of current values to give him an understanding of the different options, cash, buy hold, or, make renovations himself.
But I agree. I think there could be some additional level there around this. I don’t know that that would necessarily work. One thing that’s happening here in California, is a tenant in common. Homes. So it’s something similar to what you’re describing, where you have a single lot, and you have either a structure that has a shared wall, or they are two separate structures, and yet it’s currently one APN and they’re able to sell it as a tic with, with only certain TSC lenders, but they’re able to do that.
And that might be an option that I can get into with zoning. So thank you for that suggestion. You know, haven’t thought of that. I would have the conversation with the code enforcement to ask for permission, or if you already have the permission to go introduce yourself to her and say, listen, you know, our goal here is to meet your goals.
It’s my understanding your goal is to stay in the home and you actually would like to purchase it. Is that right? Great. Could I come in, we’ll chat about that and build a build rapport with her. Even if you need to make the petitioner, the bad cop, get his permission, to stay in rapport, just learn as much as you can find out, you know, does she have family?
Does she have alternative living? And if not, how much money would she need to get that? What’s her income look like? Can she can get proof of funds from this lender but feel her out. And then I think you can, you can go back to him and really impress him with, you know, say, Hey, here’s based on my due diligence.
Here are the four options that we have. Well, Let’s walk through these. The option of, you know, the eviction probably going to take months. It may even hold you up long enough that you run back into the reverse mortgage foreclosure proceeding. And the holding cost is something he has to consider.
So he can look at it as I’m going to lose X. If I sell to a cash buyer and can’t regain possession and do the work and all this, but what if you spend the better part of the year, all of the year and you run right back into that foreclosure and the injunction won’t be extended. What risk does he have there?
Yeah, I think, I think I completely hear what you’re saying. He saw in these three estimated net sheets, I gave him that the cash buyer would just not make sense. It would be a waste of money. It would be a loss of money. He also understood that the timing to deal with the unlawful detainer and eviction.
It could be six months to a year. And that not only would that cost money through doing the court process and the attorney’s fees but also because of the reverse mortgage, because if the default- if the one year of the injunction ends, which is going to be in about September or so he’s going to have to refinance the house and start paying a mortgage on it.
And I know he doesn’t want to have to do that. He wants to buy his own house.

So I, and I asked him, why don’t you want her to buy it? And he said that apparently, she’s an insurance broker. And a few years ago, maybe a little bit sooner, five years, she wrote up an insurance policy for a hundred thousand dollars for the decedent.
And apparently, the decedent signed it and she filed a claim and she was the sole beneficiary on the insurance policy. When he. Monies to do some improvement. He got money from another source for something unrelated, did some things like bought some washer, dryers then did some other things to the house and he thought, oh, I can get this money reimbursed to me when I filed the insurance claim for the life insurance.
And when he found out he wasn’t the beneficiary and she was the sole beneficiary, he thought it was, she did something fishy.
who pays the insurance premium. while the decedent was living? That I don’t know. It sounded like she paid for it. She’s just being savvy. And this is, there’s a whole underground world where that is legal and companies do it to their employees. Walmart has been one of those companies in the past.
So you can, as long as you get a signature from the living person, the insured, it’s perfectly legal to buy life insurance on anyone. As long as you pay the premium, you’re the beneficiary. she didn’t necessarily do anything wrong. She may just be savvy. He doesn’t think his aunt would have ever signed to do that.
He questions it for his own. It could be in his benefit because when she receives a hundred thousand dollars death benefit, she’s capitalized. So let’s, let’s use that as a down payment. And I have her friend, her friend finance, the balance and let’s sell or the place. That’s what I told him, but I think he’s just kind of, it’s more of a, to him.
I think it’s an ethical thing or a moral thing I’m thinking. But it sounds like all of the facts aren’t known, like if they sat down and had a cup of coffee and she’s Hey, you know, death in taxes, everything certain, how about I’ll write a policy against you and I’ll write a policy against me and you know, you can be the beneficiary of mine.
I’ll be the beneficiary of yours. You never know, let’s figure out what that real story was. I’ve, I’ve seen. Developments cross-collateralized off of these types of insurance packages, where you go out and say, listen, you know, you’re older. And if I can buy a million-dollar insurance premium or you know, whole life policy for you, I’ll go ahead and advance you half a million right now and I’ll pay the premium.
So while you’re alive, you’re going to have half a million. And a lot of people do those deals. So those are then rolled up in the packages they’re sold institutionally and they’re cross-collateralized to do real estate development. This is how skyscrapers get built. This is how, you know, these happened on the commercial side.
So just try to convince him to have an open mind. She may not have had any malicious intent and she may have been ethical and, and fully disclosed. Let’s not run off a capitalize potential buyer for sure. Right. I think that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to ask him if he’s comfortable with me having a conversation with her to get more information on the story to the background, and then to plant that seed again, that it sounds like she may be his best buyer and to just kind of bypass a lot of challenges.
So thank you. I know other people have questions and things, so thank you for giving me so much time today. Yeah, no, just to close the loop on that. I would say option and the order of what I think is best for everybody. Option one. She’s the buyer option two cash buyer and has him move on.

Michael Lund, you’re up next. Hi. How are you? I’m well, how are you today? So, um, I’ve been taking to heart, some of the things that uh, I’ve been learning and last night I completed the first portion of my journey towards getting a real estate license I’m on my way Lund It’s the way that you present, Chad, different options to do the seller in probate. So you can offer to the market the house for top dollar, There’s also an offer where within a week I can guarantee I will have this sold for you. And then there’s also the cash offer. I guess the question that I had, and this might be just the, in the line of ethics for me. So if, if someone says, I want to market the house for top dollar, I want to list it and put it on the market.
And the listing fails and they’re under the gun. They’re under time duress, at that point is it all right for me as their agent to buy the house at a deep discount, is there an ethics conflict there? Does that make sense? I don’t think it does. So the way I usually deal with that, we know that if a home passes 90 days on the market, there’s something like a 98% likelihood that listing will expire without a buyer in a typical market.
Even in this market, like with people, you know, stacking offers 30 deep looks at the inventory. Once it passes a point if it makes it that far, it stays. So there, there still homes with, you know, three, 400 days on market, even though most are selling in six or seven in the Roanoke market. So statistically, the likelihood of selling outside of, you know, a 90 day listing it’s, it’s, it’s slim to none until it’s, you know, relisted.
The way I would handle that is I would say, you know, listen, we’ve, we’ve got the first 90 days are critical. We’re gonna do our best. We’re gonna, you know, we’ll do our best marketing. We’ll have the best photography. If it wouldn’t sell, I would like to go ahead and make you an offer and we’ll keep that in the top desk drawer.
So, you know, you always have that to fall back on. If at any time during this process, you would like to switch our relationship from the seller to agent, to the seller, to the buyer. Then we will, we will sign this, you know, listing cancellation form. And, you know, you can have that full disclosure that that list listing is being canceled because the seller has decided to sell to an agent.
Just disclose, disclose, disclose early often. But in the very beginning, I, I say, you know, listen, we have a cash offer in our top desk drawer if we ever need it. And if I’m personally interested in buying the house, I’ll say that’s mine. The other thing you can do is actually. Pay to put an option on the property.
And you can always release your option. So you, as with your investor hat has an option for 1, 2, 3 main street, which isn’t an encumbrance. You don’t have to record it though. You and the seller are aware of it, but you’re, you’re expressing your intent from the outset that you have a, a $1 option and you have, you know, 90 days to exercise that or whatever that is.
And then you can proceed with a separate listing agreement. If you decide to exercise your option, I would still recommend you cancel the listing agreement. You need, to sever that agency relationship and create a clear delineation of what, the role you’re acting. And so that’s probably the way I would present it.
If I, if I thought I were in that position.

Do you think it’s likely that they will come to that conclusion and you’ll buy the asset? This is looking forward. So it’s, it’s something that I’ve been struggling with for a while is I’m coming at it from, from a perspective of, I had initially wanted to just go into wholesaling and I was just a little uncomfortable with the idea of going to a grieving family and just saying, give me your house for cheap.
So I just, before we go forward, I want to interject there and I want you to correct your mindset on that. Yeah. I just bought a house. That’s probably a 1 65, 1 75 replacement cost. I paid $25,000. before we went to contract, we went to hugging and she cried and thanked me for buying the house. Yeah, she was so mentally done with it because her siblings got ugly.
The house sat vacant for six years and they were just disgusted with it. And for, I built the very first fence that I ever built when I started my fencing company was on this property, her dad and I were friends. He was a U.S. Marshall. I was training for the FBI at the time. And she was honored to sell the house to me.
And I’ve had many others like this, none that were quite that personal, but I have had people thank me for paying for one house. I sold it for 110,000. I paid 13. And like he, he didn’t bat an eye. He said, oh my God, I am I so glad I come across the street and talk to you today. So just challenging you to don’t.
Don’t let a limiting mindset keep you from opportunity because there are families out there who don’t give a damn about equity. They care more about getting this behind them as fast as possible because they’ve got a Disney vacation coming up and money doesn’t have as much value to people who already have a lot of money.
Right. So just don’t let your limiting beliefs blind you from opportunity or keep you like, have you shy away from, from using that option? don’t be timid about it. Cause eventually you’ll have these stories like you’ll have 10, 15 cents on the dollar real estate stories. And my friends laugh at me.
They’re like, how in the hell do you even do this? I’m like, I just tell them the truth. And I, and I told this couple. I said, you know, if, if you list this with one of my friends, I let my West Virginia license go. But I said, if you list it, you can probably get a hundred thousand people were paying crazy prices, someone across the street and paid 40,000 for an acre with a 1964 trailer, no electric, no septic no well.
And I told her that I told her what the comp was and it was three weeks old. She sold it to me for 25 and they just called me two days ago to check in on me because they heard dad died. And she just made a friendly call to see how I’m doing. We didn’t even talk about the house. , there can be, you know, really good people and bad situations or bad mindsets, just dump houses.
So don’t, don’t feel like a monster if you step up and, and take advantage of one of those opportunities, again, just be transparent, disclose everything, and celebrate like hell when you get them. All right.
I think that’s great. Thank you. Okay. And I didn’t take them out at the time to properly congratulate you, but good on you for taking the action step and moving toward getting your license, even as an investor, even if that’s your primary role, it will just give you more credibility and more opportunities to monetize the marketing campaign you’re already paying for.
So it’s a job taking action on that. Welcome to the club. Nina. So, Daniel, Mourey is over on Facebook today. He’s not in here. I don’t think. Katt had posted a looking look in the chat. He suggested fractional ownership, very similar to what we were discussing. So you might want to connect with Daniel, he’s close to you, and take a look.
Yeah, he’s a good guy to know.

And now Dan Connolly, Hi there, thanks for, thank you I do primarily hard money here in Florida, and I met you guys a long time ago at a trade show and I’ve been down here and I’ve been kind of following along, but not doing, being active with probate business.
Anyway, I had a lady call and two weeks ago, not looking for hard money, just not sure what to do. I got a two-bedroom, two-bath townhouse in Lakewood, Lakewood ranch, part of Tampa. And I ran comps on it with paint and cleaning the rug. It’s 3, 10, 3, 15. Dad died in February of 2020.
There’s the lady that called her brother and a sister, brother doesn’t want anything to do with it. Sister has a bad mindset and a lady that called is only looking for 10 grand or so because she took her dad before he went into hospice. There’s a first, she, the personal representative, the executor, that’s the thing with none of that’s been done.
So, all she wants is 10 grand. She just wants to get rid of it. So I. I was waiting on this meeting. so I ran her down to our probate guy and he said, he’d run it through probate. But because he said something like, because it’s been on February, it’ll be two years. It’s like an automatic thing where the property will get put into the three heirs’ names.
And then the two others can sign a quitclaim deed. So then this lady that I’m dealing with can just handle it going forward. And she just called me this morning and him, we forget everything because the sister won’t play ball. She won’t sign anything. She doesn’t want to know anything. She doesn’t care about anything and don’t call me back.
I know there’s a first lien for about 200 and HOA for about five. So there’s about a hundred grand in equity. So then I thought okay, if I can’t do it like this through probate and, and buy it like that, maybe I could buy the note and come around the back door. And so I’m not real sure on how to work, how to buy the note.
I have an investor that I shared this with. That’s one of our lenders here and he’s ready to use teed up and ready to go. As far as buying the note, do you know who the lienholder is? I think it’s Bank of America. Good luck. That’s where it’s incredibly hard to communicate with big banks you know, they’ve sold that note four times over through packages of mortgage-backed security.
So it’s, it’s really difficult to unravel to get a partial release on one little note, it’s hard to get them to pay attention. If it was a community bank and it was portfolio paper, that’s easy. But if it’s B of a, they’re impossible to deal with, you can chase your tail on. I’m not sure about that though.
Hopefully, it’s a community bank and hopefully, it wasn’t sold on the secondary market. USA trust national association.
Yeah. So still it’s a big bank probably sold on the secondary market. It’s along. What I would say to do first is you and you like, you did the right thing, putting, putting them in the car and taking them to petition for probate is the first thing I would have done. The next thing I would do is try to re-establish communication and become an intermediary for the group.
And just like I told Nina, get permission to play good cop, bad cop, headed your way. It works well. It’s yeah, I can see why you don’t want to talk to her. She is like our, him, he’s a jerk. And just let him know that you may be throwing him under the bus to mend fences. People get very emotional and, and these situations, but if they’ve already said we don’t care.
The last-ditch effort here would be to offer them a chunk of the equity. And say, you know what, listen, if you guys like when you three get on deed, let’s roll this into a land trust with me as, as a fourth beneficiary. And my attorney as the trustee, and we’ll do this project together, we’ll do the paint and carpet and we’ll split the hundred grand equally.
I don’t give a damn what you guys do with yours. Or potentially there’s a JV opportunity here if they can’t get out of the way. There’s a possibility that there might be some sort of a way to tempt them, with equity.
And it’s better than letting the deal go. You know, you don’t want to split your pot, but if it’s that simple, it’s, if it’s a quick turn like that, you know, 25 grand for a cosmetic rehab, wouldn’t be such a bad deal. But ideally, like your, your best possible outcome here would be, make contact with the ones who have stopped communicating.
Make them feel heard, understand what is important to them. Some things are important. Money’s not. Maybe it’s just winning over, over that, that other person. And maybe you can find a way to give them there, their social win without having to, you know, blow the deal. But that’s where I would start first or both.
There’s no way of, there’s no way of, I guess when the probate runs when it runs through or gets submitted to the court, because there was no will or anything, and this is the only thing there’s no. Are they willing to release themselves from the estate? The brother is, but the sister doesn’t want to be talked to about anything, about nothing.
So talked to by whom and she shut down on. Right, right. And that’s my point. You may be the one that can start the conversation with her. If you can get the two to release their position from the estate, then you’re done. The household will, when title transfers.
It will go from the estate to the one member who didn’t release their claim to it. And then you, and he can sign a purchase agreement and move forward. So see if you can establish communication with her, if she’s come that, that checked out, just say, you know what, you can put all of this responsibility on your brother.
All you have to do is as, you know, sign a release and he’s the fiduciary, it’s all his problem. None of it’s your problem. You can look away from this. If that’s what she wants is just to be done with that forever. However, release the whole position from the estate. And if the other is already willing to do that, then you’re done, right?
This lady is pretty, seems pretty thick headed and I don’t know, I don’t I’m going to say I, I don’t even know who I met that there are two sisters and a brother, the one sister that’s playing ball that called me she’s sweet as pie. And all she wants is 10 grand. Cause she stuck with dad all the way through and took care of them.
Brother doesn’t want anything. And the sister is just being difficult. And I found out this morning that she’s the youngest of the three and she wasn’t a part of the decision-making and lay him and dad’s final affairs. So she feels picked over and I’m not a part of it, and so she didn’t want to have anything to do about anything and doesn’t care if the house there was the foreclosure and nobody gets anything.
So that’s when I thought maybe I can go around and buy the note. You can try it. With those big banks. It’s going to be a goose chase for sure. If I wouldn’t, I contact them. I’m going to have to call the attorney’s office to get a payoff. So why wouldn’t I approach them about buying the note?
The law firm that represents the first lien holder, I would call them for a payoff if I were if we were paying this off, right. Uh, They’re unlikely to give it to you. You’d need the authorization to release from the petitioner. Now what I’m saying is in a regular sort of refi, I’m going to be calling the foreclosing lenders attorney to get a payoff.
Yeah. So wouldn’t, I also talk to them about buying the. You can, you’re going to talk to a servicing department. That’s probably in India. And then that servicing department is going to transfer you to some other department. They don’t know if it’s the right one or not. I’ve played this game. That’s why I’m cautioning you.
It’s a goose chase. Like in what you oftentimes will find. If you can get to a decision-maker, like an asset manager, they’re like, listen, we’ve sold that as three packages on the secondary market, we don’t even own it. We’re just servicing it. And they sold it on to another big institutional buyer who packaged it in a bigger package and sold it to another.
And in the fine print of those big packages of MBS, no partial releases are allowed or off sometimes. So it’s, it’s not as simple as, Hey, I’ve got money. I’ll buy that note. Even if it’s 90, even if it’s a hundred cents on the, you know, a hundred percent it’s costing them administratively, it costs them a ton of money to do it.
So they’re like the hell with it. It’s not worth it. Let it ride. So that’s why it’s difficult because they get sold multiple times in the secondary market. I’m not saying don’t try it. Try it. But I doubt that it’s going to be the way that, that you end up putting this on the. And I’m trying to rack my brain and think she’s if that person, like for her winning is her ego is gaining control through negative behavior.
So she wants to show them ha watch. I got leveraged. Who’s the baby in the family. Now you sons of And that’s her mindset. So what can we do for her? What, like what kind of a win can we produce for her? It’s probably a paycheck, you know, you could probably say, you know, listen, your sister wants 10,000, your brother doesn’t want anything.
tell me where you are. Like, do you need to replace your car? I go, is there anything that, that you know, that you want, or you want for? And see if you can make that, make her an offer, just to sign over her part of the estate and then, you know, submit that, if there’s cash in the estate, you can pay her cash.
Otherwise, you could, you know, she could sign something that says, you know, she’s only due X amount, not an equal amount. And then anyways, if we can get her release from the estate, even if that costs money, that’s probably the best way to get her out of her, position. You could sign her up and go, go to better help and sign up, sign up, find out her name and sign up for online counseling and say, Hey, I bought you a year of psychiatrist time. I dunno, I liked that. You’re thinking outside of the box, I don’t mean to discourage you that you’re, you’ve done the right thing so far, but just try to try to get face-to-face with her and have a conversation, you know, do something nice when you show up something she wouldn’t expect.
Oh, there’s no way of getting around her. Like the court is going to name the three heirs as the title. I can’t just do the two and forget about her. No, that’s what I’m saying. You need to build a relationship with her, get her to sign a release, whether that’s for money or not. And then the brother is going to sign a release.
Then when the title transfers, it will go from estate to, you know, the executor alone. Right. And then you, and he has a purchasing. I don’t remember somewhere in a training in the past that talks about an executor being named at the once the executor or executrix named then they can sign a sales contract.
That’s right. As soon as, as soon as they have the letters of testamentary. So then w why wouldn’t, why would the judge put the names of all three on the property instead of just having an executor? That sounds like some sort of Florida homestead law. I don’t know, John Fraker, if you have an answer, I know you’re not a Florida attorney, but I, I truly don’t know the Florida homestead rule.
A lot of it kind of depends on where you are in the, where the estate is in the process of administration. Chad’s right. If you can negotiate with this lady to go away for a reasonable sum, please do that. That’s the best way. In the probate system, the executor can sign the paperwork to sell the house, you know, and I, again, I’m not Florida licensed, so just sit in California.
Once the, once the real estate is valued at a certain dollar amount, you know, then there’s a process for moving forward to sell it within the estate. If they don’t want to do that, they indeed it out to all three beneficiaries. And again, I can’t tell you what the rule is in Florida. I can just say in California, you know, if, if real estate is in them, is in the name of all three beneficiaries, you can’t hold anyone hostage in real estate.
So this person disappears. Doesn’t want to, you know, round files, all the email requests, or whatever. You can just do it. It’s called a partition action and it’s insanely stupid because it just means there’s a breakout of all common sense. So I had an estate where the parents died and they had a deed and they deeded it to all five of their kids.
My client lived in the bay area. You know, everyone else lived in Southern California. He’s I don’t want to be, I just want my money. Just cash me out, get a mortgage, whatever. I don’t want anything to do with it. You know, they were renting it. You know, his siblings were like renting it to like friends, not paying fair market value, not keeping track of that.
And then more importantly, for two years they just took his letters and threw them in the garbage. So we just filed an action, a partition action to sell the real estate but their attorney said to his clients in California. You can’t hold anyone hostage. This is either going to be a court supervise sale, or you guys are going to have to come to Jesus with. And come up with something more intelligent. So we just settled it. As far as your, you know, your perspective, you’re trying to get the styles for as cheap as possible.
I’m not sure a partition action or a court-supervised sale is going to do that. But for the other beneficiaries, their sister, whoever cannot hold them hostage. So it’s either they’re either going to do a sale in probate, under the court supervision for the price that the judge says is fair, or the fast way to get out of the legal system is a deed in the name of the beneficiaries, close the probate estate and be done with it.
And then the beneficiaries can agree or not. And if they don’t, again, I don’t know the rule in Florida, contact your, a Florida probate or real estate attorney you’re working with and ask them how it’s done there again in California if it’s needed in everybody’s name, even if you have a situation like tenants in common.
You know, the beneficiary is 99% owner of the property. And beneficiary B is a 1%, the 1% stakeholder can’t be held hostage. Either cash them out or they can sell the whole thing to get their interest out. Now, of course, as I said, that’s just a breakdown of common sense. But what you’re describing is extremely, extremely common at probate, right?
The personal overrides, the logic circuits, and people’s brains. And I’m surprised when it doesn’t happen. That way. I’m surprised when the states don’t have somebody that acts like that. Oh, so this is, this was like, this whole probate thing is new to me, but this kind of is not customary, but it’s routine. Nope. This is as far as the course. too out there. Dan, people shooting themselves in the foot, people digging money and flushing it, people throwing it, you know, lighting on fire just to spite their siblings it’s dumb. Going back to what Chad was saying if you can talk to this lady and make her feel heard, obviously that’s your fastest path to a successful outcome for everybody.
I’ve had estates where people stopped talking to each other and they weren’t mad. There’s like, you didn’t consult me on the first 80 decisions you made. Why come to me now? Right. And so the person may be feeling unheard. So to the extent that you can reach out to the beneficiary, if she’ll take her call or whatever, you know, please do that.
If not, you know, the courts have remedies for all this stuff, right?
Linda had asked, is there a, I guess the pay off principal attorney’s fees, et cetera, roughly two 15, but Dan the note is current and payments are being made. Right? No, it was. But now that payment hasn’t been made a year. Okay. And if a case was just filed, she got served about a month ago.
HOA is filed I got us a LIS Pendens filed right behind the first. So, worst case, the whole payoff will be like two 40 ish. And I did a CMA on it and there was a sale, same square footage, same footprint, two to 1500 square feet. And from June of last year to November of this year, June, July, September, and November, there were sales.
And I have just been going like this November, there were two sales in the area in the subdivision and one was for like 3 0 8 and the other one was three 15. And I went and looked at the pictures in the MLS and its paint and cleaning the carpet. That’s it hasn’t been listed. No.
So it’s in foreclosure.
So I have a question. When Chad, when you said the authorization to release the estate, is that, is that the probate case is closed. Is that what that means? Or, or did you buy the state the rights.
The two heirs that don’t care, the ones that have disengaged, they can, they can, you know, abdicate their heirship and that leaves one heir to the estate who is the executor. And then the title would roll to just that person’s name. And then you could go to a purchase agreement directly with them.
Dan, I don’t know why my mind hasn’t gone to this. The executor in Florida has the authority to sign you know, a purchase agreement, as soon as they have the letters. Now, to close that you have to have signatures of all three of them, or if you have to have released, this is a risky play, but if there’s no notice of default or LIS Pendens, you could take the subject to the lien, staying in place.
You could give $10,000 to the caretaker, the one that wants $10,000, take it sub to and then refinance that sucker as fast as you can or, or get it sold off as fast as you can. You’ve got some exposure there, but your only real exposure is 10,000 bucks. And your closing costs are 15,000 bucks and your closing costs.
Right. But who would be the, who would be signing the contract? So they’ve petitioned for probate. As soon as they have the letters, he has the authority to sign a purchase agreement. If you can then make contact with the other heirs and say, listen, we just need you guys to sign this release. You know, if they would sign, just sign it over and say, listen, nobody’s winning here.
We’re, we’re going to take a chance on this, but it’s going to go to foreclosure otherwise just sign this. And they don’t have to know that the other person got 10,000 bucks or wow. They, they probably should. You should, you know, disclose, but I mean, you could take it sub-two with a, you know, a $10,000 deposit.
That’s if there’s an executor named there will be, as soon as they have the initial hearing confirmation. That’s where I’m having a disconnect. My understanding was that there was an executor named to the estate. This other attorney that I went to go see, that’s like a friend of ours. One of our lenders says not that it will, because it’s been like February, it’ll be two years that it just gets named deeded to all three of the heirs.
Right. But the estate still has to have a representative, whether that’s a family member or a public representative, in the beginning, I thought you said you took the guy that you made, the person you made contact with. I thought you took them to the probate court. Before that, you signed a sales contract with me and I put it on there, a personal representative for the estate.
But that hasn’t been named yet. So I’ve got a signed contract, but it doesn’t mean anything because she doesn’t have, yeah. Not valid or enforceable, but it shows intent. So, but when, when the initial hearing happens and she and they ask for objections if nobody objects she’ll be confirmed as the executor or the administrator, right.
At which point you can have a new purchase agreement with her that is valid. And you’re going to hit a snag at the closing table. You’re going to need signatures on releasing or the deed from the other two, but you could gain control of the deal. But check-in with the probate court, if that may have already happened, the letters of testamentary may have been issued.
She has the authority to sign a purchase agreement and that gets your foot in the door. And then you can, you know, use what time you have and your closing timeline to figure out what to do with the other two. It sounds like your first guy, he’s going to sign a release. He’s good. It’s the younger sister that’s going to be problematic and, and maybe throwing her some cash is the best way to deal with her on that.
So, in a situation like this is the equity subject, so it’s just going into probate. Is there like a, like a public notice to creditors? Because they don’t release this stuff until, you know, The probate bankruptcy has been handled, right? Yeah. So there’s a creditors period, but as long as you have a purchase agreement, that’s more than, you know, the HOA lien and, and then let’s say two 40 was the high number.
As long as we have a purchase agreement for at least two 40, then the court will confirm the sale, approve the sale, and move, let it move forward. Even before probate closes
yeah. So in Florida, they’re going to have it that requires court confirmation. So w you know, the personal rep or the attorney will go before the court and say there’s $240,000 in outstanding liabilities. We have an offer for 241,000 we’re requesting that the court approve this sale.
And if they approve it, then you can go ahead and close it. The rest of the estate will still be open to creditors, but as long as we have, more assets than liabilities, then you can get it sold in the program. The court doesn’t look for the market value of that particular asset.
They just need to make sure that Oh California. They, they do. And, and other states they do, but in Florida that they just, you know, they want confirmation, but they don’t go through appraisement or overbids or can’t remember your term, John, like Rodger Lecy she always calls them appraisement in Arkansas, you guys call them, we have probate referee’s referee.
And they said they set the value from the referee. Yeah. They’re the ones that are the lightning rods for everybody’s to speech they’re kind of weak they say. Right. But in Florida for example, I’ve seen, Jim’s bought houses there for 40 grand with probably an as-is valuation of one on a quarter.
And they get court confirmation, no questions asked. As long as they’re looking at more of, you know, is, is there more liabilities than, than, you know, do they have more debt than equity? And if that’s the case and the court probably is not going to approve that sale, they’re going to try to get it to maximize the sale price of the home to pay off the other liabilities.
But in a lot of cases where there are very little to no liabilities and, you know, the assets are free and clear, they’re not there to protect the consumer. They’re there to protect the debtors is how it seems to me,
Dan, you’re patiently waiting. How are you?
Yup. As far as Dan Kali. This is the second similar to that. I ran into the attorney’s advising people to wait for two years so that the debtors can collect whatever if there’s minimal debt to, I know credit cards or whatever, as far as the homestead that thing that might have something to do with putting in all the names on the title, but this is the second time I hear them advising families to not even start probate until the two years have passed because of the notices and the creditors.
That’s something that I just actually ran into a couple of weeks ago when I spoke to someone. I’ll give you an example in our state. One of the reasons it is just the longest. And the slowest is that there’s a creditor notification period.
You open the estate, everybody who’s known her unknown creditors gets noticed you do a publication in the newspaper and at the end of 120 days, if everyone who is a known credit, your credit card bills, funeral homes, whatever, as long as they get written notice, and everybody else gets the publication, their right to collect money from the state is extinguished after four months.
Correct? So Florida is two, but what I’m curious about, there’s no point in waiting from our perspective. It’s quite the opposite. You would open the probate to get rid of them as fast as possible. the way to gentlemen, explain it to me was that he was told by the attorney that the death itself, whether it’s from a credit card or whatever after two years becomes obsolete and they’re not going to be able to collect any of it.
So the only thing he will worry about is the condo that he’s mentioning. I don’t think that’s the case, Dan. I don’t think that’s true. That’s what he told me over the phone. There’s no statute of limitation on debt. They, as soon as you open probate, you have to file a notice to creditors and they’re going to submit their claim and it’s going to be paid.
I don’t know that even consumer debt, like that, will just dissolve in two years. Like I would, I’m very curious. If you find out that is valid, I would like to understand I’ll look into it more. The guy’s out of state. He consulted with a local attorney, by the way, Lakewood ranch is here in Sarasota.
Bradenton Sarasota area, not Tampa. I don’t know if he spoke to a Sarasota attorney or not, but I’ll look into it and I’ll see if there’s any validity to that, just for more information. But he said it to me cause there are squatters in the family, in the house. The neighbors, it’s a madhouse at this point, the neighbors are upset, all kinds of stuff are going on and I make contact with the owner and he said I’m waiting it out.
I said, that’s not very fair to your neighbors, but that’s a, you know, it’s a mathematical decision you’ve made. He told me, I consulted with an attorney. He mentioned waiting for two years. So that the smaller debt, it was his brother that passed away. His brother’s smaller debt can somehow just not even count towards the estate.
And that’s what he relayed that he was, he was advised to do by a lawyer. Yeah. I’ll have to look into it more then. Yeah. Whenever you learn, I’m challenging you to go validate that. I don’t think it’s right, but if it is, I want to understand why, how that’s that’s the case. I’ll make it homework, homework.

In the meantime, I just had one, maybe two quick questions. What are the quick questions was when you described the way somebody walked up to you and you bought the house with 13 grand or whatever, it may be for new investors, such as myself or new people. I am licensed, but if we’re conducting other business and someone comes out of the woodworks and is Hey, can you come to see our house?
You know, we work something out to where they understand what, what would I do? What would be the conversation you would have with someone on the spot when you haven’t done any homework, evaluating and coming back to that person with a good number. Or help yourself to close that deal. And for me to be the one in the first position to get it a great question.
And I lost one like this because I wasn’t prepared. It was on new year’s day. And they the house was, it was in top three school systems and the entire. It was probably worth as is 65. And they called me and said, we’re looking to sell this house for 20 grand today. I drove 125 miles to get there, but I didn’t have a contract because I was at my family farm.
And I was, and this is the stupidest thing. this is why I hate this story so much. All I had to do was drive another five miles print, a damn contract and come back to the house and I would have bought that house for 20 grand. Instead, I went there, I built rapport. I looked through it. It was, it was full of stuff, offered them 20,000 bucks.
And while I was gone getting a contract, they called another investor. He told a bunch of damn lies and scared them and paid them 21,000. Because I hesitated. I missed out on at least, I would say the ARV on that house. Like when I, when I looked talked about, I use it as a hypothetical in building a banking relationship, I’m like, here’s one to let go, but let’s just use this on, what could you do?
What could you have done for me? Because my idea was to, you know, do a Brrrr on that one, but Anyway. So that’s that one was because I didn’t have a contract. Other ones I’ve missed because I didn’t have proper market knowledge or didn’t have a tool with me. One of the things that you can do is if you’re familiar with propstream.
It’s a, it’s, if you are going to use it to refer due diligence or you know, to, to do marketing campaigns, it’s $99 a month. I find that it’s worth every penny because I’ve got the entirety of, you know, like the most comprehensive real estate database ever put together in my pocket.
So you can do pretty some pretty quick work and figure out you can look at the comps on the market and off-market comps. You can look at them, let’s see who the lien holders are if there are liens on it. You can do some really quick due diligence with a tool like prop stream. There’s also, Propelio there’s and Katt, We’ve got a link for prop stream. If you want to drop it for them so they can get a free trial of there’s a seven-day free trial if you want to try it, Dan. But what I would say is if you think that someone else is coming before you will be prepared just aim low. That’s what I did with the one for 13,000 bucks, I went in, I had to wear a fricking stage four respirator and take a shovel to get the damn front door.
The seller wouldn’t even come into the house. He didn’t even come on the porch. He’s I don’t give a shit you to check it out. There were five feet of human waste, trash, garbage food. It was unbelievable. And I just assumed the floors were rotted out. There was no way I was digging through that to find out.
So I just quickly priced them. I’m like, all right, I know what rents are in his neighborhood. And know what I could sell it to a landlord for now. Let’s assume that the floors, the subfloors, and the joist are all rotted out. Cause there’s 10 years’ worth of fluid sitting in this pile. And that’s where I just, I aim low.
I didn’t know enough about the house and I couldn’t see enough about the house to make an informed, calculated offer. So I just hit low when he said done, I’m like, damn it. I should’ve said five. But so that one was like, that’s my best advice is you can just aim. If you’ve got, you know, a short window of opportunity and, you know, hopefully, you can get it, but those are a couple of things, like always have a blank contract in your vehicle, always, and always have a blank listing agreement in your vehicle like just have fresh paperwork, just lying around, even just stacks of it.
Cause I’ve lost deals because I didn’t have that. But if you don’t have the market knowledge and you don’t have the tools, you’re on the spot. Pick a safe number and throw it like, and if they flinch be like, okay, listen, I just, I know that I could make it work at that. If you can, if you can give me an hour, I’ll be back with a better offer.
Or what was the, who wants to be a millionaire? Like you can cut and use your lifeline call somebody up. This is where having a good relationship with an investor, especially landlords. You’d be like, Hey man, Walnut street, you know, three blocks in from the highway.
Three bedroom, two bath needs a roof, you know, old windows AC shot, what’s it worth. And just have him throw you a number, like a safe number. And I’ve done that too. When I, when I was building my market knowledge and I didn’t trust my offers, I didn’t know if I was going too high or too low. I would, I would, I I’m always creating social capital.
Right. I find any way to impress and help anyone. In a moment like this, I can call John and be like, Hey John, you have a hundred houses, right? Yeah. Do you have one in this neighborhood? Great. What’s it rent for? What would you sell it for? What would you, what do you think is a good price when you buy this one from me?
What do you get? And I’m like, you’ll find out as soon as I get it papered, what do you think it’s worth? And I would have my wholesale buyers throw me what they think, you know, ballpark, what a house is worth in that neighborhood. And it worked, man. Like I, I got them to pay more. So just some ideas on what to do if you’re under the.
I appreciate that.

And my very last question of Dan set it all off for me too. When you were mentioning something about the team enough, we put the property in a land trust, doing the paint, the carpet, and having a hundred grand to split. You mentioned the attorney being the trustee or in charge of the trust.
Now, when we’re talking about that kind of stuff, for example, perfect world, that would have been Dan’s 25 grand. How much of that would you usually take into consideration for the attorney to do all of that? What is he, what is a good number to see? 500 bucks. Okay. In Virginia, that’s what I pay is $500 to establish and record a land trust, with no transfer tax.
And they’re not going to have a problem with the fact that you, so they’re going to just run the trust, and then once the deal is sold, you just pay for that service. Then they don’t have any other part in it to where they’re going to do a percentage or anything like that. They shouldn’t have. I mean, They’re just, you know, they’re making legal fees for the legal work they’re doing.
They may ask for compensation as a trustee, but there’s nothing they need to do other than sign the deed. And they’re there to make sure you have control of sales like that you can sell the asset. You can also use LLCs. Like you could use a, you know, a special purpose, just start up a fresh LLC.
The challenge there, you’ve got to pay an attorney to write the operating agreement, but if you think that’s a situation you’re going to find yourself in. It’s good to sit down with a Florida attorney and establish an operating agreement and procedures for that model where you have essentially a cap table for the ownership and you fill in the blank you know, for, for, you know, we’re the basis value of this asset is X. I intend to spend Y and capital expenditures. And this is the anticipated net. Here’s what that hypothetic is, here’s what that breakout would look like. And then get everybody to sign on that.
So like then you’ve got a clear Florida LLC with an operating agreement that fully disclosed the purpose of the LLC and voting rights and control and control of the sale and everything can be customized. So it, whatever your attorney is comfortable with I just, I just really liked land trust because they’re simple, fast, and affordable.
You get anonymity and you don’t have to pay a transfer tax. With Laura, I paid her 500 bucks to establish and record the trust and transfer. So. Okay, thanks so much. All right, guys, I did have a four o’clock that I’ve gone over. So I’m going to go ahead and run.
I don’t see any more questions or hands up. Thank you guys for being here. We had some interesting challenges today for anyone that’s listening oh my God, I can never do this. They’re not all this hard. Like a lot of these are super easy and efficient deals. We just had, some interesting challenges today.
So thank you guys as always for trusting the advice you get here. Thanks, for everyone contributing. John, always appreciate having you here to back me up and you guys have a great day.