Sub-to deals in probate real estate, PLUS optimizing your probate marketing strategy

Welcome everybody to the weekly probate mastery group coaching call. If you don’t remember who I am, my name’s Chad, I’m the guy that started all this. I have been out for a few weeks and I owe a huge gratitude to Bill Gross and David Pannell for having my back while I dealt with the death of my father and his funeral and proceedings.
Thank you guys for having my back.
Hopefully, you guys learned a ton from Bill and David. We all have a different approach and I think it’s valuable to have different perspectives, on a lot of the things we talk about. And then I have something I wanted to cover today Since tomorrow is the first day of December.
I’ve been doing this for nearly a decade now working in this niche. And one of the things I noticed when I was one of the owners of all the leads, people would put their leads on hold or they would stop their mailing. They wouldn’t be prospecting really between Thanksgiving and New Year.
I wanted to tell you a story from 2015, it was the week before Christmas, my list came out.
I was like, ah, I can’t mail these people this week, but I pushed through it. And I said You believe that these people are better off hearing from you than not hearing from you, send the damn letters. So I sent the letters and I didn’t know what to expect. I honestly expected that I was going to piss people off just because of the timing of it.
What I got was two listings, two days before Christmas. So I went to the appointments and photography, threw them on MLS, and figured well, I’ll deal with that after the new Year. To my surprise, two investors were out looking at properties on Christmas morning. I got the first offer at 9:00 AM, accepted, ratified, under contract.
The second one came before noon. So while I was cooking breakfast and lunch on Christmas day for my family, I sold to the buyer’s agents who were showing property and Roanoke on Christmas day. Not sure why, but in December, I had around six closings cause I had residual stuff come in from the month before.

So if you’re wondering, should I be sending letters? Should I make these calls? I would ask you to consider why they’re filing probate in December. The death was most likely in September, October, they’ve reached a point where it’s okay, Hey world, we’re ready to deal with this.
Or they’re those families that are more proactive and just want to get things done and move through the grieving process faster. Either way, the folks who file probate in December are usually the most motivated to accept help and to be looking for a solution.
And I don’t know if anyone else has any stories or experience on that, but in, in all of my time doing this and coaching people to do this, December can be one of the best months, as far as finding the ones that are ready to go right now. Now when we were tracking every lead in the country, I found there was about a 38% decline in the number of leads recorded in December.
So a lot of families don’t have the emotional strength to do it. And what you’ll find is your list will be larger in January and February, because the ones who didn’t have the emotional capacity to file in December will file early, in the next year.
that’s just the topic I wanted to throw out there and just remind everybody your competition is probably sitting on their ass from Thanksgiving to new year’s. And it’s a really good time to step up and serve at a high level for the people who need it most, and you have less competition than ever.
So don’t forget that if you’re hesitant, go ahead and pull the trigger and make the phone call. Now, is there anything I can help any of you guys with, or does anyone have any stories about doing deals during the holidays?

Stephanie, he’s got your hand up. Sorry. I didn’t see you there. How are you doing good? How are you? So I have two people that have called me inbound off of my mail this week. And they both are in, strange situations and I’m not sure what direction to go with them.
The first one was a whole household that got hit with COVID. So this lady lost her father, her stepmother, and her sister, not in that order. The order was the stepmother’s sister, father. So right of survivorship from stepmother’s portion of the property passed to father, father did not file probate because he was sick with COVID.
So now her stepsisters from her mother’s previous marriage are filing their probate for the stepmother, and she’s supposed to get everything, the right of survivorship with the house. Does that make sense? So how can I help her get the property released from the stepmother’s probate?
Since the father died, second, all of her rights went over to him right there shouldn’t be any other heirs involved.
It was held in both their names. But that could have been tenants in the common or joint tenants.
Ideally, if it was held as tenants in the entirety with rights of survivorship, then you had a transfer on death and that will be easy to transfer from stepmother to father. And then she’ll have to probate the father’s estate to get the property in her name. Tenants in common or some other form of title.
You may have probate step mom’s estate to get it to dad’s estate and then probate that estate. So what her attorney has told her is that there were rights of survivorship. That’s where I got that from, but she hasn’t heard back from her attorney. Their attorney is a real estate attorney, not a probate attorney, which I’m also really confused as to why she’s doing that.
But I’m meeting with her on Saturday. So do you have any suggestions of where can I find that information? Pull the deed. Like we can just go do a preliminary on it yourself or have one of your title companies. If you run a lot of deals through a title company, ask them to just pull a preliminary for you or just send you the deed.
They should, if they have they have online tools, they can pull it deed and email it to you. They want you to think they still go to the courthouse, but if you can see how, how ownership is held, how it’s deeded, and then look at your state succession law, if it’s held in the right title, then it transferred upon death.
There are formalities, but it transferred upon the death of her to him. And then what did he have a will? No, she’s the only heir for him. Okay. So it needs to be probated in his name, likely that the transfer on death was from her to him. Now his estate needs to be probated to give her access to the real estate.
And what is her intent does she want to hold it or sell it. She wants to sell it. So it’s a listing appointment. Okay. And she needs to do it quickly. So why do I, so I can pull the deed, I can find out the information and what do I need to tell her she needs to do to lead – Hire a probate attorney. Okay. There are very few situations where I believe people shouldn’t have, if they have significant assets, they should have counsel.
They should have an attorney. Are there other heirs? She lost her whole family. That’s terrible. I mean, I would suggest she can’t be in a great state of mind. And this is a heavy load its first people have to wrap their head around it, then they have to educate themselves on it.
Then they have to learn how to take action on it. She doesn’t need to be done this on her just period. To find her a good attorney, a good probate attorney that you can refer her to and say, this is step one. This attorney is practicing in this area. In this state. He understands succession law, and the other executrix has hired a damn real estate attorney to do a probate.
So let’s hire a qualified probate attorney to make sure he is checking his homework as well. Right. they can probate their mother’s estate however they see fit. But I want to know that you’re cared for and that you’re getting the right information. And it might take, it may take some time. Is she ready to go right?
Yeah, she is well, the house is paid for, but she’s maintaining, you know, all the bills and she lives three hours away. She’s so ready that when I talked to her, she’s driving from Atlanta. I live in Savannah. She’s driving from Atlanta to Savannah on Saturday to try and get to do something.

I want to give you an extra value point that I just learned about because my father ended up dying from COVID. FEMA actually will provide up to $9,000 in funeral reimbursement. So make sure that she can get both of their funerals reimbursed. Typically you’re going to pay for it, but save all of the invoices from everything.
And I mean anything and everything associated with the funeral costs and make sure she submits that to the there’s a FEMA website specifically for this, but she could get $18,000 to cover those costs, which we’ll put some cashback in the estate’s bank account. Okay. All right.

And the other one is I’ve got a guy out of New York whose sister lives here in Savannah and is living in his deceased mother’s property. Um, And not giving him any information. And was, essentially just trying to keep the house herself. I did look up, she’s been paying the taxes on it, and from what I can see, the mortgage is current, but I don’t know how accurate that is.
So instead of just letting her, take everything, he has decided to go file for probate. She has not filed for probate. He doesn’t even have letters of administration yet, so he can’t do anything without those letters. And he said that the only thing that he has is that they have served her.
So I’m wondering, what did they serve her with a notice that someone has filed for probate? That’s public information. There’s not a process server. Doesn’t notify anybody. Did he ask for her to be evicted? No, not yet. He hasn’t asked for anything other than letters of administration.
That’s all that he’s asked for us to be named, administer of the estate and he wants to split everything fairly with her, but he wants to sell it. That’s pretty much all I have. The title is still in the parent’s name, note is it still in the parent’s name? Yes. And I checked that. Yes. Okay. And is there equity in the property?
Yes. Okay. But you get the feeling, she’s not, she’s there with some hostile hostility. She’s not willing to move. Yes. What I find in the approach is don’t isolate You need to have a relationship with her because she has control over your deal. And she has control over the service you can offer to her brother. And at some point, if she doesn’t know that already, she’ll know that then she’ll become a problem. Even if you have to play the good cop and the brother, the bad cop, you need to get his permission for that. That’s a very effective tactic in dealing with this.
Listen, I know your brother’s an asshole. I’ve talked to him already. I understand. And you’re empathizing with her to gain her trust and just get his permission and be like, listen, I’m going to throw your ass under the bus. If I have to get her to, if if I need to get her out of her way and help you reach your goal, are you good with that?
And they usually are. Because it’s, there’s usually it’s been contentious for a while, right? So they’re like, I don’t care. Say whatever you need to, I just need to get this thing sold. So ask his permission to use that tactic if you need to. Make contact with the sister, ask him what his relationship is with her right now.
What’s that relationship dynamic. If you’re comfortable with it, meet her face to face and say, my name is Stephanie. I’ve been speaking with your brother. We don’t have to talk about him, but this is a big deal for you.
So I wanted to introduce myself, ask the same things that I’ve asked him, what is your ideal outcome? How can I help you? And then sit and listen and what you’ll probably get as a very, ego-driven very detailed, and story-filled response because she’s been wanting to say this to his ass for a long time, and you’re going to have to listen to it, but sit and listen and look for things like the first question you need to get answered is does she have somewhere else to live? And can she afford that? The difficult ones are when the answer is no to that, then you have to figure out how do you find her suitable living that she can afford long-term, and then how do you bridge that gap?
Can you go to one of your investors and get her in one of their rentals. And then he gets paid, two or three months later from the estate? Figure out if she has somewhere to go if she has a suitable living that she can afford, and she’s still hostile and wants to stay, he can offer her moving expenses from his side of the estate.
I try to avoid evicting family members at all costs because it’s just making their situation worse. And over time it will just get worse and worse. So for me, I’ve been able to get people to speak using the same approach.
I’ve been able to reconnect people who haven’t spoken in 20 years, and it’s just pure fricking ego. There’s no reason they shouldn’t be talking to each other. It’s just, it’s, it’s a zero-sum game. If I talk to him, I lose, I want him to lose and it’s total BS. So you might reconnect them. You might be the reason they start speaking again and everything smooths over. She might dig in and be hostile.
One of the best things you can do at that point offers her some more money to get the hell out of the way and give her a fair warning. Listen. I have a white glove moving service, pulls you out of here and takes you to your next nice home. Or you can have the sheriff do it and you can sleep in a hotel.
He doesn’t give a shit, essentially what happened, right? The course of the courts will likely force a sale if they can’t agree eventually. Okay. Yep. And this one, there wasn’t a will? In this one, there is no will either. Are there more liabilities than cash in the estate? No, I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s a lot of debt. Is that what you mean? Does she have earned income? She must because she’s paid the property taxes and she’s got the mortgage current from what I can see. And she made a property tax payment in November.
I should’ve been asking better questions from the beginning. Can you get her refinanced? You’re not going to get paid. This is one of those deals where you’ll get paid indirectly eventually. You’re not going to make a sales commission, but if you can get her to a lender, get her pre-qualified to purchase the house from the estate.
Then everybody gets what they want. Oftentimes I jumped to an assumption there it’s oftentimes they won’t qualify. You go to the things that I have already said, but step one should be okay. Do you want to stay here? That’s great. Your brother wants to sell it. Let me introduce you to a lender.
Let’s see if you qualify to purchase the home. And if you do Everybody got what they want. And I don’t, you don’t even know me. Okay. And she would just purchase from the estate. No different than an investor would purchase from the estate? Yep. And the brother gets his 50%.
She doesn’t have to move and everything moves forward. And the lender that will give you a pre-qualified buyer one of these days, because you handed him a refi on a platter.
It’s not a refi purchase loan at that point.

All right, Stanley, how can we help you today? What’s on your mind?
I’m very new to probate. I recently completed your probate mastery course. there was a lot of content, a lot of value, a lot of things that I did not know before. So I just thank you for putting that together for everyone. also the community here is awesome.
I’ve been reaching out to you, several people. over your Facebook groups, then guys like Mr. Jonathan Hawkins him. And I spoke about a week or two ago and we spoke for about an hour, but yeah, I enjoy the community here. I’m getting ready to start sending letters out to PRS. I plan to manually pull mines from the registered wills I’m here in Maryland.
so my question, I have two questions. The first one is going to be about the marketing sequence. So I remember you saying, you know, most deals come from the seven follow up along those lines. So what type of letters should I be sending first? What type of letters should I be sending second third and so forth?
Did you download the sample letters from the course? All of those are proven with my money. The reason they’re there is that they were proven to work in multiple markets. Any of them will work. Especially in your first campaign, just to avoid, even the possibility of analysis paralysis, pick the one that you resonate most with the one that you feel fits your offer the best.
Are you clear on your offer? Are you confident in what you have to offer now? Okay. So for me, the one that I use most commonly was probate options. And it was just a few simple bullet points and it an introduction to what we do. I tested and tracked my first 12,000 pieces of mail. What I found was that about the same response rate to all of those letters.
Now, there were a lot of losers that I thought were great and they didn’t do anything. So they never, they didn’t cut. I did try with, you know, return address on, return address of this letter versus that letter, a sequence versus the same letter, three times in a row. I wasn’t able to find a measurable difference in the sequence versus the options letter three times. Like using multiple letters over multiple months, it’s compounding. So just like the magic of compound interest, this is not that magic. It’s a nightmare. When you’re sending 12 letters to 12 lists, you’re managing 144 different letters and different campaign touches.
And unless you have a good system with automation built-in, it’ll eat you alive. In the interest of efficiency and just inbound marketing, I sent the option letter three times. I would pull the trigger on all three of them the day I got the list and I never scrubbed the list. I never went in and took people off unless they requested me to, they would just get all three.
That allowed me to look forward and focus on dollar productive activity, which was not stuffing envelopes or list management. If you were an all the lead subscriber, we built that system to handle the list management. So you can upload 12 letters and all 12 can be different.
And your start date is the day that your first letter drops. And then if you’re using their internal CRM to manage your leads and manage your opt-outs, all of that list management happens for you. There’s a ton of value in that it’s included with the cost of the leads if you’re using all the features of that system, you can get creative and do a series. But if you’re doing this manually trust me my man it’ll eat you alive. If you try to manage a whole bunch of different letters in a sequence.
Yeah, that’s something I considered.

How many leads per month? Do you have? Have you pulled them before here and
here in Baltimore county there are about 300.
that’s a monster.
That’s a lot. Yeah.
That is a monster. So you imagine, even if you just send three letters at the end of the third month you’re going to be managing 900 pieces of mail.
Are you fulfilling mail on your own?
I, I intend to
Don’t. What do you think you’re worth like what’s a dollar value to your professional worth this year in the next 12 months? How much money do you think you can make? Are you, Are you a six-figure guy? Seven-figure guy. you’re, six figures. You’re making 75, 80 bucks an hour. Why the hell would you stuff envelopes? Because while you’re doing that $7 task, you’re not doing an 80 to a hundred dollar task. And I have this on a spreadsheet. I built models to prove to people you will be losing money in the form of opportunity.
So 300 letters is a big undertaking. Month two is 600 letters. Month three is 900 letters. You’re going to have some opt-outs, but you have to build a system, a spreadsheet to track all that. It’s going to consume you. And you’re not going to be doing the dollar-productive activity. You’re going to be doing marketing tasks.
like, You have this vision. You’re, You’re a six-figure guy act like it. And I know it’s hard in the beginning, it takes a little bit of courage and faith to do this, but I guarantee you’ll cost yourself money stuffing 900 envelopes because you’ll be so busy stuffing envelopes, you won’t be talking to people and you get paid for talking to people.
So try to find a way to, even if you call your list a little bit and you just send letters to the out of town ones first, those can be the most motivated find a way to make it affordable to automate. Use all the leads, use someone else, like get an intern from a college like over Christmas break right now is a great time.
put out Craigslist ads. Nursing homes are a really good place. Those folks are extremely bored. They even handwrite letters for people, but you can go ahead and print them and go ahead and make the labels, drop them off at the nursing home, let them do the stuffing and posting then drop by that evening.
Pick them up and drop them at the post office. But to fulfill all of those on your own is going to take no less for 300. That’s a day’s work. You’ve got to do You got to set up the mail merge. You got to do the printing. You’ve got to collate them. You’ve got to stuff them, you’ve got to stamp them.
You’ve got to lick them and you’ve got to take them to the post office. It’s terrible work. So I’m going to tell you to think like a six-figure guy finds a way to delegate that.
the lead gathering too. I’ll jump back on my soapbox for a second. If you’re gathering 300 leads on your own, you’re also using a lot of dollar productive time. So however you can delegate that.
Some people use VA, some people use local people, local researchers. If you want to put it on autopilot, you can subscribe to a company like all the leads they’ll pull the leads for you. They’ll skip trace, they’ll find the DNC’s, they’ll find up the five phone numbers for the personal rep.
Put it into a CRM and they’ll automate all of your mail fulfillment, and you get all that for one price. So there is a lot of value in what they do in the beginning before you understand all the pieces of it. It’s hard to swallow that price sometimes, but if you can afford that, there’s also a financing option.
I believe they’re still offering it.

You have a business bank account. Who are you with? Which bank?
CQ credit. Credit. Okay, great. So credit unions typically will offer you a business line of credit on your business account. Go ask. Say, Hey, listen, how much? Like I’ve got X amount in the account.
Can I get a line of credit? Like I use first citizens bank, as long as I ask for 49,999 or less, it doesn’t even go through underwriting. They just approve it, charge me 150 bucks. And the line is there within usually four to five business hours. So you can use that line of credit to delegate some of this, just be careful to track what you’re spending, make sure you’re getting a return.
It’ll hold you accountable. Because when you’re using debt to finance your marketing, you’re going to make every lead count. And I’m usually not a big proponent of debt, but if you’re a six-figure guy you get that marketing paid for, get your leads, paid for the letters, and then get out there and hit it hard.
And you’ll pay that off. And you only have to do this for one month. I guess maybe two your cash conversion cycle if you got 300 leads, there’s a closing in there. And the next 60 days, there’s actually, there should be at least six closings in there in the next 60 days.
In the past, uh, just spending a ton of money on marketing, skip tracing, And I just, I don’t want to risk losing all that money again, but I do trust the system there.
How about, are you an agent investor or investor. Okay. Do you have an agent that you trust? Yes, I do. Okay. What if you guys split the marketing campaign, you split the cost of the leads and the marketing, and then you split the revenue of the deals?
And you get in that way, just set a proper expectation that I’m not asking you to be my business partner. I’m asking you to collaborate on these first few campaigns. So it’s shared risk and, but it’s a shared reward too. Yeah. Or you could say if you pay for the mail, I’ll make sure that I kick everyone that I can’t buy will be sent to you as a qualified, or you can go on the appointments with me.
And if I can’t buy you list it And get them to pay for all of the marketing costs, because nine out of 10 are going to go to them. Not to you. One in 10 is going to be highly motivated to sell at a wholesale price.

What’s your strategy? Are you just wholesaling or are you doing fix and flip buy and hold creative financing?
I have an understanding of creative financing and that depends on the property equity. Um, it depends on what the seller wants to do. I’m going to wholesale as well. I’m doing all of this just to build capital for when I get into a commercial property.
Okay. Yeah.
So are you looking for capital or are you looking for a balance sheet? I mean, You want to get into the commercial property using debt, using mortgages?
The reason I ask is if you’re going to pay earned income tax on wholesale fees, right? Like you’ll pay top-tier taxes. If you can pick up these homes through owner financing, subject to a lease with the option to purchase, then that way you’re not going to have to come up with a bunch of cash, but you’ll be adding equity to your balance sheet that you can cross collateralize for commercial investments.
In almost every scenario, it would make more sense for you to build a balance sheet and not pay taxes on that equity than it would be wholesaling and paying taxes. If your ultimate goal is to build wealth and get into commercial real estate, a balance sheet is more valuable than 60% of the cash that’s leftover.
If you have good credit if you’re going to use leverage in your commercial real estate strategy. So just think about that. I regret it a lot. Most of the houses I wholesaled, I regret I should have turned them into piggybanks. When you have the opportunity to buy like right now, I bought a house in probate.
The day dad took a turn for the worst, drove back to West Virginia from Washington bought a house for 25. That’ll appraise at 150, I can pull a home equity line of credit at prime plus 1.25 with no closing costs and I can have $137,000 in strike money. I don’t pay taxes on it and I don’t pay interest on it, but it’s there.
It’s on tap. I’m buying a farm that was not probated. 17 years ago. The bank called the note. As soon as I finish this call, I’m going to go buy that farm. It’ll appraise for 120. I’ll be in it for 50. I’ll let them stay there and stay on the land for their life rights. And I’ll turn that farm into a piggy bank and it’ll sit there.
I don’t farm, but I can turn it into a piggy bank. I’m growing my balance sheet through acquisition because I’m not taxed on those equity gains, but I can cross collateralize those. Lenders, look at my financial statement and go, Ooh, if he screws up, we get all kinds of stuff. So as you’re coming into this, if you’re heading for commercial real estate, you want to start thinking
About how can leverage be your friend and an inflationary environment. Like JP will pull the lever and print some more and be paying your debt off for you. So of all times in real estate, this is a really good time to use leverage. So clean up your credit as much as you can. Don’t wholesale too many, unless you have to, unless you need to eat don’t wholesale, and put them on your balance sheet.
Okay.
Yep.

All right, Erica, I see your hand up.
Yes. Yes. Hi Chad. So I have, an interesting case. My buyer wants to buy a property. This is a neighbor’s house and is a person’s owner who passed away about a year ago. It sounds like there is a caretaker who is a friend of the deceased person. And he told my buyer that the kids don’t want anything to do with the property if the person owns two.
He owns a house in a condo, so my buyer wants to buy the house. It sounds like that is the, there might be a pre-foreclosure because he owns like maybe 60 K. But I don’t know exactly what state, is it foreclosure or anything? I found out finally as account number and the lienholder is a bank.
I ordered it as a title, but it takes several days. We don’t want to lose the property. So I’ve wanted to ask you, what’s the best way to go about this. How do I find out that it’s clean title transferable who’s the legal owner is and whom do I write the offer for it? Have you checked the newspaper for the notice of default?
I checked, but I couldn’t find anything, I checked things like foreclosures or pre-foreclosures. I don’t see any record of anything just yet. Okay. But you did order, you ordered a full title. Yes. I woulda full title. Yeah. Yeah. So I would just wait until that comes for right now. Cause if it’s scheduled for sale, there’s not a heck of a lot you can do here.
Unless if the family’s checked out and they don’t care, They’re unlikely to engage with an attorney to get an injunction. court oftentimes will grant an injunction to protect equity. But you’ve got to have willing heirs who are asking for it. It doesn’t sound too likely in this scenario.
It sounds like you may be bidding for the house. However, I wouldn’t give up. I would like to know when the auction date is between now and then what do you want to do is make contact with family members, make them an offer and see if you can get them to sign.
If they’re willing to sign, then you can go ahead and fast-track it. You call it a title company and ask for a title. It sounds like you have a good relationship. Can you pull a string and get them to do a closing? In a few days, I imagined so, I believed the buyer would be the cash, he was asking me, visit cash would help. Cash would help, I have to be a cash deal, if he’s going to get it from the family or the courthouse, he’s paying cash. Okay. Got it. Okay. Okay. Okay. They did get a family friend, who takes care of the house to talk.

So apparently it’s opening mails. So it sounds like there are like 60,000. So the property worth in this market probably would be 650, between 650-750 K. He bought the in 2005 for three 50, and I think there was a 280 K mortgage on it or something along those lines. So I don’t know how much more is needed just yet.
Apparently from the bank statement is a caretaker said that he has a 60,000 delinquency as a place. The arrears is 60,000, not the actual payout. Yes, that’s what I say. Yeah. Okay. Original note three 80 two 80, I think. Oh five. So
What’s the house worth right now as is? 650 at least. Oh, hell. So you’ll be on a, like 50, 50 LT, 50 cents on the dollar. Does the caretaker have the numbers for the heirs? That’s a good question. Probably. Probably. Yeah, because if you can get them if you’re a buyer can pay cash, even the $60,000, you can buy the asset, subject to the existing lane, staying in place.
Are you familiar with that? No, I don’t know anything about that. Oh, you go ahead and bring the loan current, if there’s a statement that says you owe this much to bring the loan current, now your buyer should understand the risk here.
And you might want to have an attorney walk you through it if you don’t have any experience with it. But if you bring that note, they can’t foreclose on the default. Now they can call the note, but then they have to start. The process has to begin all over again. So that gives your buyer a 90-day window to refinance out of it and use leverage.
if the heirs are willing to talk to you and they’re willing to sign a purchase agreement you know, to get equity, then you can purchase the home subject to the existing mortgage, staying in place, let your buyer bring the note current, and then have them start working on a refi.
The title will transfer. You’ll have that first position lien still on title. they’ll apply for new financing to do a refinance on it. And they’re probably only depending on what the heirs end up wanting if they’re willing to play they may get it for as little as 50 cents on the dollar.
So it’s an easy loan to get. Yeah. How much would you offer for the place?
I would make contact with them. They’re willing to let it go and receive nothing, right? Yeah. So my initial offer would be the outstanding loan balance. The payments in arrears and penalties would be my max offer. And if they would play ball on that, I would take it sub to for that number, bring it current and I would bust my ass to get it refinanced because they can call the note. They still have to go through a separate foreclosure proceeding if they call the note. So you have a 99, you have a 90 day, at least a 90-day window. But as long as your buyers are creditworthy, And if you transfer title, I mean, hell, they can even do a, a HELOC in the second position pay off the first and then the HELOC will fall on the first position.
Now you’ve got to have a banker that can think outside of the box. Yeah. Yeah. What state are you in?
Yeah. Did I live in Maui, which island?
I lived in Kaanapali Beach… Yeah. So over there I would go HSB, like Hawaii savings bank. Yes. Yeah. They’re one of them, they’re one of the smaller community banks that will play ball on things like this. The portfolio of their loans and they don’t give a damn about the mainland.
Like I would talk to HSB that might be a good bank that would do the refi or the HELOC. you buy the place for 60, 70,000. That’s what you’re saying. Just, Nah, I don’t think you’re going to have it. I don’t think it’s going to be that good because you have a note originating in oh five at 280.
Most of those, you know, 15 years of payments went to interest. I’m ballparking, you’re probably around 230 on your outstanding balance. And then you’ve got 60,000 in arrears and penalties. So let’s say let’s just round up and say you’re probably at 300.
You need to know that number, like figure out what the payoff is, and from the details, you’ve given is there 60,000 in penalties and arrears, but I’m going to say there are probably two 30 in principle left on that note. So that probably puts you somewhere around three, make contact with the family, ask them if they would sell it.
You have a buyer that’s willing to pay 300 and close as soon as possible. You find a title company. I’m trying to think of the one we used on Oahu, um, there are three big major ones, the first American Title guarantee. And one more I don’t work with because they are lame. title guarantee first American I do the most business with. if you can find the title company that will let you in the front of the line to close quickly, that’s what I would do. Just cause you, you have a short fuse. Yeah, so just to recap, let’s figure out:
Is there a scheduled sale date?
And if so, when is that?
Next, does your borrower have cash or do they intend to use financing?
Next? Does the caretaker have a piece of mail that has the payoff amount, including principal, penalties, and arrears? And then do they have contact information for the heirs so you can call them, are they on the mainland?
Are they on the island? Here on the island. Perfect. So if you can’t get a phone number, go find them. Yeah. Chad, then would you offer, you know, the heirs something that it’s first selling so that it would be worth for them to sell? I would say, guys, listen, are you aware that this is going to foreclosure and you will get it. Yeah. And if they say yes then it’s was like, okay, so my client will pay 300,000 bucks.
I have the paperwork with me. I brought a signed offer. Would you let it go for 300,000 bucks? If they say no, I wouldn’t sell it for that.
Okay, what’d you sold it for? They probably have their heads in the sand and often, and they’re going to regret this. They’re leaving $300,000 on the table. How many I don’t know it was, they had two children, apparently, no wife probably passed away.
The kids want nothing don’t want to deal with it. They came along is what I hear from the buyer, the caretaker told him that the kids, said, no, we don’t want anything. They’re not interested. So the only thing they have to deal with is a single DocuSign.
you need them engaged for somewhere between 30 and 45 seconds. That’s it now, while you’re, when you make contact, I would recommend finding them in person. If you can have this conversation face to face figure out what their situation is, why they put their head in the sand. Is there anything they need?
And then try to lead with a $300,000 offer, because if they don’t want anything, you’re not taking anything from them. You’re just getting your buyer one hell of a deal, right? Yes. And then if they want something, figure out what that is. Find the middle ground. If you get it for 500,000 in this market, that’s still a great deal for your buyer, right?

It is. It is. And Chad it’s got even better. So the deceased person owns a condo too. I figured it out, which is also, in pre-foreclosure. And it was a rental property. So this person’s primary residence is a tax address, and the condo is his house. So actually is there is condos are as well.
Um, Probably. I don’t know, probably rented and it’s worth maybe two 50 ish or something like that. That is a, maybe a 40 K delinquency on set and penalties and things. Different lien holders, I was thinking why don’t I buy it and flip it? I think that’s good.
You should buy it, hold it for 13 months and then flip it and pay capital gains. You already have a tenant, so if you can buy it, let it ride for 13 months and then cycle your tenant through and then do your fix and flip and you’ll pay 20% capital gains versus earned income tax.
Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. We’ve coined that the slow flip. Okay. you’re insanely more profitable. If you can bank inventory like that for a year, then you pay long-term capital gains versus earned income. Yeah. I would use a title on that one too, to see. And then should I, for most properties, should I contact the bank right away? Until you have the authorization to release they won’t talk to you. Get your hands on an authorization to release. Any short sale agents on Oahu, they’ll hand you one, but when you meet with the family, have them sign the authorization to release, and you may need to connect that chain of title with a death certificate showing that the borrower’s deceased and the authorization to release was signed by the heirs and the line of succession.
Then you can talk to them and order your payoff statement and, know that the real numbers. Yeah, it makes sense. Okay. So get that, get the auditory release, perhaps have the heir the immediate family rights, somebody signed. So is that what we, the children?
Yeah. So there was no will correct. No will. So what you need is the loan number for each of the loans you need the borrower’s full name and you, and that goes on the authorization to release and what you’ll have you’ll sign, you’ll have the children sign as the authority, and then you’ll have to show them a death certificate and, prove that person had the authority to release information on that particular loan.

Yeah, these can be frustrating. Like when they’re, when they stick their head in the sand and they don’t want to participate at all, they can’t always be done. You might still be going, you need to have a contingency plan to be at the courthouse steps as a proxy for your buyer. Okay.
And so if they don’t sign, by the way, are you familiar with that process and a wahoo. Oh, that’s what I wanted. I wanted to look at some fun homework, pull up the newspaper, look for the next substitute trustee sale. And I want you to attend it. I want you to go and practice. You need to get a read on what happens there, how fast it happens, how many books, how many bitters were there, like in case you end up being the real estate agent bidding on behalf of your client at the auction.
I don’t want you to be nervous. I want you to be confident. So they’re going to authorize you to give you 10% down in cashier’s checks and you’re there trying to get it for as low as possible. I want you to be familiar with that. Not intimidated by that. If it comes down to that, it’s a great way to meet investors too, by the way.
So we’re going to kill two birds with one stone on this homework. Okay. So while you’re there, you’re going to let them know, Hey, I’m here because I, find deals in probate all the time. I’m going to be bidding for one of my buyers. What if I were here bidding for.
Wouldn’t you rather be doing something better today? Yeah. It’s December north shore is going off. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That’s an exciting one. I’m excited. I hope they’re willing to talk with you. I would try to do it in person. Are they Hawaii? It sounds like yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So show up with some fruit. And some Musabi thank them. Some spam Musabi bento box. Okay.
Thank you so much. Thank you so very much. Good luck with that one. Let us know how it goes.

David. Thanks for patiently waiting. How can we help you today? Hey Chad, my condolences on your father, and um, the bill did a great job while you were gone. I was I’ve joined recently two weeks ago. Also joined All the Leads same time. And so but we live in a small town, rural community. We had 22 from the first month, and then this month just came in a few days ago and there were 11. So you can see I’m in a small area here. We have a town about 30 minutes away, and they’re not online by the way our local one is so I can go pull what I need off the local but the other town, 30 miles away, there’s probably going to be, five and then another 45 minutes away.
There’s probably going to be five or 10. Is that enough to work with, is that am I wasting my time working with that too few leads? So Rodger Lecy, Rodger averages about 30 leads a month.
And Northwest Arkansas, he gets three to five closings a month. the one that I point to the potential in secondary and tertiary communities, rural communities he takes it very seriously. He provides as much value as he can. He’s pulling sometimes as much as half a dozen deals out of 30 leads a month, I’ve got lots of stories like this.
There was a lady, one of our original subscribers. I never thought we’d sell a county with two leads because we have a minimum of 200 bucks. Cause we have to pay mileage and researcher fees and all that. She bought Wrightsville beach, whatever county Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina was in two leads.
She was like, I don’t give a damn I get them both. Every month! Sorry. She was two for two. Now what I’ll say is when you’re in these smaller communities with lower lead counts, aggressive marketing is not as important as building good referral relationships. you’ve got a great opportunity to impress the hell out of the handful of probate attorneys.
There’s probably one or two guys that are handling all those. You need to take them pig hunting. You need to, give them boot polishing coupons make an impression, find a way to provide value to those guys.
It’s likely in a community that small, you won’t even need to be do You can just wait for referrals. That’s what Roger found about a year in. He ended up with all of the divorce cases and that whole town, he ended up with the probates, the attorneys called him to testify in court as a real estate professional.
They give him all of the business that they get because they trust he’s going to do the right thing for the families. And that’s the beautiful part about rural communities. People come to you with the deals. So you’re probably not going to have to worry too much about lead gathering and marketing and stuffing letters.
And give it a shot this first time and if it’s super easy in the county with 33, that’s worth subscribing and doing, but in those counties that have two to 10 leads, don’t pay 200 bucks for that take your 200 bucks and, do something to impress those attorneys.
Okay, very good.

Another question. My son does cold calling calls about a hundred folks a day. And he ran across someone who said that their neighbor’s home had been vacant for, they said 20 years. So he did his homework, found out who to contact through that.
Long story short, he talked to the daughter today. Who’s in town, two hours away. And her mother lived in that home passed away 10 years ago. So it’s been vacant for 10 years. But when she passed away in 2011 it’s got a series of things that it went through and it got to this 2013 of some notices and had inventory past due inventory and notice of beneficiaries past due uh, and a couple more. And I’m just wondering what’s happening there.
So that might help me in communicating with her This is a great way for you to get to know a probate attorney. What I would do is reach out to a probate attorney that you haven’t met yet. Who’s, who’s in that county and say, listen could you help me interpret this and I’ll do everything I can to wrangle her back to you for representation it’s a great education opportunity for you to get familiar with your local process. And then it’s a great way to create a relationship with him by showing them, you’re gonna get the referral.
She applied for probate but never closed. Why is this my question? The lady who’s the attorney on here on the records from the beginning as I can see it handles 90% of the probates in ours. And I believe she does quite a few in the surrounding counties. It appears that the daughter must have had some contact with her because she’s paid him $300 fees for filing things. 20 11, 12, and 16. Lynn is the attorney Lynn limo. Yeah. Okay. How would you phrase the conversation with Lynn if I want to start to get to know her? And I think what I would say is, Hey, Lynn I found a schedule of events from December of 2011 to now it looks like you’ve been working on this case for a decade. I think maybe I’m going to be able to help you out.
Would you have time to have a cup of coffee with me? And I would sit down and just say, listen, my, my son was calling someone and ended up talking to her, found out about this. what’s your outcome? Do you want to buy the house? No. I would like to list the home as a realtor.
Yep. Okay. And just say, we spoke to the heir and she said she has an interest in selling, but it looks like she’s been stuck in the mud for the last decade. What can I do to help you move this case along and get it closed out? How can I be, how can I be of value to you?
Isn’t that contrary to attorneys? They try to stretch them as long as they can. So they got 10 years out of it. Maybe she is done with it. Okay. No, that’s good advice. Yeah. I was just, I was wondering what a good little approach might be for, but yeah. And she’s the one I need to get to know since she’s handling most of them.
Yeah. I appreciate it. Thank you. Cool. Thanks for being here, David. Good luck. Thank you,

Dan. The man, how are you? How’s everybody doing Sorry about your dad. Well, real quick. One is to Stephanie. I don’t know why she keeps getting these conundrums. Um, What I found locally here, Sarasota is automated pretty much with a computer.
And if I recall she’s also a realtor. I went down to the clerk and I told them that I was interested in probates, who I was. And I said that I was a realtor. And I signed up for what is called an authorized user, which gives me another bit of a level of access to the public files. So some of the deeds may be listed in some of those places too, where it’s just going to be a click away for people to have a shortcut.
And as they’re looking at properties, they can look at some more information, referenced the mortgage and the deed itself. I don’t know if all the automated counties have those available, but you have to make that because they took a picture of my license and they had to set up and approve a password for me.
So maybe that’ll help with some preliminary research. My question is I took your course. But I took it. When you were with all the leads, it’s been quite sometime now. And you mentioned something about letters. I never got an example of letters even back then. I haven’t done heavy mailing, but I would like to start trying.
So where would I get or do I have to go back to all the leads and figure out if I have access to that? No, it’s in the course, you have a Thinkific log-in have you, do you have a login for the digital course? If you go to probate mastery.com and click login, have you ever done that?
No. ‘ ‘cause I didn’t know that those transferred. I didn’t know how that works. We need to do is we need to get you the coupon code. The course is free for you. You’ve already paid for it, Tom can you make a note and send Dan a coupon code for an alumni course and email it to him.
Dan, I’m sorry, your last name? Ivan is a good Irish name. You get something set up for you
so well you’ll get a Tom will send you an email, Dan, and there’s a code in there that you put in and it’ll give you a $500 discount, and then you’ll sign up for a Thinkific account. And there you can go through the course at your own pace anytime. There are reading lists, there are other handouts.
There’s a lot of there’s stuff in there that I had developed after I digitize the course, like the reading list, the mind maps, you probably remember me screen sharing, showing mind maps and things. Look under each of the modules. You see handouts and links and things.
I appreciate that. And sorry, you have to find out the FEMA reimbursement for the funerals the way you did, but I’m going to get on the horn and I’m going to call all of my connections attorneys, even the probate attorneys that I deal with, the lawyers and the nursing homes as well.
Some of those sales directors, and I’ll try to touch base and give them that information I like to think I’m relatively well informed. I also made a contact with a funeral home director as well, so that would probably be beneficial for them. They’ll tell their clients as well. And the funeral director here did not, was not aware.
I’m going to drop a link. In the chat. I’ll drop the link here for everybody. This is the site. The only reason we know about it is a neighboring farmer had learned about it and gotten it for one of their family members. And I was like, eh, come on. I’ve never heard of that. Sure enough. All right.
So, I like how you’re thinking outside of the box like I’ll challenge each of you guys, how many people don’t know about this, that you can be the one that gets the social credit for bringing to them, and how big of an impact is $9,000 make for the average. Like it’s a big deal and until the money runs out, there’s no timeline on it. So even if they lost a family member last year, if the death certificate has COVID on it, they are eligible and it will cover the services. It’ll cover transport. It covers the casket, the headstone, everything up to 9,000 of our guys just passed at the Sheriff’s office just three weeks ago and I’ll reach out and see if I can help them with that too.
Thank you so much. Have a good day. Thanks, Dan. All right guys. As it turns out, I still do know how to do this. I was wondering, I guess it’s like riding a bike. Michael, I read through the comments. I almost forgot you there, man. You didn’t raise your hand, but I think you had something you wanted to share.
Sure. I don’t seem to have the hand in my interface oh, I don’t know why that is. You’ve got to earn it as your first call. You’ll get your hand later all right. Thank you.

So I just finished the coursework, fantastic, I loved it. The things that occurred to me, and this is a branding question.
So I’ve paid to set up a website for a web presence for my business. And the gentleman who was consulting with me suggested that for the benefit of SEO, that the name should have the word buys houses in it. Like all the, there are a lot of cheesy websites out there like that. And I don’t think that’s compatible with the messaging that fits this line of work.
I guess two questions I would have would be people who are in probate. Do they even go online to look for probate-related resources or do they just have people reach out to them? Is it even productive to try to engineer a website so that they find it? It’s very difficult. If you look at search volume, like you can use tools like SEM rush there’s virtually zero search traffic for probate services, probate information.
You’re stepping into a blue ocean niche. People don’t know it exists. So you’re better off spending your online efforts building a Facebook community that offers real value to these people. What if you find your local regional FEMA rep and have them be a guest on a live video and a community Facebook group, and explain all the ins and outs of a FEMA COVID funeral assistance and what that means for families.
Facebook is a great interruptive device that has found its tentacles in almost everybody’s life. To reach them in the places where they already are. They’re not out Googling who can help me with probate. They’re thinking, what the fuck is probate and where do I even start?
They’re not that far along. So it’s to try to build SEO on a new probate website, if you build it, they will come. Why not be a little more direct than take the lower hanging fruit? So I would rather see you spend your online efforts on building a valuable community, for the folks going through this.
So get probate attorneys, get nursing home get Medicaid employees to get somebody from social security. There are so many questions and this is the stuff like I’ve spent most of my time just sitting in my mom’s kitchen making sure when she has the next breakdown, I’m here to help her through it.
And it’s social security checks. It’s insurance, it’s car insurance, health insurance, farm insurance. There are just so many little things. So you can get all of these people from your community to come and participate and make them admins in the groups. This is not my group. This is our group.
I’ll make you an admin please don’t come in there with commission breath, just trying to sell, bring value, but we will, as a group, curate a community for people in transition in our community. You’re going to get a lot more rewards for your effort.
As far as what is your business model or brokerage investment? Both. After your course, I’m going to resume my work towards a license, but it’s been investor-based. So that one 10th you just described is what I’ve been looking for. Okay. And what are you just looking to wholesale or are you doing fix and flip?
What’s your strategy? Acquisitions for myself and the wholesaling the rest. Okay. So you’re a buying hold like your landlord. Okay. So with that in mind, if I had a website, if it were a website that was designed for probate, is it weird if someone who is not in probate, but is going through foreclosure, could find resources.
No. I mean what you’ll find. So here’s what I found with websites. I can build WordPress sites. And in 2013, I threw up a page on my work, my core website, which was a general brokerage website. Also had an investment website, two separate brands. Um, When I threw that page up, I bought a domain. It was sold your probate home.com I think is what uh, I had.
And I just made a domain redirect to that page on my core website and what I found using Jetpack analytics and using Google analytics is if I would send a hundred letters, I would usually get 50 to 60 web hits. I could tell you when the mailman was walking down the street. And what that told me a lot of it was mobile traffic. They opened the mail, they grabbed their phone. They typed in a very simple URL, a domain, and they landed on that page. Now I got almost no calls. Uh, Immediately, like I would sit and watch them in real-time. I knew they were looking at the site. It would be between a week and two years before they would call me.
But when they did it was come back, come list. That kind of call. So the website is not going to be a conversion machine. They’re not going to find you through search website is a credibility piece. To find a really simple domain that’s relevant to them in making a standalone site, or just hosted as a page on a site that you already own, make a landing page and redirect it to that page.
If you don’t want to host a few sites, are you in all the leads subscribers? I’m working towards it. Yeah. Okay. There, I’m planning to be, so it’s 199 bucks to fully customize, like fonts, colors, everything pages, and then $39 a month is all your hosting and every, your web admin.
So you can point your probate traffic to that, and then just keep pointing your other, we buy houses, messaging point that to your core investor site. It’s sometimes a pain to manage multiple websites, but when you have vendors, you’re not really gonna be doing anything anyways.
But it’s there for a credibility piece. Now make sure that on your homepage, you invite them from that website to the community Facebook group that you’re building, because that’s where the real value is going to be for them, not in some generic web copy. Okay, great. Thank you. Yep. Come back, we’ll talk about that, those ideas more like you can do a single page, just a single page website, like a Wix website and point them there go to, probate.com to learn more, to get the login info for a community call every Wednesday at 8:00 PM and get them on that page.
Let them register for the webinar right there. And boom, you got your lead. They’re getting something of value, wait until after the webinar to call them and call and just say, Hey, it was great to see you there the other night. I’m just wanting to make sure that, you got what you came for.
Do you feel like that was a good use of your time and are you coming back next week and touching base with them and just starting that conversation. Don’t jump in with a Hey, I know somebody died you ready to sell that house. Cause that’s what your, that’s what your competition is doing. So find ways to provide value and then start the conversation that way.
yeah, man, welcome to the niche. Come back and we’ll refine it as we go.
All right guys, while we’re at four 18, I’m going to run and go buy a farm out of probate before it goes into foreclosure. It was good to see all of you guys again and hopefully, I’ll see you next week.