Master Probate Leads for Easy Real Estate Deals!

Welcome back to the channel, everyone. Today we're going to be talking about how to master getting wholesale deals in real estate through getting probate leads. Let's dive right in. Before we dive into the video, I want to invite you to my Facebook group. It's called Paineless Flipping, like my last name, P-A-Y-N-E. Paineless Flipping on Facebook. And in this free Facebook group, it's a community of wholesalers, other people that want to help you succeed. We do a masterclass, we give you a bunch of free resources.

So go ahead.

Go head on over, sign up, and we'll let you right in, and it will help you grow and succeed. So I want to talk to you about probate leads. Probate leads are an amazing source of getting deals as a real estate investor.

Why?

Because these people need to sell. Now, if you don't know what probate is, it just means that someone has a property. This is all you really need to know. Obviously, we can get more in depth, but basically just means someone has got a property that they need to sell because someone has passed away, and now they're trying to figure out who who owns it, and in order to get it done, they just sell the property, right? It goes through the court process, all that stuff. But you can get probate leads from your county. You can get them for free. But look, instead of me talking about probate and like what it is and explain it, I actually have an expert that I interviewed that does probate, and she actually teaches people how to do probate leads and how to use it as your lead source and your main income, your main leads that you do through mail. Now, this is not something I focus on, but I thought I would give you this, guys, this information for you guys so you guys can learn about it. So let's dive right into this interview. She explains how she started in real estate, you know, several years ago, and now she's crushing it and teaching probate leads. Let's dive right in.

Right now you teach people how to get into probate. So how did— I think it's really interesting if you're a new investor, you can see, okay, you did your first deal, but now you're teaching people how to get their first deals, how to get deals through probate. How did you get there and what do you do right now?

Well, I did it like everybody does it, one, one property at a time. You know, I explored different strategies. I really loved rehabbing, but from a business perspective, it's a lot riskier than wholesaling. And it's, it's Odd to me now to think that I was in this business from 1998 to 2008. And I had never once wholesaled a deal because I, I mean, to me, it just wasn't in my world. But in 2008, when I started wholesaling, at that time, coincidentally, I discovered probate leads. I had never heard of probate leads. And I did not realize that it is, I think, the most valuable lead source on the planet because these people have someone that's passed away. By law, they're going to have to sell the property. It's not a matter of if they're going to sell it, it's when they're going to sell it. And every single month, there's a new group of leads that come out, and you get the opportunity to help these people through a very trying time. And it's an opportunity, they're either going to list the property, or in a lot of cases, it's a distressed property or needs updates, you know, it might have a new roof and brand new windows and orange shag carpet or metal cabinets or some, you know, cosmetically, it's a disaster.

Yeah, we've seen them. They're They can be weird.

Yeah. But so once you learn, and once I started working with probates, there was literally no information. There is very little competition even today. If you think about how much your competition is on the MLS and you think about, well, this in Louisville, maybe they get 20 letters. Let's say they get 30 letters. Guess what? 90% of those people stop mailing on or before the third mailing. So all you've got to do is set up your systems, your direct mail, and this is the way you reach probates. You don't text them. You don't call them because Nathan's somebody's mama, dad. If you work the plan, go the plan, and then they sell, they will sell the property. And it's a great niche.

Yeah. And it sounds like a consistency game, right? Like you said, a lot of people stop after the second and third. And when I was new at wholesaling, I thought you just send out— well, I told you this on when I was on the podcast, on your podcast. I just got a coach and I just sent out all my mail in one hit. And you were like, come on, no. And that's, you know, that's the reaction you gave. That's— but that's what a lot of people think. They think it's just one blast. So kind of tell everybody that's thinking about getting in the mail or that strategy, you know, how to do it correctly?

Well, we'll just use easy math. So my strategy is, uh, you mail everyone every month. So this month, if you put 50 people on your list from probate leads— and this is going to depend on your population of your, your area. So my population here is about a million-ish with the outlying counties, which is pretty small, it's not Chicago, but, um, you're going to get somewhere good leads. Now I filter out the really bad properties and the really high-end properties that are going to be sold on the MLS. So I'm talking mid-range properties. Here you're going to get somewhere between 70, 80 to 100 properties. So let's just say for easy math, you got 100, which you're not going to get that many in this population. You get 100 this month, you get 100 next month. So over the months, if they start dropping off, you might be expected to build a list of about 800 leads. And guess what? You didn't do anything but show up and collect those leads. They just happened. You know, it's, it's a verifiable, steady lead source. And what you do is you mail them every single month. And I use a special letter. It's a low touch, low key letter. And it tells what I do. And it says, basically, I'll be here when you're ready to sell. Very low key. And people love that. There's no aggressiveness involved. There's no getting there first because these people decide to open the estate when they're mentally ready to open the estate. But that's when you know that you can buy the property. When the lead shows up, the probate's been opened, they have raised their hand and said, I'm ready to sell the property.

Wow. So they, they mainly probably call in, correct? Like call back?

Yeah, they'll, they'll call back. And once they've called you or reached out to you, they could, they could even reach out through your website. So you should definitely have your phone number on there. If you're going to work probates, you need a probate page on your website that says, you know, this is what I do. But once they have called you, then you can feel free to call them or text them or reach out that way. But it's just, they do, they feel you've disrespected them if they've had a death in the family and you just knock on their door or you pick up the phone. You can kind of see that.

Of course, right?

You're not going to win any points. But remember that in direct mail, 81% of your deals, not your calls, your deals will come at or beyond your 5th mailing. Like I said, most people quit mailing at or before the third mailing.

So I'm a result.

I'm— that's what I did.

Yeah. You just got to stay in the game and you don't need this gigantic list. You need consistency. You need a consistent message, a consistent brand, and you have to be there to be of service to people. And they love it.

So tell me about the consistency aspect. Is it 12? Would you do it every month for 12 times for a year? Or at what point do you stop? Because you say people stop after 3. What?

No, no, don't you? In general, probates in this day and age will probably be settled. The probate will be settled in 12, 14, 15 months. So as long as they're on the list, they haven't listed the property, it's not sold, I mail everyone every month as long as the property's available.

And you verify if it's still available by— do you cross-check those to see if any of them are listed?

Every few months, ever. Initially, we just mail out and people will say, you know, I've got the property listed. They'll call you back and say it's listed. You could go that step and verify each one, but Nathan, they're going to self-select out. You would waste so much time rather than sending those 100 letters. And, you know, you should send a letter, not a postcard, of course, because again, what are they going to think if you say, oh, I'm contacting you about your property that's part of an estate? They're just not going to like it.

Yeah, that makes sense. So when you're sending out this mail— so I used to go to the county when I first started, and I would go and pull the records, and there would be— I think there'd be executors, right, of this, this day. And then there was a— I can't I can't remember who else was on there. There's executors and everybody else that's not. What do they call that?

The heirs. The heirs.

The heirs.

Okay.

So one thing that we kind of— I struggled with when I was trying to figure out this was which one do you mail? Do you mail the executor because that's the one that's making the decision, or do you mail the home that's potentially no one's living there?

No, I can tell you, you mail the— you mail the executor, the personal representative, as they're called. They are the decision maker. As part of the probate process, the court will give this person a formal paperwork that's called the letters of testamentary, and will say John Doe named Nathan Payne in the will to be his executor, or in the absence of a will, the judge will look to who is the logical person. Is it a spouse? Is it a child? And that person will be appointed the administrator. That person jointly is called the personal representative, either side, it doesn't matter. They have the same rights and responsibilities under the law, but that is the only person that can sign a real estate contract. The heir could be the executor, but not necessarily. And I did a test mailing the executor and heirs and it was a big waste of money. The executor is the, is the decision maker. And you really only need 4 pieces of information to work in probates. The name and address of the deceased, that's the property you'd be buying, and the name and address of the executor. That's it. You don't need case numbers, all this other stuff. You just don't.

So it sounds like consistency, emailing the right person and getting the right records. So let's talk about that because in Utah, that's not like a list that you can pull off of any of these other services that's that accurate. Maybe you'll get the information a lot later,, but you have to actually go to the county here for like Salt Lake to get probate. Is that the case where you are and what you, what you teach? You see a lot of people have to actually go and get it, or how's that?

Yes, but that's been that way, Nathan. There are over 3,300 counties in the US and each county has a different process. Some counties are online and in my area they were always in the newspaper, which I thought was terribly old-fashioned, but guess what? It had all 4 pieces of information that you needed. So I will say this to you. Every week they're opening up new counties that are going online. Counties like mine that were never online are now— you can get the leads online. So don't give up on that one. That's a rapidly changing thing. But you never want to have to go to the courthouse because it's not scalable unless you get somebody to do it for you.

Exactly. That's— that was kind of the difficult thing. We'd go— well, this was like 5 years ago, right, when I was doing it. I'd go, and then eventually we did get the login. I think you had to pay a certain amount and qualify for, like, to have access to that. So let me ask you this. Are— do you Are you a proponent for, you know, let's— I live in Utah, but are you saying like maybe I could do Kentucky as well? I could just get that information, or Arizona or something else? Or do you recommend— how do you recommend someone going about that if they want to do probate?

Well, I think if you're a beginner, you need to invest in your own backyard because you know where the streets are, the neighborhoods are, and that's where you gain your experience and you become safe. You become a safe— you know, it's safe for you to invest. Once you have mastered all of that, it's not my thing to invest in other areas, but I know people that do it very successfully. But you have to have agents, you have to have people and boots on the ground. You have to have a team in place. And like I said, I know, I know someone that's in Barcelona, Spain that invests here in the US, but he grew up here in the US.

You know, I think that's such a powerful lead source that, you know, a lot of people, maybe because it's a little harder to access, or you got to jump through some hoops, they're just like, let me just grab something else. Let me grab another list. But you're right, every month. So let's do an example. I get a probate list from the county, I have access to it, I pull it, then I mail it and I put it into a campaign that mails it for 12 to 15 months consistently. And as people call me back saying, take me off, we take that mailer off. Is that kind of the workflow? But you're sending letters and not postcards?

Yes, I have a mail merge ready template over on the Louisville Gals Real Estate blog. There's a, there's a freebie over there called the Probate Investing Starter Kit, and I'll give you a direct link for that. And yeah, it's a mail merge. They can go to probateinvestingsimplified.com. Um, forward slash starter kit.

Okay, let me, let me type that in there for the comment section just to make sure I got it right. So say it one more time, Sharon.

probateinvestingsimplified.com/starterkit. So I had— there's a letter in there, I have a graphic of the entire probate process. It tells you what happens as the estate is opened. Now there's a little— there are little differences between states, but that's pretty much the straight line process. And then I explained some of the terminology and the processes in there. It's completely free, you can get that. But so you would get your And what the process we always had is real quick. And my daughter worked with me, she would go through the, she would go through the leads on the tax assessor site. And she would go yes, yes, yes, heck no, yes, yes, no. That was the sorting process. She literally went through it in an hour or two. So right away, that's how you got rid of initially, you got your list down to properties that you would actually want to buy.

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