Probate Monday #4 – Is Real Estate Involved?

Scott Costello All, Blog, Probate Investing 14 Comments

probate investingProbate Monday #3 – Update

With the help of Jon Zorrer from REITvShow.com, who pointed me to a good friend of his, I was able to get my probate leads.  His friend mines all of New Jersey for probate leads and sells the in counties that he doesn’t invest in.  As luck would have it, he did not invest in Morris County and was happy to sell the leads to me for $97 a month.  A $3 savings from USProbateLeads.com.

This should be a valuable lesson for everyone reading my blog and who has yet to start a blog of their own.  I would never have met Jon if it was not for my blog.   Put yourself out there people, get on Facebook, get on twitter and participate in other’s blogs.  Real estate investing is much easier if you can network and make friends with other people in the business.  You can start by leaving a comment on my blog 🙂

Probate Monday #4 – Is Real Estate Involved?

Now that I have my list of probate leads (will actually come in 10 to 14 days)  it’s time to figure out if they have Real Estate Involved.  Not all probate cases will have Real Estate and unless your intentions are to purchase other assets (cars, electronic equipment, jewelry,etc), then there is no need to mail to the estates that don’t have real property.

* as a side note for those who don’t quite understand the difference between real property and personal property. Real property is real estate (houses, condos, land) while personal property is everything else.  Simple, but thought I’d explain that anyway.

How to find if the decedent owned real estate?

To determine if the deceased owned any property we are going to have to look up the person’s name in the county’s tax assessor’s role.  There are 3 places that I know of were one can locate the tax role…

  1. Online.  If you are lucky, like myself, you’ll be able to do a quick search on your county’s tax boards website.  A great place to find the website if it exists is NetrOnline.com (http://www.netronline.com/town_finder.asp)
  2. Title Company.  They will have access to all the tax records of which they might allow you to look at in exchange for you doing all your closings with them.  Ron Mead does it this way.
  3. Court House.  Trusty old courthouse has everything you’ll need.

Tax Role Lookup Example

One of my probate leads has the following information..

  • Deceased Name:  Glen Smith
  • County died in:  Morris County

On my County’s Tax Assessor’s page I can choose to search by Property Address, Owner Name, Block Lot or Prior Block Lot.

I will choose Search By Owner, then I search All Municipalities for a “Smith, Glen

and I get the results

My Question

Only problem I see right now is, there are multiple Glen Smiths.  Hopefully the probate lead, you have, has a middle name or initial that you can use to help narrow down the list.  Outside of that I’m not sure how else to select the right one.

If I can’t determine which Glen Smith is the deceased, then I’m just going to mail out the letter.   It can’t hurt right?  We are sending it to the Personal Representative’s address anyhow.

Mailing the Letter

If you already have a letter set to send, use that one.  Later in the week I will outline the letter I’m going to be sending so anyone who wants can quickly write up comparable one.

Just remember we are sending the letters to the Personal Representative, not the deceased property.  Although if you did send the mailer to the deceased, it would most likely be forwarded to the PR anyhow.

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    Comments 14

    1. Hi Great post, this is a very lucrative niche to be in not as many investors yet have caught on. However the thing I found was it is extremely time consuming to do all the research, put into excel mail out talk to them etc…

      We started our company to provide leads for investors so they can avoid all of that and eliminate the clock consuming work..

    2. Hey Jarred, glad to see you posting on my blog. How is everything going with you? haven't spoken to you in a while. Jim Eichvalds told me you aren't working for homevestors anymore. What happened?

    3. Hey Scott. I just kind of stumbled onto your site and here. I really like your blog. You give out a lot of good info that I can follow step by step with you. Thanks for putting it out there and keep up the good work! I will definitely keep up with you.

    4. Thanks for the kind words Andrew. We all look forward to hearing about your progress and if you have any questions feel free to post a comment.

    5. Love your blog, Scott. Just requested for your Probate Worksheet. I am just getting started in this business with a group of investors in Northern California. Did bought Ron’s probate course. I know you mentioned you have not bought leads from US Probate Leads, but are you able to give me an ideal what sort of information they give you. That is, will it tell me whether the Probate has real properties and the PR contact information?

      1. Hi Sally! So glad you are enjoying my blog.

        I don’t think I can completely answer your question, but what I can say for certain is that the value in a probate list is the PR’s contact information (at least mailing address) and I am positive that US Probate Leads would provide you with that information.

        My provider does only give me leads with real property, but as for UPL I do not know. I would give them a call and ask them. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help Sally. If you do figure out the answers to your question I’d love to know them as well so i can share that with who ever reads my blog.

      2. Hi Sally! So glad you are enjoying my blog.

        I don’t think I can completely answer your question, but what I can say for certain is that the value in a probate list is the PR’s contact information (at least mailing address) and I am positive that US Probate Leads would provide you with that information.

        My provider does only give me leads with real property, but as for UPL I do not know. I would give them a call and ask them. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help Sally. If you do figure out the answers to your question I’d love to know them as well so i can share that with who ever reads my blog.

      3. Hi Sally! So glad you are enjoying my blog.

        I don’t think I can completely answer your question, but what I can say for certain is that the value in a probate list is the PR’s contact information (at least mailing address) and I am positive that US Probate Leads would provide you with that information.

        My provider does only give me leads with real property, but as for UPL I do not know. I would give them a call and ask them. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help Sally. If you do figure out the answers to your question I’d love to know them as well so i can share that with who ever reads my blog.

    6. Love your blog, Scott. Just requested for your Probate Worksheet. I am just getting started in this business with a group of investors in Northern California. Did bought Ron’s probate course. I know you mentioned you have not bought leads from US Probate Leads, but are you able to give me an ideal what sort of information they give you. That is, will it tell me whether the Probate has real properties and the PR contact information?

    7. Love your blog, Scott. Just requested for your Probate Worksheet. I am just getting started in this business with a group of investors in Northern California. Did bought Ron’s probate course. I know you mentioned you have not bought leads from US Probate Leads, but are you able to give me an ideal what sort of information they give you. That is, will it tell me whether the Probate has real properties and the PR contact information?

    8. Hi Scott, just bought Ron’s book, and happened on your website as well. Thanks for all your input. I look forward to updating you on my journey. I also sent a request for the worksheet download. Thanks again, Andy

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