The Smart Way of Generating Real Estate Probate Leads

How Does Probate Real Estate Work and How Is It Handled

You may have realized that probate real estate (leads) can be more complex than other real estate niches.

It can be time-consuming and complicated, and for the same reason, often, an attorney is required.

According to my research and the attorney from this video, the process usually works like this.

During a probate process, an attorney runs into a piece of real estate, sometimes multiple, that requires a legal title to be transferred.

For other assets, there may be a bit more wiggle room in how it is transferred, but not in the case of real estate.

Here the court needs to get involved, and a realtor needs to get rid of the property.

Also, the property can’t be sold on day one when someone passes away. 

Instead, you need to wait until the middle of the process.

And it can be months before the judge gives the green light.

You, as a realtor, will also need letters of authority.

These letters allow you to sell the property and sign the title work and/or other things that need to be signed to sell the property.

Depending on the county, on whether someone contests and other issues, the judge might need to approve the sale of the property.

So you, as a real estate professional, will need to be good in terms of expectation management of potential buyers regarding time frames.

Potential delays may also be an issue for real estate investors.

This video is from an experienced probate investor and realtor.

I heard in it that you may make a down payment of $10,000 on probate property in California and may have to wait a year until the deal can be closed.

How to Generate (Find) Probate Real Estate Leads As a Realtor and/or Investor

How you generate (find) probate real estate leads as a realtor or investor is similar to divorce leads (you can read my article here).

Typically, the leads (easy to forget that’s real people sometimes) you are targeting pass through a mix of strong emotions and often conflicting feelings.

So when interacting with them, you may not come across as persuasive when you are not the empathic type. (that’s actually a general sales situation disadvantage).

Similar to the divorce real estate niche, you do not only sell your services to seller prospects but when you aim for referral leads, even more so to probate attorneys.

The lead generation strategy can go the B2B (targeting probate attorneys) and/or the B2C route (targeting potential heirs directly).

Going the B2B Lead Generation Route for Probates, and Why It’s Likely Better

You get into referral marketing when you go the B2B lead generation route for probate properties.

So you will target attorneys specialized in probates and/or estate planning.

By doing that, you slightly piggyback on their reputation in the probate and estate planning market.

The best way to approach them is to remember the rules for referral marketing I discussed in my article “How to Crush it with Real Estate Referrals for More Profits.”

You can target those potential referral partners via all the major types of lead generation and marketing methods, such as a paid and unpaid outbound, a paid and unpaid inbound approach, your database, and referral partners.

However, to follow the rules of referral marketing, you must be a value provider to potential referral partners you want to acquire.

And which lead generation approach is best suited for that? It’s paid and unpaid inbound lead generation.

Ideally, it’s a combination of inbound and outbound marketing. How so?

The inbound approach, such as content marketing via different communication channels (webinars, whitepapers, articles on your blog, videos, etc.), can establish you as an expert on the probate topic in your neighborhood.

After doing this for a while, you are better positioned to use an outbound approach (e.g., cold calls, personal drop-byes, etc.) to contact the potential attorneys with a higher success rate.

They may have already come across you via the content you have provided.

In contrast, a real estate professional without inbound marketing will have a weaker position when doing just outbound marketing to get probate attorneys as referral partners.

Five Practical Ideas for the B2B Referral Approach:

• Posting probate content on social media such as LinkedIn and Facebook for a selected group of probate attorneys you added as contacts and segmented before.
• You can often get probate attorneys’ email addresses for direct outreach via the state’s bar association membership directory. If not, you can do direct LinkedIn outreach.
• By hiring probate attorneys for what they do, you can circumvent gatekeepers.
• Cold-call them and say, “I am a probate-specialized realtor/investor, and maybe we can talk about how I could make your job easier.”
• Personal visits at the offices with goodies (e.g., cookies) for gatekeepers and paralegals

I also researched the probate attorney’s perspective, including problems, pain points, and wants on this business to give you a little persuasive edge regarding approaching them.

I found two inspiring videos during my research, which I’ll attach at the end of this section.

The summarized probate attorneys’ pain points and needs:

• Probate attorneys are not concerned with who gets a commission or what profit from a deal.
• Real estate professionals (agents and investors) knowledgeable in the probate process can take work off the attorney’s plate when they help sell the house.
• A huge pain point for probate attorneys is to get rid of the properties in question.
• Because of the last point, they look for real estate professionals that can offer the most options to sell a property (realtors, also being investors with knowledge in creative real estate financing likely have an advantage).
• Because of over-promises from certain realtors regarding the sales prices and the risk of causing an expired listing situation, some prefer to recommend their clients to take a wholesale deal instead of listing the property retail (again, they want to get rid of the property fast).
• Probate attorneys want to be kept in the loop concerning the sale of the property.
• Attorneys aren’t allowed to solicit. So, you can provide additional value when promoting their services indirectly (e.g., putting a probate attorney as a trusted partner on your website, doing content marketing together, and organizing and promoting educational events about estate planning with them as your guests).

I also found some contradicting or conflicting information about real estate professionals contacting probate attorneys.

In the videos below, one of the probate attorneys mentions that almost no realtors are contacting him for a partnership.

It contradicts the second video where the attorney mentions that he gets about four weekly calls from real estate professionals.

The two videos…

Another advantage of using the referral B2B approach via probate attorneys is they often also do estate planning.

People doing that are about to downsize, or a new family needs more rooms.

So there are also some opportunities for real estate professionals to get additional seller and buyer leads referred.

The More Time-Consuming Direct Approach for Probate Leads (B2C)

You can theoretically use all lead generation methods to directly target probate leads.

However, the conversion rates and lead quality will depend strongly on when the prospect will see your marketing message in the probate process and how well you can precisely target them.

Sure, you may run a paid outbound campaign via Facebook ads (my article) or Google Search Ads (also my article).

But chances are, they may already be working with a probate attorney who has a better picture of the situation.

This probate attorney may not have referred you to this same probate lead you now got as a direct lead via your campaign because the probate situation isn’t clear yet or the timing is not the best.

So working with a probate attorney helps you filter out low-quality leads. You may get more with a direct approach.

But what about pulling probate contact information and prospecting them directly via an unpaid DIY outbound way?

Regarding targeting, this may be a better direct approach.

If you get the correct email addresses, you could use them even for a custom audience in Facebook Ads.

However, the video below shows how time-consuming gathering proper contact data can be.