- Probate is the often-overlooked place to find highly motivated sellers
- Baby boomers are passing the majority of their wealth to the next generation in the form of real estate
- To get more listings, you must take more action
Where can I find more listings? This is the question all agents ask themselves sooner or later. If an agent is unable to answer this one question, his or her career is in jeopardy.
Working expired listings or FSBOs and farming neighborhoods does produce results, but the competition for these listings can be fierce. The secret is to find a group of sellers who are highly motivated and have not been approached by as many agents to list their property.
Just because there is less competition does not mean there will be less work. This simply means your labor will be rewarded in a larger way. If you are looking to find more listings, then the following is the answer you have been searching for.
Inherited properties
The baby boomer generation ranges in age from 52 to 71 years old. The wealth of this generation is being passed to the next generation at an ever-increasing pace each and every day.
A large part of the passing of this wealth is in the form of real estate. What will the inheritors do with most of this real estate? They will sell it. This creates a huge opportunity for agents to provide their services to a motivated seller.
Where to find the leads early
Almost all estates go through probate. Probate is the court-supervised distribution of the estate’s assets. A personal representative, administrator or executor will be appointed by the court to oversee the settlement of the estate. The court will give him or her the right to pay any outstanding debts and make decisions about the sale of any of the estate’s assets.
This gives the personal representative the ability to list any property owned by the estate. He or she is whom you should contact, and his contact information is available on the probate filings related to the estate.
The probate filings for each case will be filed at the county courthouse in the probate section of public records. A trip to the courthouse and a request to the clerk of court’s office for probate cases will give you access to the details of the estate.
Although I would suggest going to the courthouse to gather the information for yourself in the beginning, this information is also available through companies such as U.S. Probate Leads.
How to reach out to leads
Just like any other lead, put yourself in the shoes of the personal representative. Many times it’s a family member who might be grieving the loss of his loved one on top of the responsibility of settling the estate.
He or she often lives out of the area and knows very few people where the estate is being settled. Ask yourself what you would want or need if you were in their position.
My eyes were opened to this market when my wife’s mom passed away in another state. We did not know a single person in the city where she lived. We worried about being taken advantage of due to a lack of information. We wanted a point of contact, and we wanted information.
Become the information source for the personal representative. Offer to give them a market analysis. Provide them with a list of service providers in the area including landscapers, house cleaning companies and so on. The more helpful and professional you are, the more likely you are to get the business.
Follow-up is the key. Settling an estate is a process, and your ability to make consistent contact with the personal representative will pay huge dividends. Understand that the normal process includes five to seven (or more) contacts before seeing any results. Be persistent.
Most of these homes will be listed and sold at some point. The question is whether you will be top-of-mind when they make the decision to sell.
Take action to get results
Probate properties offer an unlimited number of leads. The number of leads is irrelevant, however, unless you take action. Go to the courthouse. Gather the information. Make consistent contact, and you will list probate properties.
To get more listings, you must take more action. The power plant doesn’t have power. It produces it. Top producers don’t have listings. They produce them.
Still not sure how to make contact with the personal representative? Click here to gain access to the three-letter sequence I use in my business that you can start using immediately to generate probate listings.
Jimmy Burgess is the founder of Real Estate Sales Machine. Follow him onTwitter.
