Probate Mastermind Podcast

Getting Past The Receptionist | Should You Change Your Intro For Recent Date of Death? Episode #333

June 25, 2021 Bruce Hill and Jim Sullivan Episode 333
Probate Mastermind Podcast
Getting Past The Receptionist | Should You Change Your Intro For Recent Date of Death? Episode #333
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Episode Topics:
00:00 Introductions
12:33 Getting Past The Receptionist
23:22 What To Say When The Death Occurred Recently
33:57 Probate In Texas
37:56 Pete Double-Ends a Deal Referred by A Probate Contact
42:03 Hoarder House With A Reverse Mortgage?!
47:25 Buying Personal Property From A Seller






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Welcome to our inevitable agents and investors from across the country. Today is June 24th, 2021. And this is mastermind podcast, number 333. I do have, I'm going to turn it over to Bruce briefly and he can recap what's new with our new programs, plural. I did have two announcements I wanted to make I think you all know if you don't, you should know that we have almost spent on a daily basis. We have companies services approach us. They want to pitch to our subscribers and we never give away or sell your information. But we do look at everything or most of what comes in and occasionally we will recommend. Something to you that we've pretty much vetted. And we think is worthwhile one of those I mentioned last week and I made a mistake in the announcement. I mentioned navigator capital, which is, we encourage all of you to be. Realtors and investors and navigator capital is one of the easiest to use best interest rate programs I've ever seen. If you, even if you're a novice investor, you can borrow up to 90%. Of the sales price, including repairs and the interest rate, depending on your level of experience starts about eight, eight and a half percent. And it can go up to 12, but if you're an experienced investor, you can get an 8% hard money loan with great terms. And when I mentioned them last week, I said that they were nationwide. A few of you checked and called me out on that. So I wanted to make you aware. They do business everywhere except California, Oregon, Washington. Hawaii, Alaska, Arizona, Montana, north and South Dakota. So if you're in one of the 45 remaining states we highly recommend you go give those guys a call. If you whether you're a seasoned investor, you want to, you're a wannabe investor. It's a great company and we recommend them highly. Another a win that two members of our sales team found this week. I, I know. Have heard me mentioned that when I buy an investment property, I'll usually just get Lloyd's of London or I'll get one of the easy companies. Cause it's a hassle to get all the inspections and everything done that the major insurance carriers require. And sometimes the house isn't in good enough shape. Two members of our sales team, husband and wife were buying a house and they called me this week and said, geez, we may not be able to buy it because the house needs a new roof. We bought it as is. The seller is not going to put on a roof and we don't want to put a roof on and have them refuse to close. Anyway, they did their due diligence and they found a company that will do competitive rates, like state, farm, and Allstate. And they will give comprehensive insurance without inspections. And that is. They are nationwide and that is farmer's insurance. Now just to clarify, you can't call them and say, the house needs a new roof. I want to get insurance. What they do is they will go ahead and close and give you 30 days to produce satisfactory inspections. So if you're an investor and you've got a house that needs rehabbing, as long as you can get it to them. Of being able to pass, minimum inspections within 30 days, you can get some really reasonable insurance and then do your inspections, after the 30 day mark. So I thought those were both well worth mentioning. Bruce, I will turn it over to you. Bruce had just been sitting on his hands since he announced our new programs. Last week. You want to bring everybody up to up-to-date Bruce? Yes. Sure. I've greatly appreciated and been a little bit humbled by the response I expected maybe a third of the response that we got. So obviously we've had really amazing response to folks that are interested in wanting more information and now signing. For the program. Truth is I thought that I'd get a bunch of interest and maybe a third of everyone that came through would sign up. And honestly, I grossly underestimated that it's been around 80% of everyone. Who's learned a little bit more about it once the sign up. And to clarify what we're doing. Cause this was not very clear. Last week we were putting the final touches on this. Essentially we are acting as your third party HR company where we are handling the hire. The training, the oversight, the coaching the compiling of the hours, we're handling all of that on behalf of our clients. And in this case, hopefully our, all the leads client. And and then we're handing you an independent contractor that, has been vetted, trained up and qualified by us. And we're giving them to you and you were paying them as an independent contractor on your dime. So we're just turning over the their hours to you. We do recommend a certain price range and depending on whether their internet. So I eat from the Philippines or domestic from the us we're recommending different pay grades, but that our goal is to have US-based ISA and Philippines based ISS. And man they're doing a great job. I've got a couple of groups in training right now. So at this point, anybody that signs up is going to be looking at two to three weeks. And then what you do with you would just pay us a bi-weekly management fee to maintain and keep your ISA trained and overseen at that point. Great program. We're super excited about it. Go ahead. Yeah. What I was going to say is that one of the things I think that I was asked as well, and I wanted to clarify this also is. Yes, we're handing them back to you and they become, of course your folks and you're responsible for them and you have that independent contractor relationship with them. And in addition to that, while Bruce is very clear in that we're going to handle the training and make sure that they know what to say when to say it how best to do all of that. You get to set the objective, you get to. Make the determination about the very specific things that you do want them to do that you don't want them to do? It's not a one size fits all the program here is that this is going to be customized to fit your needs. And we certainly realized that each of you is different and you have different things that you want to focus on in your marketplace. And there are things you may want to offer, not wanting. In regards to the services and things like that, that we recommend. So it's that kind of stuff. I think that's important. And you just need to make, be aware that you're going to be fully responsible for being able to make the choices that you make. And you've got full control to do what you want. We just provide them with all the capabilities to implement whatever you want them to do. Perfect. And two things just wanted to clarify Bruce. We've had a few people call the sales team and say, where's that link that I can go sign up. And I think it's purposeful that you did not offer that at this point. Just getting the program started. I think I understand correctly. You want to qualify the people's expectations and talk to them personally before you signed them up. Is that you still have the bandwidth to do that? Or how do you feel about that at this point? Okay. What we're doing and just so everyone knows what we're doing is we're doing a couple of group calls each week on zoom. Very similar to the foundations class, very similar to the, all the leads, orientation, where there's going to be several people on each one of those calls. And I do at this point, have a link that you guys can go to and fill out a very quick questionnaire. The sales team is going to get that today. I think they already have it. So there's a link that they can give you. It's just five questions about who you are, what market you're in to make sure that we're not double-booking market and what you want out of your business. And and then we would invite you into a little group Q and a session where I lay out the basics of the program, including pricing. Including objectives. Tim was a hundred percent accurate that this is your employee. You get to call the shots. I highly advise most people to stick with some of the scripts and training and dialogue techniques that I've taught the ifs. But you do have yeah. A latitude to be able to make some adjustments to those as well. So at this point, all you do is sign up with the link call the sales team. They'll give you a signup link to at least get onto my list of someone that needs to have a conversation. And and then I'll give you a zoom link and you guys can join one of the group Q and a sessions that I run each week. Perfect. The other thing, Bruce, that I just wanted to comment. I, when they, first we started talking about this, I thought, okay. It's primarily going to be for the people that just won't pick up the phone. And I have been pleasantly surprised that a couple of our first people that signed up people like Joe layman are prolific prospectors, but they are so busy that they're allowing these ISA to call the herd, to take hundreds of leads and narrow it down to the 15 or 20 or 25 that are worth talking to. So it's interesting. It it's not just, if you're not going to prospect it, it can be used to narrow the range of who you talk to and make you a lot more efficient, even if you're a good prospect or yep. That's right. Yep. So this is one of the big things is I'm going to be talking with a lot of you folks and hopefully being able to offer this keeps keeps you, makes you guys more effective, more productive, and ultimately. Gives you the bandwidth to back into your schedule where you can have better conversations with better qualified leads. But I don't ever want anyone to use this as that crutch in your business. That keeps you off of the phone. If at anything or if it only does one thing, it should get most of you on the phone, more often with more qualified people. So please continue to improve yourself, improve your skills and improve your dialog technique. And I hesitate to say scripts because it's really not that, but some of you are scripted. I get it. Improve those things and hit the phones, just hit them with better qualified folks. Perfect. And I know you since you've had so much extra time, you're still doing the foundations also, correct? Any updates on foundation? Coming up in two weeks guys go to the training dropdown. If you're subscriber of all the leads, go to training drop down to professional real estate coaching and register for the foundations class. That's coming up on Wednesday and Thursday, the seventh and eighth. And basically for those of you that don't know, I know we've beat this horse to it's been dead for a long time, but it just in case you don't know. Foundations. It's just what I wish I wished used to wish I could coach people on in the first month of their program. And it was taking me around eight months worth of one-on-one calls to coach you guys on these things. It's just what the most important things that you need to do to start your probate business. So if you're new or if you're seasoned and you've been doing probate for awhile, show up, you're probably going to pick up a few things if you're right. It's just two afternoons where we go over those foundational elements of your business. We are not making you a fully fledged master probate machine, but we're getting you to the point where you're going to be comfortable making those calls that you have your marketing set up and that which team members you need to get in place. Perfect. And I have been corrected again, the way I explained to the. The farmer's insurance program, Jordan was ice enough and Darcy to let me know that you do. Actions, but they give you 30 days to correct anything. They'll give you the insurance, but regardless of what they find in the inspections, you have 30 days to make it right. To keep the insurance in place. So hopefully on the third or the second, go dab cap. Hopefully I got that right on the second try. All right guys. Good, great energy. A lot of good things going on. We have. Good attendance this week and we have three in the queue. Let's go to our first call. Or first up this week is us Navy. We got the whole us Navy up. At least that's what the call the caller ID says. Oh, hi. Good morning. Hi. How are you doing? Good. How are you? Excellent. Excellent. What's your first name? Kristen. Oh yeah. Hi Krista. We've spoken to you before. Welcome back. So I have reached out to some attorneys or at least attempted to and I have the the Stonewall of the receptionist. So I was curious of how you've gone about getting to the actual attorneys to speak with them about your services that you're offering. I love the receptionist. I love the receptionist as much as I like heirs to an estate that are not the PR So you just pretend like it's the like it's the attorney when you call, Hey yeah, it's it. So let's say it's the receptionist and it's a different it's an opposite sex. So if you're talking to Jenny and you're calling for mark. Oh man, it doesn't sound like mark. Okay. At least kinda break the ice with him. Small little chuckle, hopefully. And then they are trained to Stonewall you, but they're not trained on answering every single question they're used to people saying can I speak with mark or can I speak with Mary, whoever the attorney is? And they know how to answer that question, but there are certain questions that they don't know how to answer. And when you identify that, they're the receptionist you say, look, I was calling for Mr. Attorney or Mrs. Attorney. What I'm doing might be relevant to you as well. Do you have a quick second? And then I'll let you tell me what I should do next. And then you lay out a quick version of your elevator pitch and then your conversation hook at the end of that elevator pitch is to just simply ask if you were me. How would you go about getting five minutes of the attorney's time? They're not trained to answer that question. That is a really good question that normally that it's not a yes or no. Can I get five minutes of the attorney's time it say, if you were me, how would you go about getting five minutes of their time? And that'll almost always every time I've used it almost always gets me an answer and a way that I can get the attorney, they might say email, they might say call back after five. They might say go to the club tonight, something like that. Okay. But it gives me some good drugs. Okay, thank you. I was going to prepare letters now that I've left a message with all of them, but I didn't want to try to at least follow up with a call again. So appreciate that Krista. I'm going to give you one other suggestion and Bruce May want to comment on this. We've had. Some of our subscribers tell us that this works real well in person. And I don't see why it wouldn't work on the phone. Also we've had subscribers, we'll walk into the office and say, hi, I'm sure in Mr. Johnson's busy. I specialize in probate. And I noticed that he does too. And I'm talking to about a hundred sellers a month and I'm noticing about 25 of them. Don't have an attorney. And I was just wondering, would he mind if I referred some people. Pretty hard to say no to that. And I think that works real well in person. I think that could work well on the phone also. I would agree. Yep. I would wholeheartedly agree that the bait that you're offering needs to be pretty tasty looking. You need to put some bait in the water that that, that looks like something that they want. I run into around 25 people a month, or I run into an average of 10 to 15 people every single month that don't have attorneys and I'm trying to build out my network of attorneys that I can send those people to. Okay. And then you could always throw in, if you were me, how would you grab five minutes of the attorney's time? May and hopefully they say, yeah, you can do it right now. This goes, this is some of the bigger attorneys, by the way. When you're going after the whales that are the attorneys that are doing hundreds of cases, the odds are they're going to be super busy. They're gatekeepers there because the attorney doesn't have time to talk to a walk-in or just anyone that calls. I like going after the new attorney. So the ones that are up and coming and aren't so busy, cause they're very unlikely to have a gatekeeper you're gonna, if they do that gatekeeper, isn't trained to shoot to, to block you. So don't ignore some of the smaller attorneys. A lot of times they don't have referral relationships yet. I think a couple of them, it sounded like it, it felt oh I'll definitely let him know, what do you do? And what's the charge. So it sounded like they were interested in yes, I will take some of these notes back. All right. Great job. Keep coming back and sharing your progress. You're doing one thing that we tell everyone to do. My guess is a majority of our clients. Never do we, we say work the executor first. That's the now business, but most executors probably only going to give you one deal. Obviously the right attorney can give you a career worth of referrals. It's a one-two approach. And I think too many of our subscribers just stop with the executors. Cause they're a little bit intimidated by the attorneys and congratulations on taking the. It seems like a more intimidating approach, but can really pay off big time. When I'm anxious to hear your success stories, because the way you're doing this you're methodically working them. Eventually. You're going to get some deals from them. So thank you. And please keep coming back. Thanks, Kristin. Hang on for a second. I'm probably not sure to call on you, but I might use this. Might create a question. I want to tell you guys a short story and do my best to keep it short, because I know we have other colors on it. The very first probate deal that I ever worked was seven, eight years ago. I'm not even sure at this point. And it was a gentlemen who'd actually tragically killed himself and his wife and kids were at the home. And I didn't know any of this until years later, I thought that he'd just passed away naturally. And they needed my help so much. They were grieving. They had to move out of state. The house was his, it was somehow not in his wife's name. It was passing to the minor children. And so there was a guardianship attorney involved who also did probate and the Didn't have any say over over how the house was sold. She was doing it, but it was really the kids' house at this point. And they were like six, eight and maybe 14. And so I went in and I worked with them and I found out who the attorney was and I called the attorney. She was friendly. I told her a new attorney, by the way, that did probate, that was heavily involved in a lot of court appointed guardianship. And I told her what I was doing. And I essentially said, look, this is what I do. If you need me to do anything, even if it's just shuffling papers, Back and forth for signature running things to the courthouse. Please let me know. And she loved that. And probably two or three times during the process, I would call her with updates. She'd give me a document that needed to be signed. Something like that. I'd sign it. I'd drop it back off at her office or at the courthouse. So it was a little bit of extra legwork. I'm going to tell you guys, I didn't know what I was doing. I had no idea. This was my very first probate case. And at the end of this deal, the attorney wrote me a review and said that I was by far the most knowledgeable agent you'd ever dealt with probate. And I almost felt like calling her and telling her you have to take the review down because I didn't know, I did not know what I was doing. The client paid me, my commission with a car. So I didn't get any money out of it. I got a car that I sold for twice. What the commission would be. The client wrote me a review. She referred multiple people to me. The attorney who wrote me a review has sent me probably 30 or 40 deals over the years, since then, one of which was a land development that I got to represent the builders on. And I sold 30 or 40 houses off of that development. All because. I called the attorney and I put in some extra time and I took the time to shuffle some paperwork back and forth, and I asked questions and I provided updates. And that attorney latched onto me and fed me referrals for many years. And that's what can come out of a great attorney relationship. When you go after someone that might be small today, they don't need to be a big player today. They might be small and you just need to offer to help them with their job and make their clients. So as far as identifying the newer attorneys, is there a good message to do that? I just tried to focus on the probate or state attorneys in the area. So it's hard to see where they are in their career or. You need to ask your financial advisors. If you have financial advisors who they refer to, because they typically refer their clients to a good estate planning attorney who usually does probate. Another one would be to look up anyone who does guardian. A guardianship is not always tied to probate, but Austin, it is guardianship. Attorneys are typically court appointed and any guardianship that's any guardianship attorney who is court appointed it's normally because they're early in their career and they're taking scraps. And I hate to say it like that. I know there are some exceptions, but if they're taking scraps from the court for a low fee, it means that they're not extremely well-established and they're going to really appreciate someone that can shoulder some of the burden with them. And normally gardens guardianship attorney is also doing probate and trust. So you might want to look them up and then otherwise I would say, look for the solo practitioner names. So if the attorney is Bob Jones and it's it, and you just list off a name of partners and affirm, and his name, isn't one of them he's probably really busy taking from business. Whereas if it's Jones and brother. Attorneys at law, then, it's probably a smaller private practice rule of thumb. It's not w these, this logic doesn't apply every time, but for the most part they're good cues as to which ones are smaller and maybe start. Okay. Yep. I think I got a couple in mind based on that. Thanks. Yep. Also, Kristen, if you, which I'm sure you're doing, if you sort your list by attorney, if you're getting 50 leads, you probably aren't going to have more than what a dozen, maybe 15 attorneys, I would say call them all, but like Bruce said, use maybe. You'll get some background. You get some sense of where they're at after making the calls. And then from that point on, maybe focus a little bit more on the ones that seem the most responsive, that seem to be smaller and need your help. The most, I wouldn't worry too much about qualifying who you're going to call. I'd probably just start by calling. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. All right. Thank you so much guys. Kristen guys, we have two more in the queue. We do have plenty of room for more, just hit star six and hit one. Next up is phone number ending in nine nine zero two. You're up next. Hey folks. It's Rick Wilson here in North Carolina. How are y'all doing great, Rick. How about you? I'm doing great. Doing great. Just wanted to follow up. I of course now. Hello. Can you hear me okay? Yes, sir. A little bit of interference. Yeah. Okay. Cause I'm on a speaker phone and I hope that's not causing problems, but in case the reason the question I had is new to this and as many people are, of course, we always went into a situation where the window is on the deed or what, or is on the date. They automatically inherit the product. But some of those folks are going to want to sell for a variety of reasons. And so I was wondering if you have some dialogue or surviving spouses who might consider sell, because I think we have to approach that a little bit different. It can be different. Yeah, it can be the slightly different Jim, do you have any any input or do you want me to take this right for now? Go first. Rick, you're asking whether to approach surviving spouses or how to approach them, how to approach them. But I know that from past experience, Dealing with people who lost their spouses because I've been in real estate for 20 years, but I didn't specialize in some just, I'm committed to this program. Now I'm 110% in all in on it because I liked the whole concept and it feels to me personally. So those I have I found some cases, very difficult to talk to them and others patients. They work, although they're very emotionally overwhelmed. They know they have to do something. They can't continue in that house for a variety of reasons. So I want to be respectful of the sensitivity of the loss because I'm calling often within we don't, I don't look at this. When I look at the applications here, I don't look at the timeframe when they die, versus when I'm sitting out the letters, maybe I should, but I'm sending out the letters, if I've got an address I'm sitting. Yep. And it could be within 30 days or it might've been nine months ago. I just never know. Yep. It all comes down to how you present your initial services. Those of you who has followed my overall dialogue approach are going to get frustrated with me here in a minute, because I'm going to throw a wrinkle into the general dialogue approach. We talk about presenting your elevator pitch over the course of around 45 seconds, I'm going to give you a variation, a shorter version of that. Go something like this. Basically Mr. Wilson, what we do is we act as a concierge for all aspects of probate. That could be anything from real estate to repairs and maintenance, to personal property, removal, and sale. What part of the process are you in so far? Okay, now I hit the elevator pitch, but I went really fast. Really fast, mainly because I don't want them to glom onto and hold or pay attention to the real estate comment. I want their resistance. I really want to go ahead and get that, those objections and that resistance out of the way, just get it out of the way so that you can you can position yourself as an advocate and as an understanding ear for the person that isn't ready for a stranger to be in their business. That, that way, that the surviving spouse that might be grieving harder than anyone else. They don't hear you say, do you want to sell the house? Do you want to sell the house? You might sell the house. You just glossed over it and get that objection. As, as far as being about everything else. Now they might not object. They might say, yeah, this is crazy, stressful. I don't know what I'm doing in which case you can step in and. Let's give a hand. In most cases they're gonna say, no, we're good. We haven't handled. And that's totally fine at that point. We want to get them out of the present, the here and now emotionally. Cause right now they're in the emotion of having just lost their spouse a lot of times get them out of that by future pacing them and saying, let's fast forward, six months or 12 months down the road. What's What do you want life to look like in six or 12 months? Do you wanna, are you still going to be living here? Are you planning on moving? What do you plan to do? And that person, many times by just talking about their plans in the future and getting them out of the present situation and their head is going to say something like this, they're going to say I'm probably gonna move to Florida with the kids. Okay. Most likely I'm going to downsize or maybe they say I'm probably going to be here, but hopefully my kids move up. Okay. So you're going to get an answer that gives you some insight into what they want to happen in the future. And many times their answer is going to involve real estate without you intentionally asking a real estate question. So I want you to think about different questions that you can ask that that their answer will give you give you a little bit of a revelation as to what they're going to do with the house. If you take this approach where it's not real estate focused, but you ask questions that are loosely tied to their real estate plans, you're going to get the, you're going to get the answers that you're looking for. Is that, does that make sense? Sometimes I ramble a little bit softer approach, certainly. And you don't have to, in the in the short hand version of the elevator speech, it could dub discord. You don't even have to mention real estate and just convention, the concierge service and all the other things we can do to help. It might, they might need. And they might need some help with handyman services or they have some issues relating to plumbing. A lot of these people are elderly, so they're not up to doing these things. So there's somebody there to help. Yep. And Rick, I'm gonna get, can I have permission to critique you just a little bit for a moment? Okay. Okay. So you're, I'm and I understand that you're explaining some of the things that they might want, and you're explaining it to me. You're explaining to the brush and not a PR that the way that you just explained it to me was a little bit long-winded so I would make sure that elevator pitch was really fast. Don't talk about every single day, don't get into details on the services category. So a concierge service for your entire probate process, that could be real estate related. That could be personal property related, just helping you move property out, sell property, things like that. And then it could be repairing maintenance related cleaning gutters, cutting grass, things like that. Okay. And so I would encourage you to go record yourself, delivering that record yourself. A couple of times, just use an app like audacity or something like that, and listen to yourself and ask yourself where you're getting a little bit too explaining. Cause the more explaining you get, the more, the less likely they are to engage with. So I want you to boil this down with the surviving spouse is something that you can unpack in 20 seconds and and just be prepared for them to resist it. If they don't know you they're not going to immediately say, yeah, why don't you come out to the house tomorrow and bring a landscaper with you. It's not going to happen. They're going, most people are going to resist you, which is a great thing. We need to embrace that resistance because that gives us the ability to move on to different times. Yeah. And Rick, I was just going to add so much of the way you come off is based on the way you go into the conversation, your expectations. So I sense that you might be going in a little bit hesitant and a little bit apologetic and, you might be assuming that you're bothering them and you have to assume that it's going to be okay. That they're going to be a little more, quite a bit more distraught than your average executor, but don't assume that you're bothering them or that they don't need you. I would assume just the opposite that this person that you're calling probably needs you more than most of the calls you're making. I think if you just start with that assumption you'll it doesn't mean it doesn't mean you'll be. More aggressive than the conversation, but maybe you'll be a little less apologetic. And one thing that occurred, one thing that occurred to me that Bruce often says that I like is you might just, if you feel like you need a disclaimer, you might just start with Bruce's suggestion. Hey, you may not need any help at all. And if so, that's fine. But if you do need help, I'm here to help you, something like that. Get them, give them permission to say before they say, I don't need anything, give them permission not to need anything. And sometimes that can be very disarming. You follow me, right? Yup. Yep. Yeah. Yup. Okay. I'll use that because that's very helpful and yeah, there some sensitivity involved here. Kind of, I make too concerned with that at this stage and just use the friendly, short to the point to approach and heavily objection. I mostly move on from there. I always tell we always talk about in our sales meetings, the You know what all of our salespeople started working or when most people, when you talk to one of our prospects about real estate, it ignored the number of people. Just assume that people are going to be annoyed, that they had a death in the family, and they're going to be annoyed with your calling. We find just the opposite to be true. Just keep in mind that on average, it's about three and a half to four months from the date of death until the probate gets home. Regardless of whether the grief has a spouse, a son, a daughter, a grandchild at least enough time has passed that they have they're overt enough to have made the business decision to file the probate. So at some point they've declared their intent that, Hey, I'm over it enough to deal with this. So can you just assume that going in that might help you feel a little bit better also? Yeah, I think you're right. All right. Thank you as always for participating, we keep coming back. We'll count on it. All right. Thank you, Rick. Hey guys, we only have, we got another 20 minutes, 15, 20 minutes. We only have one person in the queue. We do have plenty of room for more. We're looking for our win of the week. We're looking for our idea of the week. The winner of the week has to be real or probate specific. The idea of the week can be virtually anything. And there is a huge, tremendous grand prize if you supply either of those. So jumping the queue and give us a win or give us a good idea. In the meantime, we do have one more person in the queue. Next up is phone number ending in eight one zero two. You're up next? I could go on fellows. This is Tony from New York hey Tony, how's it going? I just won't even ask my question. I just really. Wanted to say, thank you for these these weekly meetings. Cause someone like me and my partner, both at brain surgery, I had a tumor removed last year in October and on my short term memory is shot and this is very helpful and very useful to educate me. And so when me and my partner doing so I just wanted to just shout you guys out and let you know that I really appreciate this is what you guys got going on. Thank you. Anything we can help you with this week? Yeah. Me and my partner began marketing out in Texas and the question is kind of Texas related. We have a lead that is actually interested in selling the house, but the house hasn't gone through the probate. And I was wondering, I was thinking, this is probably like an attorney question, but I just wanted to try and pick your guys' brains if I could. Is there a way to work around the probate? It's a, if the, if someone is interested in selling the property and they're the executor, but having gone through the process man Jim has been for many years I was in Virginia and North Carolina probate alone, where Jim was. And Tim were both dealing with nationwide questions. I'm going to tell you that I believe. And do please double check this with an attorney. I'm pretty sure that in Texas, you can sell a house during the probate process. There are only a few states that I know of, like maybe Delaware there. There are only a couple of, so I'm not even going to try to name them right now that won't allow you to sell before probates. I don't think Texas is one of those, and I know for a fact that they can apply or they can petition the court to for a monument of title and and even carve the real estate out. Yeah. The estate altogether and sell immediately so they can petition the court. But even if they don't carve it out, they should be able to sell as long as those proceeds stay inside of the inside of the estate bank account until probates closed. So you should be able to buy it now. Anyway. Yeah. Now Jim, Tim, do you guys want to correct me on that with Texas? No, you're right. You're correct. It is that when you want a title that has to get done, but it is also our understanding of that as well, that it is possible to do it. Obviously the challenge there is that just like any other state right now, or at least most states in the country inventory is limited and you're in the one area that. You're working in the right field to try to bring in some good crops because if you're looking for stuff to do down there, the one beauty of probate is it is in fact, an evergreen sad, true fact, we're all going to go at some point. That generates prospect. So you're good to go, but you can definitely, you don't have to wait for that. Yup. Yup. Okay, perfect. Yeah, I'd say, go ahead and do you need it? You need a good attorney down there, but so can you confirm what we're telling you, but you should be able to close on that house. The family just needs to know that they can't go spend that money until they're through probate. Okay. All right, sir. And one other thing I would add about that is that they can. Expend some of that money in regard to if they needed to do repairs to the pro to the property and anything like that, they can in fact and I don't know if they have to even petition the court to do this, but the executive or the PR does have the ability to invest in the property in terms of repairs and things like that, to make it more saleable, to generate a better profit for the state. They just have to be careful that. Taking care of their own fiduciary responsibilities and acting on the behalf of the estate. And again, the proper answer there is spending a little bit of time, a little bit of money if necessary and where you get very deep into that, make sure that you have got an hour of some well done. Attorney's time down there, real estate attorney. It can give you the heart answers to your questions because we're not attorneys and we don't give you legal advice. All right. Next up is phone number ending in eight eight one two. You're up next. Hi guys. This is Pete from Denver, Colorado. Hey baby. I think I might, I think I might have a, when I put it up on the Facebook group and you get somebody commented, wanted me to come on and talk about this. Yeah. So I had called this a personal representative at one point about selling her mom's condo, downtown Denver, and everything went great with the conversation. Talked to her quite a bit, answered some questions. At the end, she agreed to list the property with me in a couple of weeks. No problem. So I tried to call back for the next three weeks. Couldn't get her. Finally, I got her come to find out that she had had to go into the hospital for those three weeks. And while she was in the hospital, the husband went out and got another realtor to list the price. She felt bad and she referred me to a friend of hers that I did not know how to house in probate. Her friend called me another couple of weeks after, and I met her at the house went over. Was in very bad condition, a $30,000 roof job. And it just went on from there. She didn't have the money to fix it up. We agreed. I listed the property as well as his, where is, and ended up getting a wholesaler and I got a double end on the deal. Nice, nice, good job. That is a win of the week. That's what we're looking for, Pete. That's great. Awesome. Good job. Follow up. The reason I love that story is a lot of people would have given up the second. Oh, you sold the, you already listed the property. Okay, bye. And you turn that into an extra piece of business, probate related, but you turned that probate lead into business that wasn't even her house. That's amazing. Yeah I usually follow up five to six times. Sometimes I get the guy handled, I follow up with a letter and then I follow up with a phone call to make sure they got the letter. And at that point, usually they'll, they're more willing to have a more engaged conversation. Cool. Awesome. Great job, Pete. Thank you. I think we only have one, one more person in the queue. So I think my money's on you to be the winner. Thank you. I appreciate the story I've been listening. I've been listening to you guys for a long time. I follow it. I don't call in is my first time calling in, but I do follow the questions and I listened to the watch the YouTube, recording and stuff. I take notes and implement what I think is good that I can use here in Denver and, go from there. So appreciate it. You mentioned something, Pete you're in one of the most competitive investor markets and most of Denver, most of Colorado, we don't get the data until the probate's completed. So is that true? Yeah. So you're not alone. Starting three steps behind some of the other places in the country. But you've got extreme levels of investor competition and the good news is every deal you get is ready to go. The bad news is there are a lot of industries that are, work at the obituaries would get there before you, but in spite of, that's not an obstacle, that's just a a stepping stone for you to get to where you want to be. Great job, right? I, when I approach a PR, one of the first things I tell them is I'm not trying to sell, to buy their property or sell them because they're getting hammered by these wholesalers. And nothing against shirt sales it's know doing something too, but I try and explain to them that I'm there to represent them. And over the last year of the pandemic, I used that last summer and winter and built a spreadsheet. Four vendors, partner vendors, and it's up to 30, 30 pages. I have a thirties sheet spreadsheet, people I can call from antique appraisers all the way to 10 30, 1 exchange and window repair and everybody in between. And it works out great when I can do that, give them someplace to call that they need help. That is awesome. It's great job. Many fronts. Excellent. All right. We appreciate you. Thank you. All right. Thanks guys. You'll be hearing from somebody to collect your price or what are the week? I feel pretty confident. Thank you for sharing. Thank you, buddy. I will last up this week is phone number ending in three six seven nine. You're up last. Hi there. This is Nancy. I'm calling from Montana. Thanks so much. Having these sessions every week. I always love listening to the call. I have a win that isn't quite as exciting, but it was for me. I ended up with a house that was in probates. It's a nice price range. However, mom was a hoarder. Mom had a lot of collectibles and family friend was trying to do estate sales week after week. The. Person who was the PR was not making much headway in terms of cleaning. Then she was completely overwhelmed. So I asked her, what her intention was? Did she want to keep some of this stuff? Did she want to donate it? She said right now, I just would love to throw it out. So I found somebody I, who was a former client. And I asked her for referral because I know she used to be in the antique business. She said, you know what? I am interested in checking things out. She went over there, she ended up paying this woman $3,000 and cleaned out her house. It was just an amazing thing. It took her almost two weeks to clean out this house and seven or eight more dumpsters after the dumpsters had been already moving along. So to me, that was just like such a great resource and I don't have a concierge person. I think she, if she's willing to do it, she was pretty exhausted after this. But it was it was a real big wins. So right now we have the house listed and this is my question. Part of the call the house has a reverse mortgage on it. We did an appraisal and the bank said it could potentially be a short sale. However, the PR is becoming a little bit discouraged because. She's just afraid mom owed some money to the nursing home. And I think some hospital bills in addition. So unless she gets a certain amount, she's really not too motivated to sell the property. And so my question is, I know I can't like hide stuff on a settlement statement or give her, $5,000 for my commission, but is there any way to make sure she gets some money at the end? Even if it is a short sale or even if, she has to pay hospitals back. So I just didn't know if anyone had any creative ways you can do it legally. Are the hospitals are they liens on the property or anything or are they completely sure? No. Okay. Jim, I'm gonna turn that question to you. You're more of the short sale, unless there's other significant assets. That either other significant assets that she's worried that the, yeah so really, you can't collect a hospital bill from a deceased person, so I don't see. I really don't see any downside in pursuing the shorts, this as a short sale. And I've talked about this on the call. My wife's done over 2000 short sales. Just reach out. I'll give you her phone number. You can discuss the situation where there's a small possibility. She might be able to, the lenders will often give a $3,000 relocation allowance on a short sale, and it's ridiculous. Obviously the owner's not relocated and they're in their final resting place. It's still, I think she has had one or two where they actually gave the allowance, even though the person was deceased. But I hate for you to even promise that to the seller because it's such a long shot. The reality is they're gonna the reality. Now I will tell you that my wife has found in her company. Most of the time, even though the seller's not getting anything, they feel better about not having, mom or grandma's house, get in disrepair and they feel good about having a nice family come in and fix it up and live there. Ma I would say maybe reach out to Pam. She could talk to the seller assured that. That there isn't any downside or there doesn't appear to be any downside in letting the hospital bills go and, she can do her best to make sure that it doesn't get foreclosed. Put a nice family in there. The upside of doing a short sale to a situation like that is that there is virtually no paperwork. They don't, there's just a authorization to release information that the seller just has to sign as the executor permission to deal with the bank on a short sale. And there's no financials required because again, the person's deceased, it's a relatively easy process. It's not as complicated as your normal ShoreTel and But other than that, there's probably not a legal way to get her benefits from it, unless the unlikely event that the lender does, but you'd be surprised. It's possible, but unlikely that they might get a relocation, but I wouldn't count on that. But if you want to reach out Pam, I'll give you Pam's direct line it's 9 5, 4, 5, 8, 4. 0 0 0, 0. She's got way more experienced than I do. And she'll sh sure. Yeah, absolutely. 9 5 4 5 8 4 0 0 0 0. And just tell her you're, on our call and I told you to call and she'll chill. She'll give you a lot more knowledge and I don't think there's any other options, but she may have another ideal. Okay. Yeah, if she doesn't want to sign because she's not getting any money, it's just, yeah, exactly. All right. Thank you Nancy. We had one more person sneak in the queue and I usually wouldn't do this, but she is a old timer. Not in age, but in the time she's been with us, Belinda, you're up last this week. Hi. How are you doing? Can you hear me? I can hear you. Great. Okay. I just want you to respond to the woman's question, just it. And then let me know if I'm wrong, but what I've done. I understand the idea that with the probates, a lot of times people are reluctant to do the short sell because not getting anything out of it, but my understanding is, and the way I've approached that is I can buy personal property from them. If I want. And that has nothing to do with the short sale, anything like that. So for example, if there's a washer and dryer in a place, and I want to purchase that, but not until the property closes through the short sale, then I could propose that. And that's something that really doesn't have to be, it's not going to be on the HUD or anything. And it provides a way to. Maybe I shouldn't say that out loud, but to give the person some money to walk away with now, I don't want the washer and dryer, whoever buys the place may take it with them or whatever, but, so for personal property and whether or not that money comes, after you get your commission or out of your bank account, like you would normally do buying something from somebody that personal property. Does it make a difference? I'm not going to have to say on the back end, I'm going to give them on the hoods 10% or 1% of my commission. I wouldn't do that. But in terms of buying personal property, just to incentivize them, getting something at the end, I thought that was legitimate. That's where I approached approach. Just saying. All right. And I, yeah, exactly. I was just going to say that that's done all the time, but I can't, they, everybody does sign an affidavit. There's no side agreements. So it really just depends on the people's tolerance for being willing to do something like that. You don't want to, you don't want to advise them to, but you can certainly give them that as an option. Yeah. I know if I see something I want to purchase, I can purchase it on a personal level. Sure. Okay. All right. All right. All right, guys. Thank you so much. I want to thank each and every one of you for being here today, I want to particularly thanks to seven or eight of you that actively participated that want to challenge each of you. Take one, thought one idea. One thing that inspired you on this call, go out and put it into practice and please come back next Thursday and share the results with the group. Have a great week. Everybody talk to you. Same time. Next Thursday.