Everyone in my market pulls the same pre-foreclosure list and I'm the fourth call

Earlier than the filing means predicting the event instead of reacting to it, and there are only a few honest ways to do that.

The cleanest is to work signals that precede default rather than record it. Tax delinquency shows up before most mortgage default filings, often by a year or more, and the delinquency lists are usually maintained by the county rather than resold by the big platforms, which means the distribution is worse and that's the point. Same logic for code enforcement, and you're right that it's noisy. The way to cut the noise is to stack it, so a violation plus absentee plus tenure over 15 years is a very different lead than a violation on an owner-occupied house someone is actively fixing.

The second way is to change what you're competing on rather than when you arrive. At 1,100 dials with an 8 percent contact rate you're having roughly 88 conversations a week, and if four investors reach the same owner, the one who gets the deal is usually the one who solved a problem the price alone doesn't solve. Timing on possession, taking the property with the tenant in place, buying with the junk still in it. Those are cheap concessions that read as huge to an overwhelmed seller.

On estate attorneys, 12 months is the right estimate and the payoff isn't a lead flow. It's a small number of situations where you're the only call, which is the thing you said you wanted.

What worries me in your post is walking on thin spread twice. If your acquisition math only works at a deep discount and your market is four-caller competitive, the constraint may be your exit rather than your sourcing. A wholesale fee needs less spread than a flip. Check whether the deals you walked on penciled for someone with a lower required margin before you conclude the leads were bad.