Does probate outreach work on land, or is it all houses full of stuff?

Question

Everything I read about probate is houses with 30 years of stuff inside and a dumpster. I do land. So two things. What does a small campaign actually cost per month to run properly, because I'd rather see the real number than the pitch number. And is there any point mailing about inherited vacant parcels? Ten acres costs an heir maybe 400 a year in taxes. Where's the motivation to sell at a discount when the carrying cost is a rounding error?

Rena Guide · Accepted Answer

A small campaign, honestly costed, looks like this. Data somewhere between 50 and 300 a month depending on whether you're reading the docket yourself or buying court-sourced filings. Two hundred pieces of mail at roughly 75 cents each is 150. Skip tracing on a couple hundred records is maybe 20 to 40. So 250 to 450 a month for a one or two county effort, and that assumes your own time is free.

The number people miss is duration. Heirs respond on the estate's schedule rather than yours, and a case often has months of creditor notice and accounting to get through before anyone can sign anything. A campaign that runs once teaches you nothing. Six months is the usual minimum before you can tell whether the list is producing, so budget the whole 1,500 to 2,700 up front and treat it as the price of the test.

There are costs outside the mail too. Earnest money of 500 to 1,000 per contract, whatever your state charges for title work or an attorney closing, and the cash or the buyer to actually take the property down when someone says yes. Getting a signature you can't close on is worse than getting none.

On land specifically, the empty parcel has no cleanout, no roof, and no vacancy insurance problem, which removes most of what makes probate houses expensive. Your motivation question is the right one, and the answer sits in whether the heirs have any use for the land at all.

dpatel_re · Answer

The underwriting is where land probate gets uncomfortable. On a house I can pull four sales within a mile and defend a number. On 10 rural acres I might have three sales in 18 months at wildly different prices because one had frontage and a well and one had a seasonal creek across the access. Your discount has to cover the fact that you don't really know the ARV. That's before anyone checks whether the legal access is a recorded easement or 40 years of driving across a neighbor's field.

Rena Expert · Answer

Response rates on probate mail generally run in the 1 to 2 percent range per touch, so 200 pieces gets you 2 to 4 conversations. Somewhere between 15 and 30 real conversations produces a contract if your offers are sane. That means a 200 piece monthly campaign is a several thousand dollar, multi month spend to reach one contract, and your first one arrives when you've stopped expecting it.

On land, motivation runs differently than you're modeling. Low carry means low urgency, and it also means low attachment. An heir in another state who has never walked the parcel and pays 400 a year for the privilege will often take a number that looks absurd against retail, because the alternative is dealing with it forever. The discount can be deeper than on houses. The conversion is slower.

Where it breaks: rural land frequently never goes through probate at all. Nobody bothers, so the deed sits in a dead person's name for two or three generations and the heirs are now nine cousins, some unknown. Your probate list won't surface that, since there's no filing. You find it as tax delinquent with a decedent on title, and clearing it means an heirship proceeding or a quiet title action, which is attorney work with a real bill and a real timeline. Whether that's viable turns on your state's heirship and limitations statutes, so price the legal work with a local attorney before you contract.

Also confirm the taxes are actually current and that the parcel isn't sitting inside a tax sale redemption window. On a 400 a year tax bill, three years delinquent plus penalties is small money that can still wipe out title if you miss the deadline.

ehernandez74 · Answer

The six month minimum is the part I keep having to accept. I've been telling myself I'll start when I have a clean 3,000 set aside for it rather than doing two months and quitting, which is what I'd do if I started at 400.

tonyv88 · Answer

One thing on the house side of your question, parcel. If an heir does say yes on a house and you plan to rent it, the eight month vacancy is already in the walls. I've taken over units where the first month was mostly plumbing and getting the electric inspected, not tenants.

mikeoconnell7 · Answer

The nine cousins problem is a business by itself. Somebody has to build the family tree, find the ones nobody's heard from, and get signatures from people in four states. That's a service, and if you're mailing rural land you're going to hit it constantly.

Does probate outreach work on land, or is it all houses full of stuff?

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