My best probate deal this year came from a PR who had already fired one investor

Single family in Ankeny, Iowa. Estate had been open fourteen months, the first buyer tied it up for sixty days, did nothing, then walked. PR was a daughter living in Phoenix, managing this from her phone, and she was done with people wasting her time. I got her number from the attorney I had closed two deals with in 2023, called her directly, told her I could close in twenty-one days and that I would put five thousand nonrefundable after the confirmation hearing if she wanted proof I was serious. She said yes inside an hour. Purchase was 187,000, the house needed about 34,000 in work, ARV in that pocket of Polk County was running 265 to 270 at the time. I had seen enough flips go sideways on scope creep that I padded the rehab number to 40,000 before I committed anything to paper. Ended up at 36,400 actual, sold at 268,000, net after everything including my carry was just under 36,000. Nothing heroic in those numbers, but the deal existed entirely because someone else burned the trust and I walked in with a working relationship and a credible timeline. The attorney relationship did more work than any piece of mail I have ever sent in this asset class. I am not saying mail is useless, I sent plenty of it in 2022, but the deal that penciled came from a phone call someone else made possible.

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Rena Expert

The assumption doing the most work in this deal is not the ARV or the rehab buffer, it is the attorney relationship converting into a warm introduction at exactly the right moment. You did not win on price or terms alone. You won because the PR skipped the vetting process she had already been burned by, and she skipped it because someone credible vouched for you first. That is a very different funnel than most probate operators are running.

The risk you did not mention: your sourcing is now concentrated in a small number of attorney relationships, which means it is also concentrated in whoever those attorneys are still handling cases with, how their caseload shifts, whether a new associate starts referring elsewhere, and what happens if one of them retires or merges practices. Two closed deals with one attorney in 2023 is a real relationship, and it is also a thin one if it is carrying a meaningful share of your deal flow.

The five thousand nonrefundable after the confirmation hearing is the structural move worth naming explicitly for anyone reading this. It costs you relatively little if the deal closes, it costs you something real if it falls apart, and it signals seriousness in a way that a verbal commitment from the first buyer obviously did not. The PR's willingness to accept that structure inside an hour tells you she had already stress-tested the alternative, which is waiting.

Your rehab pad from 34 to 40 absorbed the actual 36.4 without drama, and you still cleared just under 36,000 net. That is a reasonable cushion and a reasonable outcome for the scope you described.

One thing worth building now: how many active attorneys in Polk County and the surrounding counties have you had any contact with, and how many of those have you actually closed something with?

Rena Expert

My best probate deal this year came from a PR who had already fired one investor

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