Probate Money: SaaS for California Probate Leads
This time, our team had a pleasure to cater to a client in a very specific niche: probate attorney who decided it’s time to swap good ol’ Excel spreadsheets with a web-based searchable platform, also known as Saas (software as a service).
Our latest product is the system that has been built from scratch for this specific client – which only proves the fact that we are flexible and always ready to go deeper into our customer‘s requirements, making the newly born software work precisely for their unique particular needs.
"Probate is the formal legal process that gives recognition to a will and appoints the executor or personal representative who will administer the estate and distribute assets to the intended beneficiaries," according to the American Bar Association."
When a person dies in California or any other US state with similar laws, and they leave real estate (house), a due process must determine who gets their property. For instance, California has a very strict process in place to weed out fraud. So, if a person passes away without having a specific document called "a trust", the property needs to go through probate. This is a Latin term: to probate roughly means "to prove the will."
Usually, unless it comes to their personal encounter with the problem, there are not so many people who understand the way probate agents do their job. But when you think of how scanty is the number of people specializing in probate real estate, and how much money is involved in dealing with it, you may rather soon get over that viscous feeling.
OK, in order to be fully objective, let‘s face some statistics given by the same reliable source:
- Nearly 73.7 million Americans between the ages of 25 and older than 75 own homes.
- Each year, nearly 2.5 million Americans in this age group die.
- If these deaths were divided evenly among all 50 states, there would be 50,000 probate home sales in each state.
Now, if you are a probate agent, you will inevitably face a number of issues in doing your job flawlessly. The process will be slightly different, which depends on the particular US state, so it can be quite challenging to find probate law information. And, the more details the decedent left behind, the more complicated the process may become.
The American Bar Association defines probate as the formal legal process that gives recognition to a will and appoints a person to administer and distribute the assets (including property) to the intended beneficiaries.
People who inherit properties due to a death in the family or other personal reasons, and want to sell it quickly, are considered probate leads. In most circumstances, they sell the property willed to them quickly after going through the probate process.
Whatever they are called, these people‘s job is to inventory the deceased’s belongings and dispose of them, according to the will (which takes precedence) or, if the person died intestate (without a will), the state’s laws of inheritance.
Anyone who has ever taken part in the process knows that probate takes a long time to complete and is costly. In addition, probate heirs tend to sell the inherited house, hence, real estate agents want "probate leads" – information on who has died without a trust. This is because, most likely, the property is going to be sold after it goes through probate, the inheritance money split between the heirs, and the real estate agent will make their commissions.
Those who have ever been in the shoes of a probate lead agent know it too well: the process is quite complicated, to put it in mild words. You have to have enormous patience to deal with the issue. You have to invest all your energy into it.
There are numerous websites out there to instruct you on how exactly you should act to get the basic information that would enable you to do your actual job. You need to locate and search your local probate listings. You have to check online for probate leads in your county. You will need to call or visit your local probate court. You have to build working relationships with local estate planning or probate attorneys...the list goes on and on.
For most new real estate investors, locating, pitching, and closing probate leads sounds right up there with a root canal as a way to spend an afternoon. You may even think probate investors are like ambulance chasing lawyers!
Obtaining probate information is very difficult and time-consuming. Basically, you have to physically drive to each court, sit at an old government computer, and write down the information. Also, the information usually isn’t searchable and the government interface is quite the opposite of user friendly.
Like most great real estate lead generation strategies, the hardest part is getting started. And here is where our brand new software comes in to perform its managerial role.
Probate Money provides up-to-date probate leads in a user-friendly, searchable format for a low monthly fee. Simply put, it gives you digital means to perform every action you would otherwise spend your precious physical energy doing manually.
In using this software, you can make your search for probate leads as much thorough and detailed as you wish. The result doesn‘t depend on whether you are using a free trial account, or you are a paid subscriber – functionality and view is exactly the same.
The system provides some cool functionality: you can give a name to your specific search, and search by date, county name, zip code, cities, etc. And if you change your mind, you can change your search entry as well.
The search is completely private, so no one is going to see how you narrow it or what else you choose to do. You can also search within your search results if you want to find out something specific: advance search performs its functions perfectly well. As we say, you can nearly go crazy in sophisticating how you want to put it!
So, to sum it up – welcome to our new software which does much more than anyone could expect it to. If you deal with the probate leads area, this will be indispensable for you. And even if you don’t – this website is an example of our capabilities for flexibility and effective website solutions.
