Probate Power Profits
| Probate Power Profits With Stacy Kellams |
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The player will show in this paragraph THAN: Than Merrill here and I hope you’re excited for tonight’s webinar. I am, I’m excited. I know 100% that Molly my faithful webinar companion and webinar mistress of the dark is also excited. Molly are you excited for tonight’s webinar? MOLLY: I am and I’m a lucky ducky tonight. THAN: A lucky ducky. Molly sometimes, sometimes my fiancée thinks I’m cheating on her with, we’re literally doing this phone sex conversations you know at 9 at night on Wednesday. She thinks it’s a little weird what I do but that’s okay because we have that special relationship isn’t that right? MOLLY: Hey Than there’s nothing crazy going on but I must admit it is Hump Day. THAN: I love it. I love it. Well welcome folks I want to thank you from around the country for joining us tonight. I’m really excited about this webinar and frankly I’m gonna be introducing you to a very good friend of mine but I also want to just emphasize the importance of tonight’s topic. A good friend of mine is on the call – Stacy Kellam and we’re gonna be discussing together ‘Probate’ and how to farm for probate deals. I know if you’re an investor and you’ve gone to at least one seminar you know what probates are, you know the potential of probates but Stacy and I are really gonna be breaking down tonight exactly how to get your hands on the super profitable deals. And before I kick it over and introduce Stacy I just wanna emphasize the importance of what you’re learning. We bought and sold a lot of homes in the past six and a half years. And probates have been by far our most profitable deals. And when I say that I’m telling you right now these deals have the tremendous amount of equity and there’s very little competition from other investors for these deals. And Stacy and I are gonna be sharing with you tonight exactly why that is and frankly it comes down to this. With the number of pre-foreclosures out there there’s a lot of investors just focusing on pre-foreclosures. And I can tell you there’s hardly anybody who’s focusing on this niche. And there’s just so many, so much equity on these deals. And for those of you who don’t know what probate deals you know a short summary on probate deals when somebody passes away and their property’s not put in trust and in order for that title to transfer to the heirs it goes through the probate process. Most of these deals are on free and clear or have a very small mortgage on so there’s insane potential on these deals but only 1% to 3% of investors actually go after them. And that’s just because of the fact that the list sometimes is very difficult to get or people don’t know how to go after them. So tonight we’re gonna try to shed some light on the probate process. How you can profit by going after probates. And I have who I believe is the nation’s expert on marketing for probate deals and going after probate deals. His name is Stacy Kellam. Welcome Stacy, how you doing tonight? STACY: I’m good buddy. How you doing tonight? THAN: I’m doing really good. I’m actually looking forward to September when I’m flying out to see you. Spend the day. Actually folks I’m going out to spend a day with Stacy. Two reasons. Number 1, first reason is we’re going to see the cowboy’s game on Monday night football. We’re staying in Stacy’s box and their suites. I’m super excited about that. Second reason, is I’m gonna go study what he is doing in his market for probates. So I’m really excited about spending some time with Stacy for two reasons. And folks he is in my opinion the expert. He’s bought and sold a ton of properties in the past thirteen years. He’s been in this business quite a while. He bought his first property when he was twenty-five years old. And he focuses mainly on probates. In fact just probate deals, he’s done over a hundred individual probate deals. Now he’s bought and sold a lot more properties than that. But I don’t know if anybody in my opinion has bought or sold more probate deals. And that’s why I invited him on to tonight’s call. I don’t think there’s anybody out there that honestly knows more. He works from the investment standpoint but fun fact is that his wife is actually a probate attorney. So I don’t know if you’re gonna get a better expert than this because you’re gonna get both sides. You’re gonna get the legal side, you’re also going to get from Stacy the investor’s side and how he goes after these properties. And so Stacy man it is an absolute pleasure to have you on the call and we’ve hang out many times and I’m looking forward to spending your money in that cowboy suite. STACY: Man I’m looking forward to having you in the suite. And for those of you here listening even if you aren’t Dallas Cowboy fans wait til you guys see this new stadium. I was there a couple of weeks ago for the opening concert. George ___ opened it up with just an amazing concert. This stadium is unlike anything you’ve ever seen and Than just wait til you see this thing man. Whether you’re a Cowboys fan or not this stadium is gonna be the talk of the NFL this year. It’s absolutely beautiful, it’s amazing. I can’t wait for you to see it now. THAN: I can’t wait either. I know I’m gonna be picking your brain even more about your probate process. I mean.. STACY: Absolutely. THAN: We do a lot of probate deals but its one aspect of our business and I know you’ve absolutely mastered it so you are my mentor in this area. Looking forward to sharing my experience but also learning from you on tonight’s call. So for those of you who have joined thank you very much. Grab a pen and paper. Pull it out, take some notes and I’m gonna kick it off and I’m gonna let Stacy run with it. I’m just gonna chime in and give you my perspective. Because we’re chasing different markets so you’re gonna learn a lot not only from me but also from Stacy. So Stacy man it is a pleasure to have you and I wanna welcome you so.. STACY: Thank you. THAN: Stacy kick it off man and let’s get down to it. STACY: Thanks for that awesome introduction Than. I wanna thank everyone for joining us today. You’re gonna learn a lot so get a pen and paper ready right now ’cause you’re gonna learn stuff from this call that you’ve never heard before. And I’m not kidding about that so get your pen and paper ready. We’re gonna be talking about how to make piles of money with no competition. And you don’t have to worry even if you don’t have any money or credit you can play this game called probate. And I’m gonna explain to you exactly what it is before we’re through here tonight. You don’t have to worry about having any money or credit. You can do this, anybody can do this. I’m gonna show you how to eliminate your competition and cherry pick the very best deals for yourself. Than was talking about just a second ago about how everybody is going after the foreclosures and rightly so. Than I’m gonna pop up I forgot to do this. But I’m gonna open up my, well I was going to. Where did my, where did my webinar, my camera go. Here we go. Well you know what it’s usually right there I don’t know where it went. There it is Logitech. Guys this doesn’t get any live, more live than this. I’m gonna open up Logitech quick down here. Say hello to everybody real quick, real quick. Than how are you doing buddy. Good to see you again. THAN: I love it man. It’s like, it’s like you’re right next to me, I love it. STACY: I’m right here man. I’ll do this again. I just wanna say hello to everybody. Let everybody know I’m a real guy. Grab your pen and paper right now. Seriously you’re gonna be learning stuff over the next hour or so that you haven’t heard anywhere else. Get your pen and paper ready. We’re gonna have a lot of fun. And we’re gonna learn a lot of stuff. So here we go. Let’s go ahead and get right down to it. Whoops went to far, here we go. Just put it on this one, there we go. Alright then. First before we get started let me tell everybody just a little bit more about myself. I know Than, he gave a little bit of information about me in the intro but I grew up from the wrong side of the tracks in a small West Texas town. Nobody in my family had any money. In fact I used to say we grew up poor and my mom heard my presentation one time Than and she said “Honey I really wish you should stop telling people we were poor, we weren’t that poor.” I said, “Alright mom how about if I just tell everybody we were money challenged.” And that, that’s to know why we definitely weren’t nobody in my family knew anything about money. They didn’t, they couldn’t teach me about money ’cause nobody really had any money in my family. So everything I’ve learned about how to make money and how to buy and sell real estate I’ve had to teach myself. So don’t worry if you come from a background like that. I didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth either. So coming from a quote and quote “money challenged” family I wanted to be the first person Than in my family to go to college. And I was! My grandparents were super happy. I was the very first person in my family to go to college and I was also the very first person to get kicked out of college in my family and that stung a little bit. THAN: First for everything. First for.. STACY: The first for everything. I went to school, I had this thing when I was in school, I thought that you know, now I’m paying for college right. I shouldn’t have to go to class or study and take the test if I don’t want to. I’m paying for it right. But they didn’t quite see it that way so it was definitely a low point in my life to say the least. I was really bummed out Than because, I don’t even know if you know this about me. The thing that I wanted the most back then and I wanted to go to school to be a stockbroker. That’s what I thought I wanted to be. And a friend dropped by one day and he said, “Stacy you don’t need a college degree to be a stockbroker.” I didn’t even know that. He did, you know, “Go take the test.” I thought that was ironic since I just got kicked out of school for not taking the test but I study for this test and I took it and I passed and I became a stockbroker. And this is what they teach all stockbrokers Than on the very first day of training, of course, “We’re expecting stocks to rally any day now but we don’t know when and we don’t know which ones.” And I’m sure some people actually stocked it in rallying quite nicely for the past few months I’m sure everyone’s happy about that. I became a stockbroker and Than, for the first time in my life I had a front row seat to watch people make money. And I noticed that rich people do things differently than poor people. Here I was you know, I’ve grown up poor and now I’m sitting here managing the money of the rich people and I’m noticing this distinctions and I noticed that there were two very distinct things that the most of my rich clientele had in common. The very first thing that I noticed was that for the majority of them, almost all of them did the exact opposite of what everybody else does. So when people are selling their stock, my rich clients were buying the stock. And when people were buying stock my rich clients were selling ‘em. That’s called being a Contrarian Investor. We all know a couple of very popular contrarian investors, Warren Buffet and Donald Trump. And let me ask you a question Than. You think Donald Trump buys himself real estate the way everybody else buys themselves real estate? THAN: No he doesn’t. STACY: No absolutely not and the same goes for Warren Buffet. He doesn’t buy himself stock or company the way everybody else does. That’s why they’re billionaires. Now we may not all wanna aspire to be billionaires but the point still remains the same that rich people do the opposite of what everybody else does. In fact Warren Buffet had a great great quote I just love. A few people may not have heard of it before. His quote is, “Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.” There’s just a little bit of fear out there right now, wouldn’t you say? THAN: A hundred percent. I love that quote. I’ve seen it multiple times. And it totally makes sense. When everyone else is sitting on the sidelines afraid of the markets when you should be buying. I tell people, if you’re not buying properties not only to flip but if they do not buy a couple of properties here and there in the hold right now you’re crazy I’m saying ____. I’ve seen crisis like this in – since I’ve been involved. STACY: Yeah, it’s like you said at the beginning of the call I bought my first investment property when I was twenty-five years old in 1995 and we were, we were still in recession, coming out of the recession in the early 90s back then and I have not seen a better time to buy since 1995 when I got into the game. It’s absolutely amazing. And you know the media would have to make you believe the sky is falling but you and I both know that a bunch of bull. And Warren’s buying right now, it’s all over the news. He’s been buying like crazy. He looks at this like a big garage sale. He’s buying everything he can get his hands on and that’s exactly what it is if you really think about it. So here I am I’ve got a front row ticket as a stockbroker to watch multimillionaires buy and sell their stock through me and I’m noticing that my clients do the exact opposite of what everybody else does. I got a little cocky then and I decided I was going to manage money for other people myself. And I did and I studied what my rich clients were doing and how they traded their stock and I got pretty good actually. And I made, I started raising money from clients and making money for them in the stock market. I actually did very well until I didn’t do so well. One day I lost over a million dollars of other people’s money. One day, it feels, actually feels worse than that picture right there. It feels like somebody just punched you on the gut, it’s, it still hurts to this day to even think about losing a million dollars in a day. And it not only scared me it scared my wife and she came to me and she’s like, “Honey I want off this roller coaster and I want off of it bad.” Speaking of my wife here’s a picture of my beautiful family. There’s my wife Shea and my soon to be four year old son Cage and my soon to be two year old son Caston. And of course Cage and Caston weren’t around back then but Shea came to me and she said, “Than I want off this roller coaster…uh, Than she said, “Stacy I want off of this roller coaster.” And I said you know I absolutely want off the roller coaster too honey. I’m gonna give back every penny of the money that I lost for those clients first.” And that’s exactly what I did and as soon as, as soon as I did that I never went back to the stock market. I became a full-time real estate investor. That’s the second thing. Remember I said there were two things that all my rich clients all had in common. The first was that they’re contrarian investors. They’re doing the opposite of what everybody else does. And the second thing is almost all of them took their money out of the stock market and they put it into real estate. And so my wife actually got so spooked she said, (she was a good student then), she said I’m going back to school. I said, “Okay that’s great I support you. What do you wanna do?” She said, “I wanna go to law school.” And I’m thinking, “Cool, you go to law school, become an attorney and I’m gonna go play some more golf.” She said, “I don’t think so that’s not how this is gonna work.” But I know you, those of you who were on the call at the very beginning heard Than say this but for those of you who didn’t then I’ll go ahead and tell them now. My wife became a probate attorney. She went back to law school and studied law for three years in law school. And then when she came out, she was a fulltime practicing probate lawyer for five years before we had Cage. And then once we had Cage she’s been a stay at home mom ever since. And let me tell you Than she’s learned some of the most powerful moneymaking, wealth building strategies during those five years that she practiced as a probate attorney of anybody that I know. And that’s exactly what I wanna share with everybody tonight. And remember I said after I quit the stock market I got into real estate. I’ll show ‘em a picture of the very first real estate deal I ever did. Here’s the very first deal I ever did. I made a little over twenty-five thousand dollars on that first deal. I had no idea when I did that deal. That was be teaching the stuff one day so I didn’t keep a copy of the check. But I made over twenty-five thousand on that first deal on the set. That’s it, that’s the easiest twenty-five grand I’ve ever made. I’m not, you know, this is it. I’ve found my calling. And so I was plodding along doing real estate deals and then one day Than my phone rang. And there was a lady by the name of Diane on the other end. She was literally almost in tears. And she said Stacy you gotta help me, my brothers, herself and her 5 brothers and sisters had inherited this house from her father who passed away. And their mother passed away before the father and they couldn’t get rid of the house. She said she had talked to every real estate investor in town and nobody would help her with this house. I thought, well no one else has been able to help you I don’t know if there’s anything I am gonna be able to do for you Diane. But I agreed to meet her out to the property bet it isn’t that much pain. I’m gonna try to help her. I met her at the property and saw the reason why nobody would help her with this deal. It was a complete nightmare. It didn’t look quite that bad but almost. And I said Diane the numbers just don’t work no wonder nobody has been able to help you. And I ran through the numbers, it’s not gonna make sense for those of you on the east or west coast or some of the larger markets but back then here in Texas that house fixed up was only worth eighty thousand dollars. And so if you’re in California just add a zero I know that doesn’t even come with a garage out there but it’s only worth eighty thousand. And when her father passed away there was an underlying mortgage of forty thousand dollars. And the house literally needed about forty thousand dollars worth of work. And so you can see why how every investor just said, “Oh forget this, you know we’re outta here. There’s really no money to be made.” And on top of that there was some probate issues with it as well. Frankly I didn’t know what to do with it either. Those just made the deal even worse. I told Diane honestly I think it’s gonna take superman to do this deal but it turned out it took superwoman to do this deal Than. And for those of you who were just logging on and didn’t see the previous picture of my wife that’s the picture of my wife. I took the deal to my wife and said, “Honey here’s this deal, you know, tell me if I’m missing anything.” And she looked at it and she said, “Honey if you just do this, this and this, everything should be fine.” And I did exactly what my wife said. Long story short Than I made fifteen thousand dollars in seven days on that deal and every investor in town were kicking and screaming from. And that’s when I knew I found my way to be contrarian real estate investor. And it actually gets better than that because after my wife showed me what to do I spent about three hours on that deal and so I made about five thousand dollars per hour and I said to myself, “Self I believe there’s a little bit of money to be made on this probate deals.” But I also knew Than that if I was just like most real estate investors who just stumble on one every now and then. And like you said when you do ‘em, when the real estate investor stumbles on a probate deal accidentally it’s usually the most profitable deal they’ve ever done. I needed a system so that I could find this babies at will. And so that’s what I set out to do with my wife’s help, my wife’s paralegals help. We created a system over the next couple of years. And we’ve refined it over the last seven years to be able to find this bad boys at will. And here’s some checks from the deals that I’ve done. Here’s a sixty six hundred dollar deal. Here’s a seven thousand dollar check Than. Here’s a twenty-two thousand dollar check. And here’s a fifty-three thousand dollar check. And I just absolutely love probate ’cause like you said in the beginning of the call, there’s so much more equity in this probate deals than there are in most other types of real estate deals. So if you just now joined us and if you haven’t grabbed your pen and paper yet this will be a great time to get your pen and paper ready because we’re about to get into some nitty-gritty stuff. What you’re gonna learn today is how having never-ending source of ultimate motivated seller leads. Think about that for just a second. Why is it never-ending? Because are people ever gonna stop passing away? THAN: No. STACY: No. They’re always gonna pass away so it’s literally a never-ending source of what I call ultimate motivated seller leads. And I’ll prove to you why I say that probate sellers are truly the ultimate motivated seller. I’m also gonna show you how to buy property from thirty to fifty cents below market but that’s no big deal in and out itself anybody can do that right now in this market. But here’s the key, with probate you have virtually zero competition. Virtually no competition with this probate deals. And I’m also gonna show you why now is an absolutely amazing ground floor opportunity to get involved on these probate deals like you’ve never seen before. And the cool thing Than about probate, I know you know this because you’ve done a ton of probate is no matter what kind of property you’re looking for as a real estate investor, you could find it in probate. If you’re looking to do luxury homes and, there are luxury homes in probate. Think about it, do people who own luxury homes pass away? Yeah. And those luxury homes go to probate. If you’re looking to do commercial properties. Maybe you wanna get into strip centers, those properties are in probate. Think about it. Do people who own commercial properties pass away? Maybe you’re listening to me right now and you’re wanting to do multi-family apartment units. Or maybe you already are. And maybe you’re a little discouraged by how much competition is out there well what if you look for multi-family apartment buildings that were in probate. Think about it. People who own apartment buildings pass away every single day. So no matter what kind of property or what kind of deals you’re currently doing, if you’re doing short sales, well take short sales for example. What’s one of the very first things a bank wants to see on a short sale package. The hardship letter right? Think about it, there’s no better hardship letter on the planet than the death certificate. Just fax over the death certificate and tell the bank, “I’m pretty sure the dude’s not gonna pay you anymore he’s dead.” And it puts you on a whole new round of negotiating with the bank on this short sales. So no matter what kind of deals, real estate deals you’re currently doing, probate makes it that much better. Probate will just turbo charge you’re current deals that you’re doing. They’re that good. So Than let me ask you a question real quick, you think you’ve got any people on the line who are investing in foreclosures right now? THAN: I have no doubt.
THAN: A hundred percent in fact when I go and I talk around the country in different groups and I always like to see what other investors in other areas are doing and it’s the same thing. Whenever I ask people how many of you are investing in foreclosures I have tremendous response. And then when I ask about probates I always see like one, maybe two people who are targeting this yet right now there’s around five million unsettled probates around the country. I mean there’s just tremendous opportunity. And I just encourage people you know, when you go through this right now you gotta really write some of this things down. In fact if you want answers, ask questions. Put your questions into the question box on GoToWebinar. I’ll answer some while they come in and I’ll ask Stacy at the very end about those as well. And we’ll also be playing trivia at the end so I’ll let you just ran back with it. STACY: Yeah. You could definitely shoot. You can use your control panel on gotowebinar to fire up a question. We’re gonna take, I’m gonna take as many questions as time will permit at the end. If we don’t get to your question please don’t get upset ’cause I’m sure people are already firing off questions as I speak right now. We’re gonna go there. But the point is Than goes, speaks all around the country, does events all around the country. I’ve talked to people around the country there’s very little competition for this probates. And I’m gonna reveal the heron just a little bit. There’s actually more probates than there are foreclosures out there. And I’m gonna prove you why that streak. You might be scratching your head and go, “Stacy how can that be right?” I’m gonna prove it to you here in just a second. Right now, first thing I wanna do. There may be a few of you listening who don’t know what probate is. Probate is simple, and I want you to write this down, probate is simple the process of transferring assets from one person to another after somebody’s passed away. That’s really all it is in a nutshell okay. Let’s say that if I pass away I’m gonna leave my car to Than. Okay right now my car is titled in my name okay. In order to get it over to Than we’ve gotta take my name off the title and we’re gonna put Than’s name on the title so he can sell it, use it, do whatever he wants to with it right. And if you break it down to its basic element that’s really what the probate process is all about. It’s just transferring those assets from one person to another after somebody’s passed away. Now there’s some key players that we’re gonna talk about in the probate process. The first there’s we’re gonna spend some time tonight are the heirs of course. The heirs obviously are the people who stand to inherit the, all the goodies when somebody’s passed away. And there’s one heir in particular, Than I know you know this, that is the most important heir of all. And we’re gonna call that person the personal representative. Now you may have heard ‘em being referred to before as the executor or the executrix or the administrator or the administatrix. Every area calls ‘em something different but it’s, we’re just gonna dispel with all that stuff and we’re just gonna call ‘em a personal representative. And that person is usually an heir. Nine times out of ten it’s an heir. And that’s the heir that has stepped forward and said that they’re going to represent the other heir’s interest. So they’re gonna speak on behalf of the other heirs. And that is the person; the personal representative is the person who I deal with as a probate investor. And that’s the person you’ll be dealing with as a probate investor as well. And we’re gonna talk more about the personal representative as we go here but here are some huge advantages the probate. I said in the beginning you’re dealing with the ultimate motivated seller. And Than, the reason I say that is because you’re dealing with an unemotional seller. And when someone inherits property that they didn’t earn themselves they really don’t have any emotional attachment to that property. Versus say somebody whose in foreclosure who does have an emotional attachment to the property. So there’s a difference there. And the heirs just wanna sell their property fast. They just wanna get their money fast. They wanna get their inheritance yesterday and they know they’ve gotta sell in order to convert the assets to cash so that they can get what they want which is the money in the first place. So they don’t have an attachment to the property. They want to sell. They need to sell. And they have to sell. They’ve got some time lines imposed on ‘em by the government, I will get into, but they’ve got to do things in a timely fashion, they’ve gotta get the stuff done in a certain time frame so that they can get the process wrapped up. And like Than says in the beginning of the call theirs huge huge equity in this probate deals. And that opens up an owner-financing component to probate. That most other forms of real estate don’t have Than. And when you can open up the possibility of owner financing especially in today’s financing market it just opens up a whole new world of ways for you to take down this probate deals. And like, I’ll talk about it here in just a little while, a good percentage, about 20 plus 20-25 percent of all probate properties are free and clear. And I know you probably run into that too Than. And it just opens up a whole new world when you’re dealing with a property that’s free and clear versus one that’s upside down. And like I said before we’re talking about the ultimate ground for opportunity. And the reason I say that Than is because here’s a graph of the number of probates from 1970 to 2007, so over the last thirty years or so. You can see in 1970 there were just under two million probates a year and in 2007 there were about 2.5 just under 2.5. Looks like its on a little bit of an upturn there. What do you think its gonna look like over the next thirty years Than? THAN: Going to grow. STACY: This things gonna go vertical. It’s gonna go exponential. And the beautiful about this is that right now it’s an absolute gold mine these probates. And it’s only going to get better. But when would now be a good time time to get, to learn how to invest in this probate properties and start making money before every other, you know, real estate investor jumps on the bandwagon. Then we’ll be hearing more people talk about how many investors are doing probates. You wanna get in before that happens. So like I said at the beginning of the call, there are some key things about probate that are a little bit different from most other forms of real estate. One of the cool things about probate is that probate was created to protect the creditors. Most people don’t realize that Than. The reason it was created in the first place was to protect the creditors. And think about that. If you owe me fifty thousand dollars Than and I passed away would you still want your fifty grand? THAN: Yeah you better believe it. STACY: Yeah you still want it especially from me right? THAN: Especially from you. I want double my interest on that one Stacy. STACY: And our credit card companies are the exact same way. You’re mortgage, whoever holds your mortgage on your house or the loan on your car, you know they need to be protected as well. Those debts can’t just simply vanish when you pass away. Because then we’d have total financial chaos in this country if more financial chaos than we’re already having if people we’re just allowed to pass away without paying their bills. So the creditors get paid first before the heirs. Now remember I’ve said that, I’ve said a couple of times now that probate sellers are the ultimate motivated sellers. And this is another reason why they’re so motivated because the heirs themselves don’t even know that the creditors get paid first before them okay. So the first chunk of money that goes after they sell the assets goes to the creditors not the heirs okay. So they’re even more motivated to sell all those assets ’cause they’ve gotta get those creditors paid off so that they could have what’s left over just so they can get their inheritance. And like I said a second ago Than, even right now when as many foreclosures there are, there are still 2 times more probates than foreclosures man can you believe that? 2 times as many probates and foreclosures but I don’t want you to just take my word for that. Let’s think about that for a second. Why is that? Well even in the most hardest hit areas of the country foreclosure-wise, there’s we’re really only talking about 15% or so of some areas are going through foreclosure. Now that means that 85% of the people in those areas are not in foreclosure, okay. But now think about this, 100% of us are gonna pass away some point right Than? We’re all gonna die. So not virtually all the people, I won’t say all because not all estates go to probate but by 99% of everyone’s estate will wind up going to probate. So that’s why there’s so many more probates than there are foreclosures yet all the investors are focused on the foreclosures when there’s so, there’s such a bigger gold mine over here to play and then no one’s playing in it. It just blows my mind. And another awesome thing about probate is you can find anything in probate. You can find houses, cars, land, coin collections, antiques, jewelry, businesses. Anything a person owns during his or her lifetime can be found in probate. And why, we’re gonna talk about some of those things in more detail. But businesses, you know God forbid something ever happens to my Mom but my Mom is a small business owner and I don’t know anything about her business. If something were to happen to my mom, I would be a motivated seller of my mom’s business real quick. So do you see why I keep saying that probate sellers are the ultimate motivated sellers. But talking about some of the things that you could find in probate Than, here’s just a small taste of some of the things. It’s just not about the house in probate. There are houses in probate, there are cars in probate, there are jewelry, fine jewelry can be found in probate, boats. Anything that a person owns during his or her lifetime can be found in probate. In fact Than check this out, you’re gonna dig this. One of my students found this boat in pickup in probate. Now when they found this boat in pickup riggers a few years ago, the boat pickup were worth almost fifty thousand dollars together. My student was able to pick that boat and pickup rig up for five thousand dollars Than. Ten cents on the dollar. THAN: Stacy. STACY: I mean when you run across assets for ten cents on the dollar it doesn’t matter if the house or boat or pickup you’re gonna be able to make money. And that’s the cool thing about probate. They’re just; it’s not just about the real estate. Although there’s just tons of money to be made with the real estate we’re gonna talk more about the personal property side of probate a little bit later Than. Alright Than, let me ask you a quick question. I know you know the instance here. Which of these houses has less competition, the one on the left or the one on the right? THAN: Foreclosure opted on the left, probate on the right. STACY: Exactly, exactly. Yeah, and here is where we the robber meets the road with probate guys. And so if you’re joining this late and you haven’t got your pen and paper, do it now because this is, this is like I said where the robber meets the road. This is why so few real estate investors pursue probates. Because like Than said the house on the left is a foreclosure house and every Tom, Dick and Harry foreclosure investors stand on the front yard. Looks like they’re having an auction there. Everybody knows about it because everybody knows the address of 1234 Maple St. because everybody’s county has a foreclosure specialist who goes down to the courthouse, gathers all the data and then emails out a spreadsheet, you know, for thirty bucks a month or whatever, you know. Whose in foreclosure, how long when they bought the house, whose got the note, how much they owe, how much they’re behind. You know everything about them. But there’s no such service like that for probates, okay? And very few people other than myself, Than, some of Than’s students that his taught this to and the students that I’ve taught this stuff to. We’re the only ones who know how to find the address of the probate house. The house on the right is a probate house it’s about to hit the market but nobody knows about it. Not even the real estate agents. And I’m gonna show you how we can get there before anyone else knows what’s going on. And like I said at the beginning of the call you’re gonna be able to just literally cherry pick the sweetest deals for yourself. Just almost invisibly and nobody is gonna know what’s going on. So Than it’s time to get down to my simple 5 Step Probate Process. I’ve broken my system down into five simple steps. And so again guys if you have not take, got your pen and paper ready this would be a good time to do it ’cause I want you to write this stuff down. Alright step number 1 in my process is, you have to find the probate notice in your local newspaper. Now I’m not talking about the obituary okay, I’m talking about the probate notice that attorneys run that notifies creditors that someone has passed away. And you’re usually gonna find this in the smaller local newspapers okay. If you live in LA it’s usually not in the LA Times. You can find some probate notices in LA Times but the attorneys like to save on their marketing cause so they don’t advertise in those big metropolitan newspapers. They run in the smaller newspapers. And now I used to just tell my students Than, I used to just say you gotta find your newspaper in your county that publishes the probate notices. And I got students calling me back saying Stacy we can’t find it. We’re having a tough time and I said, “Alright I don’t wanna hear this excuse ever again.” So I paid one of my employees Than. It took her three months and she created my newspaper directory. Which lists every newspaper in the country that publishes probate notices. How cool is that dude? THAN: Really cool. STACY: It’s absolutely amazing. There’s no other probate system in the planet that has this newspaper directory. My employee spent three months contacting all five thousand newspapers in the country by phone and by email and asked them one question, “Do you or don’t you publish probate notices?” And we created a PDF, you open up the newspaper directory and you can see on the left here, we’ve got all fifty states listed alphabetically. I live in Texas so I would click on Texas, and that opens up on the right all of the newspapers in Texas that post the probate notices. If you live in Dallas, you can see here the Daily Commercial Record in Dallas, publishes probate notices Monday through Friday. Alright? The Dallas Business Journal does this as well. And if you live in McKinney, Texas – the Courier Gazette is the newspaper you want. Now you can just click that link from within my newspaper directory and you will instantly be on that newspaper’s website. How cool is that Than? Take you right to their website and you can start looking up the probate notices from the comfort of your own home. Now that’s step number one, you gotta find the probate notice and that’s the step that most people miss. But I’ve done all the hard work for you. I’m gonna give you my newspaper directory. And all you have to do is open it with a couple of clicks of your mouse and you’re gonna be on your way to finding probate deals that no other real estate investor on your town knows about, from the comfort of your own home. Then you just move on to step number two. Step number one again was you’ve gotta find the probate notices in your newspaper. Step number two is you gotta know, do they own any real estate. Now I’m assuming that everybody is interested in real estate since they’re on this call. We’ll talk a little bit more about the personal property here in just a second. But at this point you found the probate notice with my newspaper directory, but you don’t know if they own any real estate. Well we can solve that real simply because all you have to do is go to your tax assessor website and plug in the last name of the diseased, and it’ll tell you whether or not they own any real estate. And sometimes that’s not always the case. There’s some other trick you can use if that’s not the case. And I talked about that in my system, but I give everybody who invest in my system Than a tax assessor website so that they can use. Again it’s very similar to the newspaper directory. They click on their state, click on their county, and they go straight to their tax assessors website. So again with just a couple more clicks on their mouse they will know whether there’s any real estate to be had in that estate or not. Then you just go on to step number three. Step number three is you wanna get the personal representative’s name and address. Now a cool thing is Than, I know you know this that a good majority of the time, the personal representative’s name and address is actually in the probate notice that you’re gonna find online. It’ll say that so and so the deceased has passed away and so and so is their heir and then it’ll give you their address and which is actually step number four. Once you get the personal representative’s, or step number three, get the personal representative’s name and address which you could, be found online again from the comfort of your own home, just go to step number four and you send the personal representative one of my probate letters, they come from my system. Now my wife sat down and she helped me craft four letters Than. That are incredibly powerful letters that come with my system. And my letters on average get between a 10 and 30%. They average about 20% response rate. So for every hundred letters my students send out, they get about twenty responses. Now I know you’re a direct mail guy, is that good or is that good? THAN: That’s off the charts good ’cause I know I’ve seen ‘em and they’re good. And actually we just thought us moving over to ‘em so I’m pretty excited about that. It’s insane when you do that. And a lot of times you’re the only one contacting ‘em because the fact that it matters in my area, there’s probably one maybe two investors that I’ve seen in the past six and a half years who are good at contacting these probates. I mean nobody does it. It’s amazing.
THAN: A hundred percent because most investors, the only time I’ve ever seen investors get in trouble is when they but a whole too many houses too quickly and they don’t have enough cash flowing. STACY: Right. THAN: Wholesaling provides that cash as well as provides the liquidity for all the other investments you make plus pay for at least amount of time and probates are natural. One thing I wanna bring up just to emphasize what you’re saying. Probates are by far some of the easiest deals to wholesale because you put it under contract there’s still things that have to be done when in the probate process so you’ll have plenty of time to remarket this properties. When you’re working with an heir it’s not like the property’s gonna be sold the next day. So you can give yourself plenty of time and the contractor and that’s really key to what wholesaling is. You’re trying to give yourself 30 to 45 days to find another buyer or more when you remarket the property. When they’re about to lose the property in the foreclosure situation you’ve gotta move, I mean you’ve got to hustle. But when you’ve got time with probates you’ve got a natural built in timeline on most of this. Sometimes, the most time you have 60 to 70 days because the heirs are dealing with the person’s possessions that have passed away which obviously you can still, you can negotiate as well. But they’re dealing with that sort of information so you’ve got plenty of time to find a buyer. In fact I think they’re the most natural wholesale deals out there based on the fact that you have plenty of time to remarket these properties during the approval process. Its just a phenomenal strategy to use especially when you don’t have a large buyers list, you know, compared to the, a lot of people are having trouble doing the pre-foreclosure A to B, B to C closings because they don’t have, all timelines matched up with the buyers and they’re gonna lose the property. So it’s a natural natural thing to wholesale ‘em. I could talk to you for days but Stace I’m gonna let you run now. STACY: I know, no you’re absolutely right. You’re saying some amazingly powerful things. And the reason that, one of the other reasons that you don’t have to hustle with probate like you do with the foreclosures because you don’t have you know, 15 other investors breathing down your neck trying to get this thing under contract out from under you. You don’t have to move as fast. And that’s what Than’s saying. You can take your time because there’s not that competition’s just isn’t there. And because the seller again the ultimate motivated seller in my opinion, they don’t have to sell tomorrow like someone in foreclosure does. They can give you a little bit more time. So then you’re absolutely spot on Than. So those are my five steps. It doesn’t get any simpler than that. Anybody can do this. In fact Than even this dude right here, I can teach this dude how to do this. THAN: That’s you from you from like 12th grade right? STACY: Gosh, you weren’t supposed to tell ‘em that man. Yeah I actually did go to high school with some dudes who looked just like that. And I could go back to that town right now and I could teach those dudes who still have those mullets how to do this, it’s that simple. In fact here’s one of my students, Seth Taylor whose only 27 years old, wrote in and said about my system. He said, “I can confidently say that Stacy has developed a comprehensive system that provides an excellent road map to guide you from start to finish in the highly profitable probate niche. This system is a much must have!” And I’ll tell you a little thing about Seth he’s only 27 years old. Again he doesn’t have any money or credit. He’s not out there risking his money or credit. He’s wholesaling this properties. If Seth can do it at 27 year old from Portland, Oregon can do it, then you can do it as well. The only difference between Seth and you right now is that Seth took action and you haven’t yet. So now Than I want to, I wanna address a question that maybe on some people’s mind right now. They may be thinking, “Stacy wait, if you and Than say that there’s so much equity in this probate deals then why don’t the heirs just list the property with a real estate agent?” And that’s a great question and I’m not gonna sit here and tell you that that doesn’t happen. That does happen but who cares there’s 2x more probates than there are foreclosures. It’s gonna happen from time to time but here’s a bigger thing to think about. Than if you were a personal representative of somebody’s estate and you were thinking about putting that piece of property on the market with a real estate agent but you hadn’t done it yet. You were just thinking about it and all of a sudden you’ve got a letter from one of my students saying that they could help you. And that they might be interested in buying your property. Who you gonna call first the real estate agent or my student? THAN: You’re gonna call the person that’s gonna cash you out. Because the reality is the heirs, a lot of these heirs, all of a sudden they inherited a property. A lot of times they live out of state and as that property is going through the probate process, the fact that most of this people, most people you deal with on probates don’t have a tremendous amount of money. They’re younger, a lot of times that the most they have in the bank might be five to ten grand and all of a sudden they inherit a property that might be worth two hundred thousand that’s on free and clear it’s like a windfall to them. They don’t, a lot of times they don’t even check the market value. You call off and literally you talk to ‘em face to face and you can make an offer of one thirty-five, one forty all day long and they’ll take it ’cause it’s all of a sudden, they’re realizing money they never had ever before in their life and they’ll take it. And the majority don’t wanna deal with agents, a lot of this properties are, they’re not all plain depth seller beautiful properties. But some of ‘em are, a lot of ‘em are dated. And because of that it’s like an eyesore to them and they realize that agents are gonna have you know a longer time to sell it and it’s you know money now or money six months from now when the agents sells it. And ’cause the agents sells it more sure but you are a cash solutions to them now. They take it all the time. STACY: Absolutely. And that’s exactly what I teach my students how to do. I teach them how to be Johnny on the Spot. The early bird that gets the worm. I teach my students how to get there before the agents have even contacted them so. Why wouldn’t the personal representative contact the student like you said over a real estate agent. They get a letter in the mail saying, “Hey I might be able to help you with your state,” which by the way that’s not what the letter says if you’re wondering. ‘Cause the letters are a little more intricate than that. But you know it definitely says something along those lines in the letter. They get that letter, they read it and they’re dealing with a potential buyer that we’re gonna call that buyer first before they call an agent whose going to then have to find them a buyer. So yeah, you can get to this properties before the agents even know what’s going on and just take ‘em right up from underneath the agent. In fact I wanna talk to the agents ’cause I know we have agents on the line. If we could open up the line I know we have some real estate agents on the line and I always like to do this. And I’m gonna talk just to the real estate agents for a second because they have an extra special advantage that none agent investors don’t have. So if you’re an agent right now I wanna ask you, how would you like to cut your biggest expense in half or just alleviate it and get rid of it altogether. And I know if you’re an agent your biggest expense is marketing. How would you like to stop marketing altogether or at least cut it in half? And how would you like to put an extra two to five listings per month in your pocket? How would that affect your yearly income if you’re an agent right now. So here’s the extra advantage that agents have Than. It just blows my mind that more agents don’t think of this. When I’m live I always ask for sure hands, how many agents are there in the room. Last time I did this I was in Atlanta and a guy raised his hand he was about 55, I said, “Sir how long have you been an agent?” And he said 20 years in the Atlanta area he’s been an agent and I said, “Great, how many probate properties have you listed and sold this year?” And he scratched his head and he said, “None.” I said, “How about last year?” And he said, “None.” Let me ask you a question, “How many people live in Atlanta?” He said about three and a half million or so and I said, “Great, you think more than no people have passed away in Atlanta within the last couple of years?” And of course everybody laughed and I said, “So why aren’t you getting those listings? Those probate properties are being listed by somebody. Why haven’t you got those listings?” And he said, Than it blew me away here’s an agent whose been an agent for 20 years in one of the largest markets in the country, Atlanta. And he has never had a probate listing. I said, “Why?” He said, “Because I didn’t know how to find ‘em.” And I said, “Not anymore, now you know how to find ‘em.” So you agents who are listening to me right now with my system you will know how to find these probate deals. You can as an agent send a separate set of letters to the personal representative. You can send to, one as the agent. Well you can send just one letter it could say two things. First I’m assuming if you’re listening and you’re an agent you wanna be an investor more than you wanna be an agent or you wouldn’t be listening right now. So you can say, you can approach the PR first as an investor and if they say, “No we’re thinking about listing with an agent.” You just take up your investor act and say, “I know a great agent, would you like to list it with me?” So they’ve got an extra advantage, they can pick up those listings if they’re real estate agents. Than how cool is that man? THAN: Sweet. It’s so true we do that. I figured that out a couple of years ago. We started getting this calls on all of our deals and it’s more bond with foot right over to the listings. I mean I myself am an agent, we have agents in our office and it’s natural fit. I mean the number one thing that agents need are listings that are gonna sell you know relatively quickly. So I completely agree. STACY: Yeah. Absolutely man and it just blows my mind agents are in the game more than anyone else. They’re in the game 24/7. They live, eat and breath this stuff and they don’t even know how to find this probates. And again that’s why there’s so little competition. But you guys don’t have that excuse anymore. Not after tonight. So here’s one of my agent students, Jenny Smith with her family. She writes in from Albuquerque and she said, “Since learning Stacy’s she’s cut her marketing cost in half and she has more listings than ever. Thank you Stacy.” I love getting stuff like that they’re just awesome. Now cool, this one right here we have, I hope we don’t have any audio problem ’cause I want you guys to hear it from Richard in his own words. I wanna set this up for a second Than because I’ve met Richard at my first ever probate boot camp last February. We’ve been, it was a four day event. We’re on the fourth day of the event and he’s been quiet sitting in the back the whole time we’re talking about estate sales and how you can make money with estate sales. There’s so many ways to make money with probate. He comes up, and Richard does, he comes to the microphone, he says, “Yes I just like to tell you a quick story.” He’s very monotone. “Love you Richard if you’re listening!” He’s a very monotone guy and that big smile is about as excited as you’re gonna see him get. And he says, “I found, as I was driving down the street I saw an estate sale.” He just went into the estate sale. He found the personal representative inside the estate sale. Told him that he might be able to help settle the estate by buying the house. Long story short they sold him the house 3 days later. It was a hundred and forty thousand dollar house and he got it for seventy thousand dollars Than. How sweet is that let’s see if we can make this play so you can hear Richard in his own words. Alright. And I’m clicking it and you’re not. Here we go. I saw a blink that time maybe it’ll go this time. Sorry for the technical difficulty this is the first time. Since we’re doing this live I wasn’t able to use the video Than so we’ve gotta and fixed the audio. Alright I’m gonna give it just a couple more seconds and if it doesn’t here in just a second I’ll move on. And it doesn’t look like it’s gonna start. Anyway Than how cool is that man he just, he’s just driving down the street, walks into an estate sale, picks up the house for fifty cents on the dollar. Picks up a hundred and forty thousand dollar house for just seventy thousand dollars. It doesn’t get much better than that guys. Uh-oh, alright we do not, we don’t want that screen right there. Please don’t lock up on me. Please don’t lock up on me. Let’s go to the next alright. Let’s see. Sorry about this Than. THAN: It’s alright, you got, you got no problem you got time. I think when you try to merge it out here with the ____. Folks I’ll just bring up while Stacy’s fixing it, you can fix it Stacy that’s alright. That happens over here on my side too. STACY: You want to, let’s see how about if I, if I do that, I will just, I’ll just close the program real quick and I’ll just open it back up. Go ahead and say what, hey here I am guys. How are you guys doing. I just hope that I pull up the exact same one that I just had open. Alright let’s see. THAN: Molly if you want too Stacy I have it over on my side. STACY: Molly can you just flip it over to Than’s real quick? That would be awesome. Perfect. THAN: I have it over on my side and we can reverse it over Molly. Hold on what second. Let me just put it over here. STACY: We will not attempt to do the audio. We tested it this afternoon. I promise we tested it and it worked just fine but.. THAN: Alright here we go. STACY: Alright cool. THAN: Can you see that now? STACY: Yep and we’re on slide. I can’t see it just yet but we were on slide 45. THAN: Okay I got it right here Molly. MOLLY: Okay, it’s on your screen. STACY: Yep I can see it. Here you go. The very next thing we’re gonna talk about is the personal property treasure hunt. Am I in control Molly or is Than? THAN: I’m in control I’ll just click through, I’ll click through as you go. I got it. STACY: Okay, cool. You wanna open it up into full presentation my bud? THAN: Alright. It should be alright. STACY: Alright here we go. Awesome. Perfect. Sorry about that guys, you never know what you’re gonna get on this live calls. I apologize Than. I thought that it would go a little bit smoother than that. THAN: That’s alright. Believe me I think everybody can relate to having personal problems with the computer. So believe me we’ve had more than a, more than a few Stacy so I’ll just click it as you go. STACY: Alright. THAN: I can put it in this motor click as you go? STACY: Yeah go ahead and put it in the presentation mode that would be awesome man. You know right where we are. So Richard, getting back to Richard we’re just saying. He did, you know, he picked up a house for fifty cents on the dollar just by stopping in and talking to the personal representative. That’s the kind of deals you can find with probates guys. So now I wanna talk about the personal property side of probate Than. And I don’t know how much experience you’ve had with the personal property side of probate. But there’s some of my students Than that are making more money on the personal property than they are even with the houses. If you can believe that. And again if you go to the next slide, I just wanna remind everybody that exactly what kind of property you can find in probate again. Houses, cars, boats, watches, it’s all in probate. Anything that a person owns during his or her lifetime can be found in probate. Now let me tell you about personal property and how that works now. It only happens about 25% of the time or so. But every now and then you’re gonna run into an estate and the personal representative’s gonna say, “Can you just deal with everything?” They’re gonna say, “We’ve taken all personal artifacts that we’re interested in, we want you to deal with the house and everything else that’s in the house.” When that happens I want you to, I want you to remain calm and I want you to say, “Yeah sure I can do that.” And then I want you to put your hand over the phone and go ‘cha-ching’ because you just hit the jackpot. And you might be wondering now, “Stacy what am I gonna do with someone else’s crap? I’ve got enough crap of my own.” There’s this little website that you might have heard about. It’s called eBay. I’m just being slightly ____ of course you have heard about eBay. But in case you didn’t know you can sell boats, you can sell cars, you can sell houses, you can sell watches, you can sell anything on eBay. And my students that are making more money off of the personal property are doing so because they are able to make it faster than the real estate. Because you don’t have to, if you’re selling a watch on eBay there doesn’t need to be a survey or a title search or any of those things. You can put a Rolex watch up on eBay and you can sell it in an hour. And so you can literally have money just almost immediately when you run into a situation where you are able to get the personal property as well as the real estate. If you go to the next slide Than, my student, here’s Jerry Davis with her family. She writes in and says that she did a personal property flip. She sold some, got some personal property out of an estate. Sold it on eBay, made $2,126 in 4 days selling personal property on eBay Than. Dude it doesn’t get much better than that, does it? Two grand in 4 days?
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