In this video, I am showing you a house that I purchased from a property owner that had inherited a property. In this case, it was a grandson who inherited the property from his grandmother. The lead came in off my direct mail campaign to an inherited and probate leads list using my “caricature” postcard. Make sure you attend my next Lex Levinrad Real Estate Training Event to learn how to market to motivated sellers and how to find houses like this! We have a Fixing and Flipping Houses Boot Camp coming up where I teach you how to find houses to fix and flip.
I sent out a direct mail campaign to this inherited list and this motivated seller called in. I went out to the property, met with the seller, and we agreed on a cash price for me to buy his house. The house was titled in an estate, so I knew that we would most likely need to probate the property. Many sellers that inherit properties from family members are not aware that they need to probate the property (this is very common).
I referred him to a probate attorney, and it took around 6 months for the property to be transferred into his name. The title company and the probate attorney were in constant communication. Every time they asked the seller for documents, the seller was uncommunicative. It turns out that the seller does not like to check his email. I had to personally get involved, follow up, text and call the seller to harass him to get the documents in to the title company and to the attorney. You need to do this sometimes.
Finally, we had all of the documents necessary to probate the estate and transfer the title into his name. That cleared the way for me to buy the property since I was purchasing the property from him.
When I purchased the house, it had ALL of the furniture in the house. All of the couches, TV sets, fish tanks, tables, beds and even the clothing in all of the closets. It took 2 weeks just to empty out the house (what we call “trash out” in the business). Our crew had 2 huge roll off containers and took quite a few trips to the dump to clear out all of the contents of the house. The kitchen was full of utensils, plates, glasses etc. So before we could rip out the cabinets, we needed to get rid of everything in the kitchen. We had a mini garage sale to help in getting stuff out of the house as quickly as possible.
When I purchased the house, it was in exactly the same condition as when the homeowner had passed away. This is what happens. People pass away. Their relatives inherit the property. And the relatives want to sell that property as quickly as possible.
The grandson had been by the property to take what he wanted to keep from the house. The rest was trash. This is very common with inherited properties. Many times a relative will go by the property and clean it up and pack up everything. But more often than not, most of the time they don’t want to deal with it and will ask us if we can buy the house “As Is” with everything in it.
After we had ripped out the kitchen, and gotten rid of all of the furniture and clothes, the next step was to rip out all of the carpets and carpet pads. It was at this point, that we shot this video.
I will post another video showing you the completed house after repairs before being listed on the MLS.
Do you want to learn how to fix and flip houses? The best place to start out is by registering for today’s Fixing & Flipping Webinar Training!
If you want to learn how to fix and flip houses, I highly encourage you to attend the Fixing and Flipping Houses Boot Camp
