Baby Boomers and Probates

Mike Hambright (00:00.77)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. Today I’m here with Sharon Vornholt. We’re gonna be talking about the power of probates today. She’s a probate expert and old friend. We haven’t talked for a little while, but we’ve been on each other’s shows quite a few times over the years. I think we started our podcast around the same time, give or take a year back in 2012. think you said yours was 2013. And I don’t know how many times we’ve been on each other’s show, but it’s been a little while. So Sharon, great to see you.

Sharon Vornholt (00:25.282)
It’s good to see you, Mike. Yes, we’ve done a lot of things over the years, a lot of different things.

Mike Hambright (00:29.784)
Yeah, yeah. So I’ve always known you as an expert on probates. I know you teach a lot about that and you’ve done a lot of that yourself. Before we kind of dive in, because there’s a lot of misconceptions about probates and I think there’s, as you said, with the aging population, there’s a huge opportunity coming here for people to kind of, you know, not only be working on them now, but prepare yourself for this kind of silver tsunami that’s out there. But before we jump into that, tell us a little bit about, you have a long history as a real estate investor and a lot of

real estate experience. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Sharon Vornholt (01:02.548)
I do, and I had another real estate related business that I started in 1991.

Along around 1998, a realtor walked in my office and said, do you want to go to a real meeting? And I said something really profound like, what’s a real meeting? That was the first time I knew that, because my family was not a real estate family. My dad was a general contractor, but that was the first time I knew that you did not have to be a realtor to be involved in real estate. So I invested for about 10 years from 1998 to 2008 part time.

My plan was to build a small portfolio of rentals so I’d do a couple of rehabs. I dove right into rehabbing and then I would buy a rental and do some rehabs. And I kind of went along that path for 10 years. And then in 2008, we all remember what happened around that time.

I closed the other business and went into real estate full time. And that just coincidentally was the year I discovered Probates. Now I had always worked off market deals simply because I didn’t want to get in there and scrap around with realtors and other investors on the MLS. It was purely because I view off market deals as the low hanging fruit. I still believe that today. But once I discovered Probate, I also discovered I had absolutely no clue how to work in

that niche and it took me a little bit to put together systems and to learn how to do this. But once I did, the thing I realized about probates is that you literally have a never ending stream of leads. It’s the cycle of life. People are born and people pass away and these…

Sharon Vornholt (02:48.724)
These people, need our help. Now, for some people, they’re going to list their property. For many others, they’re going to sell them to an investor because they’re outdated, they need a lot of repairs, and they just want to be done with the estate. And that’s just the simple truth of it.

Mike Hambright (03:05.334)
Yeah, and as an investor, think most investors would say, let me connect you with my attorney or my title company, or they say they’re already working with somebody.

they don’t really add any, they just don’t add a lot of value to that situation, because they’re like, well, get that taken care of and then let’s talk again, or I’ve got somebody that might be able to help you, but I don’t know anything about it. And so in an effort to kind of try to add value to keep them on the line, they might connect them with somebody, but maybe just talk a little bit about, and I want to go into in a minute to what is a probate, even because a lot of folks probably have some misconceptions here, but talk about the advantage of the investor that truly understands the process.

and what needs to happen so that they can become more of a consultant to the seller versus just somebody that just points to somebody else.

Sharon Vornholt (03:53.728)
Yes, and this is a really key point. People are intimidated by probate because they don’t understand the process.

And that’s true for investors, but what you have to realize is that the executor or the decision maker, whether they’re the executor or the personal representative, as they’re called, they don’t always know what’s going on either. another misconception about probate is you have to wait till the probate is closed. And that, my friend, means it’s over and you’ve lost your opportunity. So as an investor, you can buy a property right about in the middle of the

process.

And we all love and know attorneys, real estate attorneys, that help us make our living. But when it comes to probate, these folks, all they do is the probate attorneys look up on the tax assessor’s site and they say, well, this house is worth $500,000. What they don’t know, they’ve never walked into the house, is that it needs $250,000 worth of repairs. So right off the bat, set this, you know, the person who’s seeking advice, they set them up at

Mike Hambright (04:56.27)
Yeah.

Sharon Vornholt (05:02.788)
to be in kind of a bad situation. And that’s not intentional, that’s just not their business. But.

We can help these people navigate what is truly a time in their life where they You know would go back to the legal process So the legal process is the the act of administering the estate and carrying out the the deceased wishes if they had a will So that’s the executor now if they don’t have a will that person is Appointed by the court and they are called the administrator And this is where it gets kind of confusing these people jointly are called the personal representative

But what I’d like for investors to know is that person is the decision maker. That is the person you want to be working with. So we are in the unique position to help these people dispose of a property and move on with their life. And that’s really what they’re looking for. And your job as an investor, yes, they want to sell the property and they want to make some money, but there’s almost always something else. It’s almost always full of stuff.

Mike Hambright (05:45.486)
Mm-hmm.

Sharon Vornholt (06:10.104)
or they’ve discovered their parents had code violations or tax liens or something, they have another motivation.

Mike Hambright (06:15.448)
Right.

Yeah, a lot of times you’re dealing with a family, right? So sometimes, I mean, I’ve bought tons of probate houses over the years as well. And so usually it’s like maybe one spouse died.

a long time ago. And the other one, know, dad died 10 years ago, 15 years ago, mom’s still there. And now it’s the kids or some portion of the family’s responsibility to kind of muddle through this. And that’s where it gets a little tricky where you can be a consultant and really help people. Cause it’s not just about the house. It’s an entire estate. They had other things. They’ve got medical debt. They’ve got all sorts of issues that need to be handled. And Approbate really is, it’s really a public announcement to debtors, right? Like anybody that, anybody that has

Sharon Vornholt (06:57.314)
Right? Right.

Mike Hambright (06:58.96)
a lien on this house or has debt with these people, you better speak now or forever, hold your peace is essentially what a probate does,

Sharon Vornholt (07:08.266)
Yes, and there’s actually something called the Notice to Creditors that’s published in almost every state in this country. Now, I found out through having a student in New York, they don’t do that in New York. I guess they read the obituaries. But yes, so when someone passes away and the estate is opened and then we either the executor is named or the administrator is appointed. Now, once that happens and the decision is made who can sign the real estate,

the sales and purchase contract. Then the assets are sold, but just as you said, next the creditors are paid, you know the heirs get what’s owed to them and then finally the estate is closed. So it’s a very straight line process in almost every state. But yes, the creditors, they get paid before the heirs get their money, so that’s another motivation for them to stay on track and get this estate closed.

Mike Hambright (08:07.192)
And in the meantime, they still have possibly payments on the house, taxes, all those things are still adding up every single day.

Sharon Vornholt (08:10.86)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

every single month and two things like hospital bills, nursing home bills, all of these costs are know are debts and they have to be taken care of.

Mike Hambright (08:25.25)
Yeah, yeah. So we just covered a lot of it there, but what else should we talk about in terms of like, is a probate even?

Sharon Vornholt (08:34.486)
Well, like I said, it’s the act of really administering the estate. And this is where another thing where people say, well, they haven’t opened the estate. When do I market to them? Well, you start marketing to these folks when they open the estate.

That means they’re raising their hand saying I’m ready to move forward. Now this could be, once had one where the man literally buried his dad and drove downtown and opened the estate. But that’s not the way it usually happens. There’s usually a period of time of months, maybe even up to a year before they are ready mentally to open the estate. And like I said, sometimes the house is just stuffed full of stuff. You probably came across

If they’re not hoarders, they’re what I call keepers. They’ve kept every butter tub, every scrap of rental scrap, and it’s all neatly stacked. But they keep everything. And often the family is embarrassed by the condition of the home. So you have to wait for them to get ready. But when you start marketing to these folks, as soon as the estate is opened, and then we can talk about marketing a little bit more in depth, but you have to understand the process.

understand the mindset of these sellers and that I think that’s what differentiates you.

Mike Hambright (09:57.134)
Yeah, and what are the steps to kind of probate and a steps, maybe steps to the selling process? It might differ a little bit from state to state, but probably a lot of similarities. So kind of share the fundamental steps, if you would.

Sharon Vornholt (10:09.536)
Yeah, and once they open the estate, now mind you, there are things going on behind the scenes that the judges and the attorneys are all doing. But they will, the first major thing they have to do is validate a will, if there’s a will. Is it a valid will? Is it the most recent will? And they have their processes for doing that. And once they name the person, they’ll issue something called the letters. It’s called the letters of testamentary. And I have to tell you, in all the years of doing this, really focusing on

almost 20 years now since 2008. I’ve never once had someone pretend to be the person in charge or try to in any way sidestep that process, but there is that paperwork that they will have that you can ask for. But once they’ve got that and they’re the decision maker here, then you can move forward with selling any personal property or real property in the estate. And that’s another point. I don’t do

this, but some people offer to host estate sales for them. They do all sorts of things, but once the property, the real estate and the estate is the main thing, and not all estates will have real estate, but most all of them will have real estate if they’re going through probate. Once that happens, then it’s just a matter of paying the creditors and…

giving the heirs what they’re due and closing the estate. It can happen fast. Most cases it’s not going to happen. It’s going to take six months, 12 months or longer depending on the complexity of the estate. I will say this too, you will get a lot of houses that need work but it’s dumbfounding the amount of people that have a lot of assets that didn’t do any estate planning and now find themselves in probate when there are ways to avoid that whole thing.

with trust and things like that.

Mike Hambright (12:01.526)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, we as a real estate investor, we’ve seen that a lot, right? Is you’re like, holy cow, like, what a burden. Some people, you know, probably aren’t they don’t even they’re not even aware that they put on their, their family by not having even a will or not having things clearly defined, it creates a lot of infighting and stuff like that. And so

Sharon Vornholt (12:08.748)
Yep.

Sharon Vornholt (12:23.362)
Yes.

Mike Hambright (12:24.27)
Yeah, we had, and even knowing this, having done hundreds of houses and I don’t know how many different were probate situations, probably 50 to 100 plus, is even knowing that all these years, still, we, my wife and I, still did not really have our house in order until last year. We had a will when it was 15 years old. A lot’s changed in 15 years for us in business for sure. Our son’s 17 and he would be ruined if this just fell in his lap. We only have one son. mean, it would destroy.

Sharon Vornholt (12:43.564)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mike Hambright (12:54.26)
You know, it would be such a burden on our whole family. So we finally went through a lengthy process just last year, set up trusts and like all this stuff very clearly defined our estate and our wills and our wishes and all that stuff. And so it was long overdue, but it was a huge relief on us knowing that we would make that a lot easier whenever that time comes. Hopefully it’s not anytime soon, but you know.

Sharon Vornholt (13:15.49)
Really, but not only that, you can avoid a huge tax bite if you do this right and you have an estate attorney. But like you said, it’s the burden on your children and everybody should kind of start cleaning out their houses well before the time so their kids don’t have to deal with mom and dad’s precious things that are of no value to them. That’s true.

Mike Hambright (13:33.048)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (13:38.434)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yep, yep. So let’s talk a little bit about the kind of the opportunity that’s coming. Of course, we, you know, I always say this, we help people that are dealing with death, divorce, inheritance, problem, tenants and things like that. And we don’t wish any of those things on anybody, but that’s just the reality of life. There’s no way you can avoid death, unfortunately, quite yet. let’s, but obviously there’s an aging population here with baby boomers and that’s going to create a lot of, a lot of opportunities for somebody that knows how to kind of, you know,

help other people in that situation. So talk about kind of this opportunity that is coming at us quickly here.

Sharon Vornholt (14:18.774)
Yes, this is not a term I created, but the term has been coined, the Silver Tsunami. And we talked about this a little bit before the show, but the baby boomers are people born between 1946 and 1964. So you remember that easily by reversing those numbers. And there are approximately 76 million baby boomers in the country right now.

Baby movers are the largest demographic ever. You talk about Gen Z and all the other generations. None of them come close to the sheer numbers of people. But these folks are all going to be.

aging out of the situation they’re in right now. Some of them will sell their properties. They’ll still be in the same condition a lot of times. know, they may downsize. They may go to a nursing home. They may pass away. There’s there is so much opportunity whether you are a realtor or an investor. But for an investor, it will be roughly a 20 year period of time where you will have about it’s estimated and these aren’t my estimates are all the people that do these

they’ll say there will be an additional two million properties a year on the market for almost 20 years. So I don’t care where you live, this is a great opportunity to help people. And I think that’s why I love probates. Because you get to take what’s a very messy situation in their life when they genuinely, if they called you, they want your help.

They are looking for somebody to show them the way. And if you know the process and you know what’s coming next, they’re not going to call their probate attorney every 30 minutes or two days to get all of the information. If you can become a trusted resource in their life, they’re going to call you.

Mike Hambright (16:14.668)
Mm-hmm.

Sharon Vornholt (16:15.106)
There and in your direct mail, you know, it’s the overriding message should be This is what I do. This is how I can help you. I understand where you are, but I’ll be here when you’re ready This is not a niche where it works to be high pressure there’s no getting there first people talk about working pre probates and Somebody’s just old. Well, I’m not really sure what that strategy even means because we talked about they have to they have to

to have this paperwork to say you are the executor, you are the administrator before the house can be sold. It cannot be sold before these steps are done, and that’s why it’s so important that you have a basic understanding of the process so that you don’t lose that opportunity.

Mike Hambright (17:01.057)
right.

Yep. As the investor, Sharon, do you have kind of a trusted team that you pull in when necessary, like a probate attorney and other folks? I know that there’s a lot of, I actually did this, this is quite a ways back. This is probably 2010 or 12-ish. I,

I was buying probate leads from a company and I’d always just marketed to those leads. But then I said, well, let me go back for like a year and pull all the probate attorneys that were associated with this. And so I was able to do that, get a list. And I thought it would be a whole bunch, you know, there’d be several people that do a lot of probates and they were one, I’m in DFW by the way, it’s nearly 8 million people now. So it’s a big market, but there were one or two that had done, you know, 50 or

And then there’s just like thousands that have done one. And I think that there’s a whole bunch of attorneys that just are generalists and they’re like, I can help you with that. I can help you with that. And a lot of families that have an attorney, they don’t necessarily have a probate attorney. They just have a general attorney that’s like, yeah, we can help you with that. so, but.

Sharon Vornholt (17:59.103)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Mike Hambright (18:15.904)
it’s like a mechanic that can is a generalist versus a specialist. Like if I was gonna hire a probate attorney, I’d want to hire, I’d personally want to hire a specialist and not a generalist. So do you have that person where you’re like, hey, a lot of people could help you with that, but you know, here’s how I can help you is I can pull in my kind of quote team to help with every, every component you need. Maybe you have an estate sale company, maybe you have a probate attorney and you know, kind of a little team of advisors there.

Sharon Vornholt (18:42.368)
Yeah, can get, wherever you live, it’s important to know if what your people need. If you’re in a rural area, you’re probably not going to ever need a…

an estate attorney, I mean, or somebody to sell, what am I trying to say, to auction off your belongings or something like that. It’s going to be a different process than in a big city where you are. But yes, and the most valuable person I’ve ever had on my team is my real estate attorney because he knows probate.

He is the person, I always tell people if you’re writing a contract on a probate property, especially if you intend to wholesale it, send both contracts to your attorney and let him know that you’re wholesaling the property and he can.

run that title and he can tell you right off the bat if you’ve got any problems with the probate. You may have to end up going back to a probate attorney and there are a wealth of information but they don’t necessarily understand real estate investing. I had a probate attorney once tell me

20 years ago, it was illegal to wholesale property, it’s illegal to double close. It was illegal in his world because he was not an investor. Now my real estate attorney is an investor. And see, I think that is the prime difference in whatever you’re doing. If you have a probate attorney and he or she is an investor, it might get a different result. But when they were in the newspaper here, Mike, until about two years ago, our leads of all

Sharon Vornholt (20:19.17)
only been online here for about two years. Prior to that, you could open up that newspaper every month.

And there were two or maybe three attorneys, just like you said, that did 90 % of the business. And those are the people that could help you maybe become a resource for you. But think about this for a minute. They’ve probably got somebody on their list already. But if you reach out to them quarterly, I always tell people, 30 minutes of their time. Just bite the bullet and go book time with them. Don’t expect them to give their time away for free. And if they say, have some

that we work with say, great, I wanted to introduce myself because there may come a day when you need someone else. Maybe they move away, maybe they got mad or whatever, but you don’t want to necessarily say that. But just say to them, maybe I could be your plan B. If this property is not one that they’re interested in, maybe I can be your plan B. But I do think those relationships are important.

And I do think what most people fail to do as investors is tell every single new person they meet what they do.

Mike Hambright (21:32.984)
For sure, yeah. So let’s talk about, there’s this kind of silver tsunami coming and that’s gonna be an opportunity for not only investors, but real estate agents and realtors. And there’s been a convergence going on for a while now too of agents that are becoming investors and investors that just needed to get licensed in a lot of states and more and more coming all the time. So talk about the opportunity to kind of, you know, wear two hats, the investor hat and possibly the agent hat.

Sharon Vornholt (21:42.242)
for agents.

Sharon Vornholt (21:51.767)
Right.

Sharon Vornholt (22:01.666)
I can remember a time when that was a very tricky situation, but it’s not that way anymore. So I have seen a real shift in some savvy real estate agents specializing in probate. Now they still do all agents investing, know, specializing in probate. They still do all the things that they normally did, but they’ve got that tab on their website. It’s not really enough to have that designation.

understand if you’re an agent listening, really need to understand the process at its very core. Exactly how does it work so that you can be a resource like Mike said.

But what I have found works the best is, let’s say you are an agent investor, it’s kind of hard to go say, I’m here to list your house and talk to them a little bit and they say, well, I don’t know, well, how about if I offer you 50 cents on the dollar as an investor and I do the fix up? That totally doesn’t work. But if you go in and you say, am an agent, I’m an investor, I’m here to buy your house today. So you go look at the house,

I’m Mike Hambright, I’m here to look at your house. I’m interested in buying your house, but I need to let you know that I’m a licensed real estate agent or broker or whatever that is. So you make your disclosure upfront, but you make it very plain that you’re there with the intention of making an offer on their property.

Then if you cannot come to an agreement, it’s a very easy conversation to say, well, hey, do you want to try to list your property? I’m okay with that. See how that’s two very different conversations? But it’s, I like to tell agents, this is not really the best term, but if you are an agent investor, you can kinda double dip on one mailing. So it really is,

Mike Hambright (23:56.728)
Sure. Yeah.

Sharon Vornholt (24:00.596)
It’s a unique time in history where I’d say someone, they were committed to this, they keep their regular business and they add probates, they could put a lot more leads in their pipeline, a lot more deals, a lot more listings.

Mike Hambright (24:13.646)
Yeah, yeah, that’s great. So talk about marketing to probate. So I own a marketing company. We tend to, you know, a lot, I guess there’s always this question of, you reference, I know you do a lot of mail too, or a big believer in mail. Do you kind of reference that there’s a probate situation or is it just coincidental that we happen to be marketing to buy your house and they need your help? Or like, how do you tiptoe around the fact that somebody probably passed away?

Or somebody did pass away.

Sharon Vornholt (24:43.266)
I don’t tiptoe around it. I address the elephant in the room in my very first mailing.

Mike Hambright (24:48.866)
Okay.

Sharon Vornholt (24:50.386)
And you know, I have a probate course and in that course, I’m in the direct mail pieces that I provide. I have a letter called condolences, letter one and no condolences. So this goes to however you feel about this conversation. But it’s not it’s just references that you this is why I’m contacting you, because I will guarantee you that if you send them a mail piece and they their next question is going to be, how did you know about me?

And then you’ve got to have a kind of an awkward start to a conversation and you’ve got to own the fact that you pulled a list of people who are in probate. For me, it’s just I’d rather get it out in the open. But there’s no right or wrong way to do How do you do it, Mike?

Mike Hambright (25:38.272)
Well, that’s evolved over time. used to be, we’ve tried sending something very specific before and some people just get pissed, right? I mean, they’re angry that you’re targeting them, which like, well, we target people with all sorts of distress, but, and then,

Sharon Vornholt (25:48.011)
Mm-hmm.

Sharon Vornholt (25:53.014)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Hambright (25:56.184)
Then most of the time we would just coincidentally say we’re looking to buy houses, know, a general solicitation to buy houses. Probate is just one of the things on the list. And then through Investor Machine, my other Legion company, we actually now…

Sharon Vornholt (26:01.579)
in your area.

Mike Hambright (26:11.598)
every single postcard we send out for our customers if they want to do this is when we say we specialize in helping people in these situations and it coincidentally says probate if there’s a probate like we actually it’s variable information that we pull in if it’s a probate if it’s a mowing lien if it’s an irs lien if it’s a problem rental or an eviction we actually change the bullets for if somebody sends out 10 000 postcards there’ll be 10 000 different lists of bullets of what we help people with and we

Sharon Vornholt (26:20.64)
Mm-hmm.

Sharon Vornholt (26:26.568)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Great.

Sharon Vornholt (26:39.884)
Right, right.

Mike Hambright (26:41.628)
know that three of those four things are specific to them. We always make the top one generic so that it doesn’t sound like we’re targeting them. So we’ve kind of used data and technology to help us get a little more sophisticated there.

Sharon Vornholt (26:48.298)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sharon Vornholt (26:52.946)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and that’s one that’s definitely one way to do it. I think my every market is different. You’re in a very big market. I’m in a market that’s much smaller than yours. But I think it all goes back to testing. You have to test your male piece and you have to see what works for you. Now, in my personal preference is I do not market to living spouses. If if

Let’s say there’s a couple and one passes away. I do not market to their surviving spouse right away. I slide them over into a separate list because I found this to be true. Particularly women don’t always stay in the house. They move near their children. They’ll move to Florida with their girlfriends. A lot of men do that too. But I slide them and put them in a different.

Mike Hambright (27:46.446)
moved to Florida with their girlfriends. No, I was joking. said the men do that too. I was like the men moved to Florida with their girlfriends. Yeah.

Sharon Vornholt (27:48.372)
Yeah, well they moved down there where their girlfriends are.

Men move with their girlfriends. Yeah, I guess you could take it that way. But my point is, it’s a similar thing to what you’re doing. We put them over here and then we send them, I normally send letters for probates because people do get mad if you mention, in my market they get very angry if you mention probate on a postcard. They find it insensitive. But.

I moved those over and then in about seven or eight months we start marketing to the surviving spouse just a very generic, hey, I’m looking for property in your area. you know, you’ve got, same thing, can use whatever postcard suits you, but it’s funny how marketing has evolved. I really believe in direct mail. I think it is hands down one of the best things, certainly for probates.

like imagine I always tell people imagine if your mom a dad and somebody knocks on your door next week and they they want to talk to you about buying your house or they pick up the phone and call you and say hey I realized that you recently had a loss in your family talk about people getting upset they get upset over that so it’s it’s a way to help them and be mindful of their situation and their feelings

Mike Hambright (29:06.296)
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Mike Hambright (29:15.864)
Yep, yep, awesome. Well, we could probably talk about this for hours, Sharon. So if folks want to learn more about you, I know you’ve got a lot of great information to share. Where can they go?

Sharon Vornholt (29:19.454)
Ha ha ha.

Sharon Vornholt (29:24.91)
They can go to SharonVoranholt.com which will forward over to the blog. It’s a hub where I have a link off to the podcast and they can also check out, I have a course called Probate Investing Simplified at ProbateInvestingSimplified.com. They can check it out there and…

This is such a great opportunity to add and you don’t have to go all in and forget everything else. I would never suggest that and you should add this to your toolbox.

Mike Hambright (29:56.206)
That’s awesome. We’ll add a link down below. thanks for sharing some insights with us today on the world of probate. Yeah. Awesome, everybody. Hope you got some good value. Probates are a great way. You could angle it in a couple of ways that were.

Sharon Vornholt (30:00.588)
Well, thanks, Mike.

Mike Hambright (30:09.624)
targeting people that are in a difficult situation or that we’re helping people in a difficult situation. And obviously you’ve got to go into it with the best intentions to be helping people through a difficult time in their lives. And so Probates is one of those opportunities that are out there. So make sure you get to know Sharon a little bit more. She’s a real authority in the area and appreciate you guys for joining us today. We’ll see you on the next show.

Sharon Vornholt (30:13.269)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.