Probate Real Estate in Arizona, with Sammy DeStefano

0:02 Welcome to Probate Weekly. I'm your host, Bill Gross, at Bill Gross Probate on social media. And today we interview weekly typically attorneys, vendors, estate planners, and top professional real estate agents in the space to learn how we can be better at serving our clients and working with our vendors. Really excited today to have from the what's this? What's Arizona's known? What's the what's the nickname for the state? I forget now. Grand Canyon State. The Grand Can of course the Grand Canyon state of Arizona. Sammy DeStefano. Sammy, thank you for joining us today. Yeah, Bill, you're like a celebrity in my eyes. So, it's really fun to be on your show for each other. Well, thanks so much. Thanks so much. And so, you're a real estate agent based in the Phoenix area, Scottsdale area. Phoenix and Scottsdale mainly. But really our probate business covers all of Maricopa County and Pinal County. So, what has that brought you to working in the probate space? I think that it's underserved. I think most agents, Realtors® I talk to, if you ever mention listing a property, they'll never stop calling you. They are interested in selling properties. However, once they just the ones I work closely with, once they found out really what it took to go through the probate process and they have to contact attorneys and there's a few different forms in Arizona actually that are needed when you're selling a probate property and checks and money is usually delayed when you get paid. I don't think many of them are interested in getting involved in it.

1:32 So, I think it's one of those things that it sounds easy. Yeah. But it's not, right? I get asked a lot from real estate agents, well, how what's the easiest way to build my probate business? I say, I have no idea because it is freaking hard, man. I work every day at it. Now, I work certain number of hours and I work, you know, in a controlled, you know, productive environment. But I think that's to me the attractive part is because if it's hard for me, it's hard for the competition. If I get over the obstacle, they're behind me. They still haven't got over it, right? So that's so let's talk about what are some of the things that would appear to some real estate agents as problems that you work through as part of your business being a probate real estate agent. So much of the delay I see in when working with personal representatives or even attorneys have shared that this is an issue that they run into as well is kind of the it's not my job syndrome. So many times a personal representative in my experience has so much put on their plate and for you as the Realtor® to put something else on top of what the attorney's already given them to do, it's simply not going to happen, right? So if you tell them, you know, clean out the house or change the locks, post no trespassing signs, things like this, they're going to add it to the list. I think they're going to have good intention to do it. They just simply don't have enough time in the day. So u we just simply take care of it. I mean, without a thought. So, before you know it, the property's ready to go. They're always surprised. The attorneys that I think that's a big reason why the attorneys will work with me is if they mention something needs to get done, it's probably going to be done by the end of that day. It just it needs to get done. So you cover a few things there. One is what I call Realtor® time versus attorney time, right? Attorneys only people that you call them on a Monday, my experience, and they'll call you back the next Monday and say, "Hey, Bill, it's Joe returning your phone call." I'm like, Joe, who is? And it was cuz a week ago I left him a message.

3:23 And in their world, that's acceptable. In our world, wow, what happened? You didn't call me back the same day or within an hour. Whereas Realtor® time, we're probably going to text you within five or 10 minutes if we can't get a hold of you and we're going to call back that day almost every single time. Yeah. So, some Realtors® get frustrated by that. But I think our job is to kind of accept that's how attorneys are and even consumers to some degree. And our job is to figure out how to work with those people in that in that format. Yeah. Yeah. I love the attorneys, too. You ask why I do probate. The reason I tell the attorneys this, and they seem to love it, too, is I like dealing with attorneys, you know? They're not scary to me. They're business people. And in my in my average day of real estate, sometimes they're the only business people I'm going to I'm going to talk with because my clients are usually very emotional, and they should be. They're going through a lot of this loss and so there's a lot of counseling and kind of patience needed when they're talking with them. And then Realtors® in my experience, they talk a lot and they don't say much. And so I think if we were billing per hour, like if I made $500 an hour, I would cut out all of the fluff. And that's what the that's what the attorneys do with me. And I think they like me because I reciprocate it, right? And I think the on the flip side for as a real estate agent, you know, I make maybe on a listing 10, 20, $30,000 on listing the property, but I don't get paid per hour, so I can spend more time building the relationship with the customer to use up that time that I made. They look at that, oh, you made, you know, $20,000 and all you did was sell the property. Well, yeah, but I also talked to the customer for hours and hours that you don't and you add all together. And I think as a you know I think myself as an attorney I'm not but in terms of my hours I try to bill myself out and I the number that I use for a reason is $400 an hour and that you know is this $400 an hour work.

5:19 Now that means though I can talk to a customer or referral source as long as they need me to. That's part of my job. Sure. As opposed to attorney look at that way. Their job is just to do the legal work. Right. Right. The other thing is too on the on the topic is most people I don't think I learned this until I was doing a high level of business was most people don't seem to understand that sometimes you have to spend 5,000 to make 10, right? You know, like Realtors® like myself, I mean, let me pull on the sword. When I first got in the business, I didn't have any money to spend. And the National Association of REALTORS® says 98% of us are selling four houses, five houses a year. That means I'm only working every other month. I don't have a lot of money to spend. And so, you know, if I have to spend 2,000 to change the locks on an entire home, I'm kind of asking, well, when's my commission going to come in? Because, you know, I'll do it then. Well, it's not needed then. It's needed in the beginning. And so, I don't know, you get to the point where you just you count it all as part of the job. You don't ask any questions and you just do it. And you just let's stop being surprised by things that are our job. So I think that the other thing I use to distinguish between a wannabe probate specialist and an actual probate specialist is a wannabe complains about all the things they have to do that oh I have to change the logs. I have to put the signs. I have to put no trespassing signs. I have to do this versus a real probate specialist brags about you know I had one deal where I had to evict the people. There were rats. There were termites guns. There were guns filed.

6:55 Yeah. You're bragging about it, right? And we still closed on time, right? And that's Yeah. Yeah. I had one time where I bounced, you know, that customer like $18,000 in various expenses and I was like five different vendors and but you know, if you're in the business to handle it, you know, I have a line of credit I use just for business expenses on this kind of stuff because I found that if I had to write the check from my operating account, I was hesitant. If I just said, I'm going to just put one credit card just for advances on customer listings, then I just, you know, and yeah, you pay interest on it, but you know, that's just part of the business. I just figured out I'll just write the check. You know, I say write the check. I'll just charge the expense. Yeah. Without giving thought because if it's the right thing to do, it's the right thing to do. And if I'm paying some interest on it, I make money on commissions. It's just part of the expense. It's a business. So talk about Can I ask you a question? Yeah, for sure. You work with a lot of attorneys. I've been having more and more attorneys when I first meet them and it's a valid question. They ask me, "What makes you a probate specialist?" They said, "I'm seeing all these Realtors® that are coming out as probate specialists last year. What does this mean?" And you just covered it, right? It's someone that doesn't whine about the things I had to change the locks, but they actually take pride in it. If they're whining about it just tells me that they're still new to it because it's surprising. It's not surprising to us. We have to do it every time almost. But the one step underneath whining about it is not even knowing you have to do it. So many agents that I speak with and it was like this when I got in. I was like, "Wait, yeah, so we have to we have to change the locks." And the attorney goes, "Yes." I said, "should I just ask the client to pay for it or do you pay for it?" And they say, "No, you pay for it." I was like, "Oh, well, why do I pay for it?" you know, like it's not part of when we're taught to be a Realtor®, it's not part of what they teach us, but the home can't sell without it. And so, you know, and it can't be secure. And so, we still we start to learn this is part of the job of being a probate, you know, if you're

8:58 Going to work in probate. Well, I think you could make a case that the customer should pay for it or the attorney could advance it or you but whatever it is that there's a process and that the process might be I like a customized process, you know, because sometimes the attorneys won't advance the money makes them feel like they're doing something. Sometimes the customer has the money and they feel like they're in control and they want the keys, you know, is but you know, and but I think the main thing is what's the customer need and giving it to them. That to me is always a true north star. And so go back to your question. What makes an expert? You know, I hesitated when I use that term. I will say that I used to go to court every day in LA County. And in LA County, because we had we have nine different courtrooms that run all day long on probate versus other counties which have a smaller slice. All of LA, which is the largest county in America, has the largest probate business in America. Maybe compare. Maybe the city of Atlanta has as many but they have multiple counties whereas we have one county in all LA County and California has more court confirmed sales. So I used to go every day and see at least on average one court confirmed sale a day from that too. Within my first year I had seen over 200 court confirmed sales. That was more than any judge had seen. That is more attorney had seen, more than any Realtor® had done. I had a spreadsheet of every single court confirmed sale. I still have it going backwards for six years. So I can say that question on that topic. I am the expert. Nobody has that database. Yeah. Nobody has the, you know, what percentage of court sales are approved, denied, continued, who the attorneys have done them, who haven't done them. And so to be specific, so for example, I had a client who there's two owners of a property. There's a there's a probate estate and there's a trust estate. My client happens at the trust estate and they're arguing over who gets to decide who sells the house and the other the other party has an agent says they're an expert and they submitted a

11:00 Proposed listing agreement. Well, listening agreement only had one of the two parties. Well, that's a mistake. The they also they didn't have in there checking that they were a conservatorship. That was a mistake on in California. We have a form and you're supposed to fill it out. But not having both parties to me was just showing on the contract isn't valid. Just because you sign it from one party, both all parties who are in the transaction have to sign the listing would be valid. And so I commented the attorney said, "Well, they say they're an expert." Meanwhile, don't they know who the who owns the property and the proper format for the listing agreement? And so to me, expertise is not getting a certificate and it's not learning how to get business, which is important to do, right? But it's learning what does a customer need in order to get what they want and to know the process and procedures. I'm not an attorney, but I know the business side of probate real estate. And that's the part that I specialize in and try to bring to that. That's why I do this podcast because I learn something every day. In fact, Sure. Do you have you said something that I've never heard before just because it's important to me. Do you have in like in California we have our standard listing agreement standard purchase agreement and then we have a probate listing agreement and we have a probate purchase addendum that get attached to my knowledge no other state has those do you have as part of your official we don't have that no we don't we don't have that we just Arizona in Arizona's eyes they do want us to continue to use their a form for listing property but there are addendums and then specific ways kind of like what you touched on specific ways that attorneys want things titled. So, I think the thing that I maybe bring to the table, and I've been lucky enough to make some really great attorney relationships where they send me their clients because they know it's going to get done the first time, is so many times the attorney has to go over the paperwork that the real estate agent did and change everything. And sometimes that happens a week before close. And so the title companies and the attorneys

13:05 Are taking all of this time to fix everything that should have been done the right way the first time. It just delays flows and it wastes the attorney's time. The other answer to your question, what makes you a probate expert? I always ask agents when I'm coaching them, of course, in California, we have a standard probate listing addendum and a standard probate person. Have you read those forms? Like it pretty much if you really read the form and knew it pretty explains the whole process. Like 90% of questions when a buyer's agent and I typically don't very rarely represent buyers at all, particularly on probate cases because I want to get the best price possible for my client and I so I work with buyers agents all the time all over California and they'll ask me questions and I often want to just say, "Have you read the purchase agreement? It's in there." Like, why are you asking me this? I don't. I mean, you know, I'm a nice guy and my job is to be pleasant to the other agents as much as possible, but 90% of the questions they ask are in the form and meanwhile, they're writing an offer for a million dollar property and they haven't read the form. It just to me that amazes me. So, to answer your question, part of it just the fundamentals. I just do this work every day and try to pay attention and learn along the way. Yeah. Yeah. I there's some there's something that's been bugging me for about two weeks now. There was this client Eileene that she lived in Nevada and she listed a property out here that she inherited.

14:27 She was the personal representative on was worth about a million that' be a million50. And I think the thing that I've learned over doing this over the years is a lot of these personal representatives don't simply don't live here. And when you look at a state like Nevada and Arizona, you say they're both they're right next to each other. What can be different? So much, right? And you know, LA's I don't understand LA's market. If I if I studied it, I'd probably just call you for it. But there's all these nuances. And so for you know, to jump to the end of the story, Eileen somehow got contact contacted me because she saw that I did a lot of probate work online. She had hired the neighborhood expert of this small neighborhood of 300 houses to list the home. And it was sitting and sitting and sitting and she shared with me. She goes, "We did go under contract." And I said, "Well, what happened?" And she said, "Well, you know, I told my agent they understood it was a probate and everything else and we didn't know we were going to be getting this home, so it's all gravy to us." so she started calling investors because we weren't getting an offer. And we got an offer. And I said, "What was the offer?" And mind you, like the first thing that's important to do when selling real estate in a weird market like we're in is just to look at the average days it takes in that neighborhood to sell a home, right? And so she was in a 95 days on average neighborhood. It was day 39 and she felt like because in her market in Nevada, it was moving really fast.

15:53 Two weeks a home should be sold. So she thought she was behind the eightball. She actually wasn't even up to the eightball yet because that wasn't shared with her through her agent. She took an offer for 720 from an investor and the agent simply just called in investors and said, "Hey, this is a probate deal. You know, it's all gravy to them. They'll pretty much take whatever." I said, "You just took 720." I said, "Do you know what that's going to do to the neighbors?" Not that she cared, but I said I said, "With your eyes closed and one hand tied behind your back, you could have sold it for 900." Yeah. You know, and it's just so I think keeping a lot of this private too when we're hired by clients, you don't advertise to investors what the situation is. You know, let's say she was past 95 days in that area, but to take a 720. I watched that I watched that listing I watched that property close and they listed it the next day for about 900 and they went, of course, within a week and so it was just a it was just a wholesale, you know. Yeah. But that investor made all of her equity that she was supposed to make. It's horrible. I mean, I don't hate investors. I don't even hate wholesalers. But to not know what you're going into, I see that over and over. That's what made me get into probate.

17:11 You know, it's just there's a lot of lost money. Well, it the hard part for me. I say the hard part. The challenge I see agents having is every listing gets offers from these wholesalers now that look like real deals. Yeah. And they've gotten more and more sophisticated, I think, in their deception. And you know, you get this offer and it looks complete and you have to really know what to look for. And I've been around a while. So, if I haven't heard of you and you claim to done all that business, probably something's wrong. Yeah. That's always my first clue. And I go into the MLS and check. I go on the Department of Real Estate and check the license status and who the entities are and such and find these things out. But newer agents I work with all the time find themselves tied up with a wholesaler and they don't know well you got to push them out fast because they're just going to tie up your property. It's just going to look bad for you. It's just going to cause problems. It's going to cause your seller to be frustrated or upset. And so that's part of it is those are fundamentals of selling property regardless of a probate or not. And that's why I don't, you know, when somebody says to me, you know, I had I had a client that I'll never forget it was it was a friend of mine who was a Realtor® in another area. He said, "Hey, would you list this property for my client and I talked to the client, they wanted to sell for like 1.1 in a condo, which is easy to comp. It was worth about $8.90." I called them back and said, "Look, it's way overpriced. What do you want me to do? If it was my client, if it was my prospect, I would just say they're not motivated and move on. Well, would you just list it for them anyhow as a favor to me? Yeah, sure. It's not a big deal. You know, I don't really use my marketing stats as a marketing piece. If it serves a customer, makes them happy. So, I we're on the market for like two weeks and the client's calling me saying, "Hey, I got approached by another Realtor® who has a special list of buyers who want to pay more." I said, "Well, think about that for a second. Who would be on your special list if you're paying if you're not getting a great deal?

19:09 People call me all the time, hey, do you have any great deals? No, it's on the MLS because I don't want to get you a great deal. I want to get the top price. Not only do I want the right price for my customer, I want the idiot who's going to overpay. And my job is to tie them down and make them close and they're in pain six months later because I got such a great price myself. That's my job. That's why people hire me. And to think I'm going to give you a good deal as an investor. No, of course that's not what I'm going to do. That's why I'm a listing agent. And this it's so funny because I when the client was upset at some point I and she said, "Well, we want to list with them." I said, "Fine, great. I'm glad to cancel for you. No problem." They sold it for $8.90 to some other agent. And so that magic list of buyers and I think sometimes attorneys get sused by that also. Oh, I got a phone call from this guy in the neighborhood and he specializes in the neighborhood. Well, he specializes because he gets them off market at a cheap price and your client's going to lose money. That's what's special. Yeah. Yeah, he's remodeled every house up the block up the road because he's taken them all. Good. Good for him. I mean, he's he might be a great remoder and make great product and sell it, but his profit is all on the intake. It's all on the buy side. Yeah. You Every developer I've ever met will tell you they always make the money when they buy the house. The selling it is just what they have to do to cash out their situation. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the that's the side of the business I don't care for as much, you know, but I think investors have a specific spot. I think wholesalers have a specific spot, but like Oh, when you're getting offers at 70 to 80% of value, you know, I also help people in pre-foreclosure. And so if it's between getting 75% of what your home is worth or giving it to the bank in a week, I think it's a very small niche.

20:52 That's where you need the cash investor that'll close in four days. But when someone just lets it leak that it's a probate listing and they need this money for medical bills back home or they want to buy a nice car and they just want to sell it fast. I mean, you're giving away hundreds of thousands of equity sometimes just by letting the cat out of the bag that was the seller's situation. You know, it doesn't make you a great agent that you sold it quickly is you disclose things you shouldn't have. Right. Well, let me just pass on one of the things I do is I work with a company. We have a fund where when people come to me in probate there, they're facing foreclosure. Maybe it's reverse mortgage that they wait too long on or regular mortgage and there is equity. If they file with our attorney or one they know and use our service, we'll advance them in money to pay off the mortgage. We'll pay their arrears or just pay off if it's reverse. You have to pay off the mortgage. But we have a fund to do that. Obviously, there's equity we're protecting. We have a position that we get. But that's kind of thing where it goes a little bit above and beyond just selling the house. I can say to the attorney, well, I can make sure it doesn't foreclose. We can just advance the money service. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, we charge for it. But that's what the customer wants because they want to save the equity. They want to save a half million dollars. So let me go back to your question. Turn back on you. What do you think makes an agent a probate expert? What do they need to do to achieve that or what are the activities that will help them? Obviously experience, but you don't want to be the first person or the second person. So, what activities have you done or you see other people do that help expedite the process of becoming an expert? Yeah, I think I think every great answer is actually a lot simpler than it than everyone thinks it is. Like we all over complicate this process in real estate because we think what we do is really important. It might be important, but it's very simple. So, like I guess I'll give you the answers attorneys have given me is attorneys there's been so many times where I'm referred to a case where the personal representative lets the current

22:55 Agent go and I step in to finish the sale. And I mean, so many agents are looking at a home that maybe wasn't maintained over time and saying, "Well, in order to sell it, you need to remodel it and you're going to need 40 or 50 into it." Yeah. But our job was I could have gone into interior design. I'm sure I love it, you know, but our job isn't we're not hired by an attorney or a personal representative for interior design tips. Right. You're able to sell a home that doesn't even have a roof. Yes. Right. And so if I was hired to sell the house and the estate has no money to fix a roof or remodel or put a new AC on, my job is to sell the home. And it's also to set the expectation of what is a home with no AC working AC worth in this neighborhood because it's not worth 500,000 if that's what the neighbor just got for a fully remodeled. But if I set the expectation, I say this is how much you're going to walk away with. You won't have to put a single dollar in because that's what you're telling me you don't want to do. And they agree to that I think that's what a professional is. So, it's like I've purchased some homes that were brought to me by personal representatives because they said, "I don't want to put a single dollar in. I also don't want to be on the market for even three months. I need the money now and I'm ready to call cash investors." Yeah. I say, "Well, they're going to be here. You know, 70 75% of your home value is kind of where cash investors live. I'll give you 85 90, you know, and it very rarely goes that way because you have to be in a desperate situation to take that offer, but I'll offer it. And then the other thing is, you know, if you want to remodel the home, I know contractors that'll remodel it and wait until you close the home to get paid and so it doesn't take any upfront money, but it's going to take two or three months extra. And so just to have more tools in the tool belt, you know, so that you can you can help different situations. Well, plus that remodeler who advanced the money is going to

24:57 Charge you to cover the cost of the money. In my experience, a little more. So you're going to pay a premium for that work. And I think, you know, there's a company in the property space in Southern California that specializes in really what I would call like value-add sales, which, you know, obviously in some cases, like if the property is set up right for value ad, that's a different animal, right? Sometimes here in LA, if you're going to add an ADU and you have to be properly situated, you can maybe make a profit adding an ADU or maybe but generally you're not going to get a return on your money beyond the money you spend if you also count the time value and the maintenance of the property. And so when I work out with the customers, let's look at those numbers. Here's where you are today and here's you be 90 days from now and you're going to have to oversee the contract and here's the money he's going to charge you. Oh, and that $500,000 equity, you're not getting any return at 8%. Let's say you work all that out, the number doesn't make sense. In fact, there's a great toy I use called Remodeling magazine online. It got bought from Housing Wire where I actually take various jobs and show there's nothing you can do to get 100% of your money back, right? Because people who remodel a house typically live there for five years or so, enjoy the remodeling, and then sell and get back a nice chunk of what they spent, but they don't get it all back because they lived in it for a period of time. Yeah. So, that's one of those I agree 100%. There's not much other than making a house safe to show and available to show. I tell them there's nothing you're Yeah, there's nothing you're get profit on. I don't think I at least my experience, but there people specialize in that. I think I think you hit on the head. It's a way to make the customer think we're more important than we are, you know, because I'm going to help you by repainting. I'm going to help you buy.

26:45 It doesn't really sell the house, I don't think. Yeah. And I give them the option. Many times, you know, so many times when you sell a house, you give a credit. You've seen credits for like, you know, a roof. If a roof is leaking and it needs replacement, a lot of times you'll give a credit to replace the roof. But if you talk if you check in two or three, four years that homeowner, they patched it and they never replaced it. And so some I think many times people just want the option and so I show them what is the option. It's going to cost three months. We're going to have to chase down contractors and make sure they're working. Many times I just put up cameras in the house and I'll give the access link to the attorney and the personal representative especially out of state PRs so that they can see everything done to the property. They could see when I come and when I go. Makes them comfortable. But on the other end, we have a team of people. You know, why wouldn't you have a team of people? Because we've had to hire hazmat before. We've had to hire cleaning and moving and appraisal services. Why would I not keep those personal relationships if they did a good job? And so it's more than just googling who is a five-star moving company in the area. It's connecting you with the owner of the one I've had good experience in. So, which is harder to find than you would think. I think sometimes people assume like I'm in LA where we have a it's like Phoenix, right? Phoenix versus Scottsdale versus Mesa. You sell in all of those places, I'm sure. But the same guy is not going to go to all those locations because they all have their business limitations. Correct. It's harder than people understand to have good vendors that's going to service all those areas.

28:19 And you're lucky if you have a few of those covered, I think, in some cases. Yeah. Yeah, that's an interesting issue as far as the extra work that you do for the customer. Sometimes I think they, you know, I don't oversell what I do. I do want to sell what I do really well, but make sure the customer gets the best possible result for it. You talked about Oh, I just lost my train of thought. Yeah. Oh, hazmat. That's a whole world. That's a whole world when I'm talking to these attorneys because you know I think most of my probate business to me it's because I do call personal representatives when they open up files with the courthouse we go down get their information. Many times they don't even have an attorney and so I'm just connecting them with good attorneys but many times the attorneys when we get business directly from them we sit on the phone and we just talk about how we never have the same job. It. Our job is never boring because every single day it's new. And so like probate is when you inherit a property. So the ugly side is sometimes there was someone who passed away in that property three, four, five, six weeks ago and no one knew. So hazmat's the service that will come and clean up. Some will some crime shows. When you when you watch a crime show, it's the same thing. But I do think this is really interesting is when you're looking at probate, nobody knows what probate actually is. They don't they don't know what it takes. They say, "Oh, well, if you inherited a house, I'm a Realtor®. I could sell the house." Absolutely. But are you willing to go through everything that's needed to get it to the finish line? And it's if I've measured it, I think it's probably maybe four to six times harder than the time that the neighbor up the road hires me to just sell their house because they're moving. Right.

30:17 Right. It's just more work. Well, it's more of certain types of work and it's not other types. Right. It's like what I often don't have to do for me at this stage of my career is I don't have to go to the beauty pageant where they interview six Realtors® and the Realtor® show up and have balloons or they have some sort of fancy video thing that shows what my listing, you know, to be honest, none of that sells the house and they're all caught up in this whole thing. And frankly, I say, "Listen, if you like me to sell, great. If you don't, I understand. I'm busy. Love to help you. But if not, no hard feelings or call me. Have questions along the way because that the Realtors® who spend a lot of time what kind of cookies should you put in the oven for your open houses nothing wrong with it doesn't really sell the house it they're trying to sell the customer on how good they are at selling the house they're not really selling the house my job is to sell the house well that goes back to the beginning of our call when I said I actually prefer to work with attorneys over Realtors® because it's just very few Realtors® act like how I act I feel like there's you know there's Realtors® and then there's business people and when you talk to a Realtor® Like me in my first year in the business, I didn't know how to analyze a property and, you know, invest in a property. I didn't know I knew granite looked a little nicer than Lenolium, you know, but it's just like at the end of the day, it's different to analyze a P&L statement and put out a performer and speak with an attorney is so different than what they taught us in real estate school, right? Because they didn't teach us what cookies to bake during the open house, right? That's all we knew.

31:49 Yes. You get into this. Yes. How many balloons, how many open house signs to put, where to put open house signs. I don't even do that anymore. I have other It's not their fault. It's how they were taught. It's how I was taught, right? But we slowly learned. But to tell your customer that's going to make the difference on the price they get is just nonsense, right? You could put out five open house signs or 50. Now, the fif the 45 extra may get more attention from prospective new customers. That's a different question. Sure. It's not going to sell that house for anymore. That's the distinction. And I think that's the part that I try to focus in on is what's really going to help the customer get the house sold. So, interesting. So, let me ask you this. One of the more the more the growing piece really become the dominant piece of real estate in my world in probate are properties where somebody's living in it. And whereas three, four years ago, I was working with eviction attorneys getting evicted, at least in LA, in some cases. So long and cumbersome that more often now we're just selling it as is taking the hit to an investor who's going to take over that process. What's that like in your market? Are you able to get squatters and let's say you have the heir the brother who doesn't want to give up the house can't get him out or are you able to still work with them and get them removed? How I would answer that my first few years in the business has changed so much to now. That's another thing as a Realtor® we're not taught that. So I think I'll say this back in the day I didn't I would say I you know I think let's try to evict them or something and if they don't let's try to find an investor that'll take it over because there are there's over four million people living in Phoenix and it's a hot investment state. So many people own homes here that they never move here but all their investments are here now. Now I know just through reading through attorney contracts in Arizona forms is we are a landlord friendly state, we can evict that person, you know, and if you're a personal representative watching this video,

33:52 Right? The easiest, cheapest defense if you just opened a probate was just go to the dollar store and get no trespassing signs. And if you can't afford to change the locks, at least put the signs up and take photos that you that there were signs because that will stop tenants as far as their legal right to stay in the home. That'll stop them in their tracks and then you just go to the sheriff and have them evicted. Wow. Won't if you don't, they become a tenant very quickly in this state. Still a landlord friendly state, but yeah, I would say nine out of 10 times we can get them evicted. We can get them out of there. The attorney's not going to do that and they shouldn't. It's not their job. It's not even my job. But we've done it so many times that's become easy. So, do you coordinate with eviction services or attorneys that do that specialty and eviction services and then just, you know, filing it with the sheriff with the with the county sheriff and they'll get Oh, you do the filing. You do the filing yourself. Oh, wow. Because a lot of times if you're living in Michigan and you're the personal representative, you don't know even the website to go to for Arizona, right? So I'll have them on the phone with me and I'll just do a call with the personal representative and go down and, you know, they ask every time, does, you know, does Sam have permission to speak on your behalf? Yep. He's my he's my probate Realtor®. And so the first few times I had to have my handheld and I learned it from working with people like you or other probate Realtors® in Nevada, in even in Tucson, in a different market of Arizona. I was lucky to find them, but at this point, it's made the job very easy. You know, up until about two years ago, one of my main advantages was working with eviction attorneys and eviction services. And I whole rolodex of those people depending on where you were, the situation. I really had all that down to a science. And LA, California is not landlord friendly.

35:44 No, they're not landlord friendly. That's We're landlords. Yeah, we are. I think our state just wants to take the property and just give it to the tenants if they could. They're just doing it one lot at a time, one regulation time. And so I live in LA in LA County in California. So you have a city that's landlord adverse and a county that's land verse in a state that's landlord adverse. Three layers of that. And to be honest, for the most part now, I tell customers, look, I'm fine help coordinating with your eviction. I know the best eviction attorneys. I've interviewed my podcast. I'm I'll do whatever it takes to help, but I don't got to change the laws. And here's the problem. It takes like two, three years to get rid of them. Now, sometimes investors don't know that. And because they did one two years ago, and they think it's a six-month process. And I said, "Well, you know, we have a case where we're selling the property with a $25,000 credit if they take the occupant in the property. It's not tenant. A little different situation, but like for $25,000, you're getting off cheap." And the customer said 100% we'll take it because they were an attorney. They knew the process. So, we're in a whole different world there, bud. I'm glad to hear you doing that. And I think that's a that again that gets down to being appropriate for your market and your customers and being an expert in whatever that is. In your case, being an expert like I used to be on the eviction process. Today, it's really helping the customer avoid the eviction process and say, "Let's figure out ways to sell a property as is more effectively." that's become more my job, I think. Why you said that was a big piece of your business. What has changed over just a couple years for you? Well, I think it's is not me. It's the city and county and state are all marching to becoming more and more landlord vicious. Oh, I see. Like you have a case for example, there's certain laws that start in one city and then it becomes a county in the state. Like in San Francisco, they're now charging for vacant property. So, if you have a property and say, "Well, I want to rent it because it's, you know, my kid's in college. He's going to graduate in

37:46 Two years. Maybe he'll want to live there, so we'll leave it vacant. We don't want to rent it because that's it's not worth it and the risks and all that." The city of San Francisco will charge you for vacancy now for residential property. Wow. Statewide, we have an initiative this they're trying to put in the ballot for commercial property if you don't rent it, if it's vacant. So, we have I one of my clients, I'm a broker of record for a commercial property management company. When you try to sell property in a market where you have 190 day average marketing time for industrial property in downtown LA, that means you're vacant for 190 days on average if it's vacant. Wow. The city wants to charge us now for vacant property because they're saying, "Well, we're not collecting the revenue, so we need some way to pay for it." Well, we're not collecting anything that's vacant, right? So we live in a city and a county and a state that all are just committed to giving properties to the homeless people who've wandered here from around the world. And you know politically you know you can have a case about immigration and how to enforce the laws and all that but what's not a question is we've made it very dangerous to keep a property vacant and as a result there are people who've lost you know you know all the money they have. I had people think, "Oh, the landlord's wealthy. You know, they're going to inherit I had one case where they're going to inherit $800,000 househ." What they understand is that he air literally isn't a nursing home in some dumpy Medicaid nursing home like for poor people in some rural area of Virginia.

39:21 Because they didn't have access to the equity from the house. If they had $100,000, they could move to a nice adult facility, get nice care, be taken care of, get proper attention, but they can't because of the rich landlord and the laws resigned to help the tenant who was just dealing drugs and prostitution and all kinds of crazy stuff in this property. And the guy who died was a war veteran, decorated hero. And so he left his property for his wife who couldn't get proper medical care because this tenant was in the property. That case goes back three years. We got them evicted, but not so simple. It's just a whole and I hate it. I hate telling people I hate I hate surrendering to the tenant. And when we sell a property, the tenant in there in some cases the buyer beware, hey, we told you and it's up to you to know and you're an investor and you're sophisticated. Good luck. But I still hate it because I know they're going to get screwed. I've had people like that call me tears later and say, "Hey, by the way, we never got that guy out. We're still struggling with it." It's just it's just terrific. Which circles back to, you know, we call personal representatives when they open up when they file to become personal representative of a probate case. And when I'm talking with them, the number one number one question is, you know, they say that they have a f family friend or someone up the road is a Realtor®. They're just going to use them.

40:41 And I just ask if they're open-minded to, you know, hearing what a probate Realtor® is, interviewing both of us and going with who you feel most confident. Yeah. They say, "Well, you know, isn't it all the same?" And it circles back to Realtors® agreeing to take on these things because they say, "Well, it's just selling a house." You know, sure, maybe. Why not? It is until it isn't. Yeah. When it isn't until it isn't. And then when it gets hard, you can't back out. You know, you have to the only way out is through, right? Yeah. And that final thing, I thought this was this was a highlevel thing I learned only after doing it for a while was that the attorneys, if they catch on that you don't know what you're doing and you've never gone through a probate and you don't even know how to define the word probate and you're on the call phone all the time with the attorney, you're emailing the attorney asking them, "What do I do now?" Guess who's paying for that? Because they start charging it to the estate. So, you're increasing the estate's bills, legal fees at the same time as you're not you're wandering and you were just I mean probably had good intentions in the beginning was I'm the family Realtor®. I want to help you know. So, we actually save we actually are able to I just write down kind of some of the questions that the PR has. I talk to them weekly just to stay in touch. I'll write down the questions and then the attorney usually asks every two weeks I'd like an update. So when I call him I rattle off the questions. I get all the answers and I give it back to the PR and none of that was built. So what's the difference between someone who knows this business or doesn't is you can lower their legal fees or you can increase them. You know I thought that was interesting.

42:23 Well you're bringing extra value too, right? The attorney who refers you now is not only not having to do the work they don't really want to do and if they build they really don't want to bill for work they don't want to do one thing I don't want to bill for everything they want to bill for what they want to bill for they don't want to do what they don't want to do but if you're doing it to them it's free but the customer is enjoying the value from them for free and I think that's where you extend the value of what you're talking about for me my business is more procedural like to sell private court confirmation you have to follow a certain ad legal advertisement before is one of the stages. Well, I say the attorney, you know, if you like me to do it, I'll do it. If you want me to pay for it, I'll pay for it, you know, and like that saves on time. I have one that the attorney said he did and his parallegal is really not very good. They filed it with the court and so rather than ask him for a copy of it, because I've asked him for it daily now for three days, now it's on the court records. I just download it. Now I have all the information I need. I can move forward. So I have to bother him back again. And he's going to say, "Do you still need it?" No, I got it off the court records. There's no other Realtor® doing that, right? That's the difference between me. I saved his time instead of billing him. So, I think that's the goal is if we can give more value to our customer for less cost. That's what business is about, right? You're creating more for your customer. Yeah. Yeah. Well, look, I know we got a little long here, Sammy. I really appreciate the chance to chat with you personally, and I know other people may be. If an attorney or a Realtor® in the area wants to work with you, refer you some business, or ask you questions, what's the best way to get in touch with you? Yeah, you know, Realtors® aren't very hard to find. So, I had Bill put up my phone number, my email. If you just if you just Google me, you'll see that I'm I work for the Cydia probate division and, that is it's basically just specializing in probate. So follow any of the links or the reviews or anything, but I'd love to interview kind of hear what you're going through and see if we can't help you get what you're wanting in the time you need it. I mean, we've gone through a lot of different situations. And then another huge source of my education is Bill and his

44:28 Podcast is he you accelerate my growth by going through all of these situations I don't have to personally go through and learn how you how you got through them. And then when I see I encounter them in real life, it's feels like I've done it before. So, well, likewise. Look, it's great to learn about how business is done in Arizona and Grand Canyon estate. And I really appreciate your time today and your success, continued success for you. And let's stay in touch going forward. Okay. Absolutely, Bill. Thank you. Fantastic. Thanks so much. And again, this is the Proate weekly podcast. We get together every week with an attorney or professional business or vendor to help us be more successful in helping our customers and create more value for them. We have a Facebook group where you can continue the conversation. If you have questions or referrals or you're looking for referrals in different states with an attorney, your Realtor® or vendor, feel free to ask there. I'm your host, Bill Gross. Bill Gross Probate on social media. If you like this, please like it. If you have questions or suggestions, put in the comment section. If I can help, please reach out anyway. And as always, make today your best day ever. Thanks so much.