Texas Probate Real Estate: Hidden Deals Every Realtor Should Know

Carey Worrell00:00:00

When you have a seller that is like living in their home and they've lived there and they've made improvements, they're looking at, how much should I buy this house for? How much is my mortgage? What improvements did I do? And a lot of times those things matter to the seller, but they don't matter to the market.The market value doesn't care, and sellers don't want to hear that. But a probate seller that is an heir, they didn't do any of that. They didn't put in any improvements. They don't really.They probably don't even know how much the house was purchased for. And even if they do know, they don't care because it wasn't their money. They're not paying the mortgage right now.They have no cash, and they have an asset that they don't care about. And what they want is cash, as opposed to a seller that's living in a home. They still have their home that they're living in.So they can always decide, well, no, if we don't get that 400, we're staying here. For a probate seller, they're selling. Yeah, it's moving, and they usually want to move it pretty quickly.And so they can be a lot easier to work with than, you know, people that have an emotional attachment to a home.

Mike Mills00:01:05

Well, hello everybody, and welcome to the Texas Real Estate and Finance podcast. I am your host, Mike Mills, a North Texas mortgage banker with Service First Mortgage.And today we are looking under rocks for real estate deals that you probably, probably didn't even know existed. And here to shed a little light on this unmind gold is Carrie Worrell.She is the founder of Simple Law TX and a Harvard trained attorney with nearly two decades of experience. So she's a pretty big deal.And we're diving into probate real estate, how to find overlooked deals and protect your license with smart legal strategy.So if you work in real estate, finance or investing, this conversation is going to help you spot opportunities and avoid some of those landmines that we all run into. So, Carrie, how are you doing today?

Carey Worrell00:01:50

I'm pretty good. How about yourselves? Thanks for having me.

Mike Mills00:01:53

Yes, absolutely. Doing well. And you are in Austin or Houston? What did I just remember? Houston.

Carey Worrell00:02:00

Okay, sorry. Houston area. But we, we work all over the state. But physically located in Houston.

Mike Mills00:02:05

Yes. Where it's muggy and it smells bad. That's my impression.

Carey Worrell00:02:08

Hey, no. That you need to come to Houston, check out muggy. Yes. Smells bad. Parts. But not all.

Mike Mills00:02:16

Not all the way. Sometimes. Sometimes. Okay. No, that's fair.Okay, so before we get into your background a little bit, I do want to kind of dive right into stuff because, you know, this is a really interesting topic that I never even considered, honestly, until we had a conversation about this before the show. And I think it's really great because especially right now when, you know, the market's a little slower, you know, than.Than people want, although it is picking up. You know, rates are probably starting to come down some. The Fed's probably going to make a rate cut in September. We'll see what that does.But, you know, we could start to see some things show up. But also to add to that, that means a lot more listings are going to pop up, most likely because people are going to be ready to sell.And that's where we kind of get into some of this probate stuff.And so I was reading something the other day, and it said it was a legal shield study that basically said that 41% of boomers and 45% of Gen X don't have a basic will.And basically they're implying that, you know, when it comes to, I think it's called intestate estates and entitle issues, these are popping up everywhere of these issues because unfortunately, you know, I'm Gen X. I think you are probably too. Right. Yeah, you know, I think we're doing okay. You're an attorney. I figured this out.I do have a will, have some stuff ready to go, but there's a lot of people that don't. And so when they pass away, these properties kind of get put in limbo if they haven't prepared stuff.And this is kind of one of the things that you guys special in.So I want you to talk a little bit about, you know, what these probates, you know, what the situations are, kind of how they work and then where it comes into play. Especially when we look at, you know, having agents get involved and participating in the sale and sometimes the buying of these homes.

Carey Worrell00:03:50

Yeah, absolutely. Gosh. What do these situations look like? They're. They look different all the time, but the reality of it is, at the.At the heart of it, every probate issue stems from somebody passing away.And like you were saying with the market, you know, the market has ups and downs, but regardless of how the market is, people are always going to be dying, unfortunately. And a lot of times, I mean, it's part of life.A lot of times those people, especially the boomers that you were talking about a minute ago, they own real estate, and in. In Texas, Real estate actually passes to the new owner the instant that somebody dies, right?So the instant that a property owner dies, somebody else owns their portion.

Mike Mills00:04:33

Okay.

Carey Worrell00:04:34

Who owns their portion? We might not know right away. That person might not know right away.And like you mentioned, that could either be somebody left it to them in a will or they didn't have a will. And then the state of Texas has default rules for who your property goes to if you die without a will.

Mike Mills00:04:52

Okay?

Carey Worrell00:04:52

But even with both of those in place, we still have to have a process to get it, to get the paperwork correct, showing that it started with A, A is now dead, now it's gone to B. We need something in the chain of title to show that so that the property is marketable and can be sold.And so that's where probate comes into place to. Typically done in probate courts. It requires a court to make a determination of who somebody's heirs were. There are.Sometimes you don't need a court, but that's. That will bore all you, all your listeners. But typically it happens in probate court.And once that is all settled, then the property is marketable and can be sold because it's clear who actually owns it.

Mike Mills00:05:33

Gotcha.

Carey Worrell00:05:34

So that's kind of generally how the process works. It all starts with somebody dying, unfortunately. Somebody who owned real estate.

Mike Mills00:05:42

And is it typically when that starts? I would imagine that, you know, when that's going on, that somebody is not.Once somebody passes away, the first person that they're calling is not a realtor. They are calling you. Right. Or someone within that is calling you.

Carey Worrell00:05:59

They normally will call a lawyer first. Sometimes if somebody is really close to a realtor, they'll call a realtor first, right?But usually they're calling a lawyer first because they're like, oh my gosh, what do we do? Because. And the reason why is that typically a house is not their only asset. Right.They probably also have a bank account, retirement account, cars and everything, things that a realtor can't really help them with. So that's kind of why they're typically calling a lawyer, a probate lawyer first, in order to figure out, okay, what the heck do I do?

Mike Mills00:06:27

Right?

Carey Worrell00:06:27

Sometimes. And it kind of depends on the situation.If you have usually a husband and wife that are living in a home and one of the spouses dies, oftentimes they will do nothing about that, Right? Because the surviving spouse is still living there. No one's complaining about it.They're paying the mortgage, if there is one, they're paying the taxes just like they always have, and everyone goes on about their business. But then what happens is then the second spouse dies, and now there isn't anyone else living in the home that goes to their heirs.And now you kind of have to deal with the deaths of two people. You have to deal with the death of that first person who, yes, everybody assumes that it went to their spouse, but might not have.Where did their half go? And then where does the second spouse's half go as well?So a lot of times you don't see it until kind of, if you're talking about a married couple, the second spouse dies, and then it's actually moving on to a different generation.

Mike Mills00:07:22

So one would be able to argue maybe that if I'm.If I'm an agent, a realtor in Texas or anywhere, really, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to be very familiar or have a good friend who is a estate planner, probate attorney. Right.

Carey Worrell00:07:37

Okay. So, absolutely. And that's where, you know, what you were talking about earlier with, like, the hidden gold mine that a lot of Realtors are just.Is not even on their radar is these probate leads.There are companies that you can pay to get leads from the probate court, but by the time something actually is in a probate court, they already have a probate lawyer because that's who had to file their probate case for them. And those lawyers, if they're any good, they all have a network of realtors that they work with.I mean, the first thing I usually tell clients is as soon as we file this, you're probably going to get a call from a bunch of Realtors that have, that are, you know, scouring the public records and have found that you filed this. Don't talk to any of them because I have a guy that I would like to refer you to.

Mike Mills00:08:23

And they already trust you because they reached out to you. Yes.

Carey Worrell00:08:27

Right. And so they're going to go with whoever their probate attorney most of the time is recommending.So definitely, real estate agents should be networking with probate attorneys. I mean, the leads are. They're good leads. These people have to sell. They're definitely going to sell.They're normally willing to sell it at a reasonable price because they don't have an emotional value attached to it. They just want to get the money out of it as fast as possible.So they can typically be very reasonable clients in terms of their expectations, especially in a market like we have now, and there's just a steady. A steady flow of these leads. I always tell people you should go.If you don't know any probate attorneys, go on your LinkedIn search for probate attorneys in your area and find the ones that you have some mutual connection with, and then just ask for an introduction. Because probate attorneys are also looking to meet Realtors, because Realtors also refer business to probate attorneys.So most of them are going to be willing to take your call, willing to go out to coffee. And if you learn the process and you understand the process, that's going to be who. Who probate attorneys are more likely to refer those deals to.

Mike Mills00:09:33

Well, and it's a very rare relationship where actually both parties can have a mutually beneficial situation. Right. Because with me as a lender working with realtors, do I have deals that come to me first?Sometimes, sure, it happens, but it's rare, especially when they're trying to buy. More often than not, they talk to an agent and then they call me. So I don't have as much value add as far as, like, giving them contracts. Right.My value add is education and, you know, services and things of that nature.Whereas in this relationship, not only can you as a probate attorney give them business, but them as a Realtor in dealing with their clients can also give you business. So it's very much a symbiotic relationship.

Carey Worrell00:10:15

Yeah, yeah. Especially meet a lot of probate lawyers, also practice real estate.Not all of them, but I mean, that I guess would really be the ideal is find an attorney that does both. And so we do both in our office. We do probate and we do real estate.So I can refer the probate deals to realtors, and then Realtors, when they have a problem come up in their deals, they can return refer those real estate law cases to me because they're usually going to be the people that see those first.

Mike Mills00:10:41

Yeah, well, and you had a good, really good point there, which I think some people, you know, I think, I guess you probably know it, but you just don't. It's kind of one of those things that doesn't resonate until you hear it.But, you know, especially with selling right now, you know, we went through this market where houses were flying off the market just in, you know, one day, and then we've been in three years almost of a, you know, some. Some doldrums, you would. But you still have a lot of sellers out there that are a little unrealistic on what they can get for their house.And when you're dealing with someone that has a, you know, personal, physical attachment to a property, and you go in and you're saying, hey, this house is worth whatever, 350. And they're going, no, no, we're not selling it for a dollar less than 400. Well, that's a. That's an uphill battle you got to fight.Right, right, right.But in these circumstances, unfortunate as they may be, there is a certain level of detachment removal from that property, because, you know, in a lot of cases, I would imagine they just want to get it sold. They don't really, you know, they want to get as much as they can, for sure.But if the agent's like, hey, if we price it here, I can sell it for that quickly, then they're often. Probably more often going to do that.

Carey Worrell00:11:45

Absolutely.Especially because, you know, when you have a seller that is, like, living in their home and they've lived there and they've made improvements, they're looking at, how much should I buy this house for? How much is my mortgage? What improvements did I do? And a lot of times those things matter to the seller, but they don't matter to the market.The market value doesn't care what you did unless it adds value. If it's just something that you liked, I mean, sorry, and sellers don't want to hear that.But a probate seller that is an heir, they didn't do any of that. They didn't put in any improvements. They don't really. They probably don't even know how much the house was purchased for.And even if they do know, they don't care because it wasn't their money. They're not paying the mortgage right now. They have no cash, and they have an asset that they don't care about. And what they want is cash.As opposed to a seller that's living in a home. They still have their home that they're living in. So they can always decide, well, no, if we don't get that 400, we're staying here.

Mike Mills00:12:38

Right.

Carey Worrell00:12:39

For a probate seller, they're selling. So, yeah.

Mike Mills00:12:43

Right.

Carey Worrell00:12:43

There's no and, yeah, it's moving. And. And they usually want to move it pretty quickly.And so they can be a lot easier to work with than, you know, people that have an emotional attachment to a home.

Mike Mills00:12:55

Yeah, absolutely. How many issues do you see often running in with heirs? Because I know the heir situation can be, you know, brother, sister, you know, whatever.And they this one wants to sell or this one doesn't, and you've got three people involved. You got to get the third one. They're out of the country, blah, blah, blah, blah.So I know this process, you know, can obviously take some time sometimes to get everything lined up.But do you see a ton of, you know, infighting between heirs and how would you suggest a realtor deal with that or do you deal with that on your end more?

Carey Worrell00:13:25

Yeah. So the thing about probate law is that it's pretty clear, okay, who owns the property is typically pretty clear.And there's not really, there's no argument that can be made in the law of oh well, I was closer to her or I did all these things for mom and you did nothing. Literally none of that matters. The law is the law and it will tell you who owns the property.So there's not even really much room for fighting on those things now. Yes. Do people, some people fight. They might say, well, yeah, mom had dementia when she wrote that will.That left me out of it and she shouldn't have signed that. There are things that happen like that, obviously, but in terms of just contesting the ownership, they don't really usually go anywhere.The problems that we have more often are what you mentioned is that one person does not want to sell the house.

Mike Mills00:14:15

Right.

Carey Worrell00:14:16

Especially a lot of times a really common scenario we see is elderly parent, one child is taking care of that parent in the home and they are living with their parent in their parents home.Well now parent passes away, home is now owned by let's say three children, but only one of them actually lives there and chances are that one has not been paying rent, has not been paying a mortgage and now they're like, well wait, now I'm just the one quarter owner of this home and I don't have any money and I don't have, I might not, you know, have the ability to, to get a home anywhere close to the same quality as this with my one portion. And that can be difficult. However, there are, there are mechanisms in the law that allow you to force a sale. Now does it require a process?Yes, it does.

Mike Mills00:15:05

Right.

Carey Worrell00:15:05

Is it time consuming and sometimes expensive? Yes, it is. But those, it's pretty, again, it's pretty clear cut.The rule is that if you don't want to co own a property with your co heirs, you don't have to and you're going to win in court if you bring that case.And so normally I can convince the person that's living in the house that they're just wasting their time and money, but more specifically their money because time is on their side when they're living in the house for free, but they're wasting their money by trying to fight it because the outcome is inevitable. And I think that's where agents that are really willing, like I see, I've known a lot of agents over the years and a lot of the kind of. Sure.These are none of your listeners. Mediocre to less than mediocre agents.As soon as something goes wrong in a deal, as soon as the title commitment is like, oh wait, title is vested in your parents, not you. They're like, sorry, yeah, deal is going to fall through and then they move on. They don't even try to work it out.And so for the agents that are willing to work a little longer on a deal to work those, those pieces out, they will work out and they can be worked out. And everybody has an incentive to work them out because there's no asset until it's sold. These people have nothing.So for the agents that are willing to kind of play the long game and not give up and figure out the system and know how it works and add that value to their clients, there's a lot of money to be made because a lot of agents are not even competing for these deals because they're too hard.Yeah, they're really not that hard, but they're, they're perceived as hard and they're perceived as not instantaneous, but the money is kind of guaranteed. And honestly, you can, if you think it's going to take a little longer, you could probably work out a little higher commission if you want to.

Mike Mills00:16:51

Well, yeah, I was going to say, you know, when it comes to, especially these days with commissions being, you know, a focus of not everybody, but, you know, there's a fair amount of buyers and sellers out there that are aware that, you know, that commissions are, are, they've always been negotiable, but now they're maybe a little bit more cognizant of that and want to.That when you're dealing in these situations, I would imagine that it comes up less simply because again, going back to the point of all they want to do is sell the place. They're just trying to, you know, get it out from under so they can move on with their lives.And they, and they especially don't want to deal with it. Like, I don't want to mess with this and so, and so doesn't want to mess with this. So just hire somebody and they'll take care of it.And so you can command a full commission rate at that level because, you know you're going to do a lot of work and you know, yeah, they may take a little time, but anybody knows in this business, because it's no different, you know, when you have a relationship with a, you know, previous buyer or seller and, you know, you send them your holiday emails and you text them happy birthday and you do all these things. Right.The whole point of that is because the next time an opportunity for them or their friends or family comes up to buy or sell a house, you want them to think of you. That's the idea. Right? Well, that's called a pipeline. Right. You're creating a pipeline of people.Well, if you have four or five or six of these probate deals going, are they all going to close at once at the same time, the same month? You're going to probably not, but you're going to have a steady flow of business, you know, and then.And I would imagine as far as the work is concerned, there might be some waiting. Like you got to wait for this to get cleared and get through the courts and get that done, etc, but that's just the waiting period.You're not really having to do a whole lot of work so you can go focus on all your other stuff at the same time.

Carey Worrell00:18:26

Exactly. And I mean, and again, that is where networking with those probate attorneys can really help agents. Because if you convince.I mean, I work with a lot of agents, so I am a firm believer in paying agents the full commission that they ask for if they are worth it. And I know the ones that are worth it and I know the ones that are not.But there's enough out there that are worth it that there's no problem paying them, you know, whatever their 6% listing or even more. I mean, I've had agents that have charged more than 6% and they were absolutely worth it.Because if you're working with a probate attorney that you have already convinced of your value, they are going to speak up on your. You're not going to have to convince the client of your value. That attorney who's talking to them is going to say, you need to use this person.This is how much they cost. This is an expense of the estate and it is worth it. Because if you go to somebody who's offering you way less, they're also going to do way less.They don't understand the probate process. And one another way I'm able to sometimes, and I don't want to say sell it to my clients, but, you know, show my clients the value of an agent.They say, look, I've worked with this agent on a Probate deal. They know the probate process. They know how to do it.They will do a lot of the work that you would have had to pay me to do, because if you have a terrible agent doing this, they're not going to do the legwork. They're not going to arrange the calls and do what needs to be done. And I will do it.And I'm just charging you by the hour, whether your house sells or not. And so, you know, you're.You're going to get more value out of somebody that is good and that, you know, even if they're charging more than what you could maybe get out there. But again, you don't have to.You only need to convince a probate attorney of that value one time, and then once you work with them, they are going to be selling you to their clients. They don't even really have to sell you.I, I've never had a client not take my recommendation on the realtor that I have introduced them to, unless they have a personal friend or, you know, something along those lines. But if they really don't have anyone and they're like, who do you recommend? It will always go with who I recommend.

Mike Mills00:20:29

Yeah. Yeah.And it's, it's not something too where, you know, I would imagine, because part of the things that you're going to talk to them in the very beginning is going to be the costs involved in going through all this. Right. What your costs are, what the court costs are, all that Stu stuff. And I'm pretty sure you probably build in.Here's what's going to cost to sell the house.And so they went from a month ago, not expecting any money whatsoever from anything to a month later, you know, obviously a tragedy occurred, but a month later, and now they're getting a $50,000 check or whatever it is. Now, could it have been 53 or 55 if they had negotiated and tried to. What? Okay, maybe. Right. But they're not. They're just like, okay, good.This, this is. This looks good. I'm happy. Let's go forward. And now you're.You're not even having the discussion, really, once you, by the time you meet the client the first time.

Carey Worrell00:21:18

Yeah. They already know what they're paying. They already know you're recommended.And also, you know, something you were saying while, while we were talking about that reminded me of something I could add about how real estate agents can send deals to probate attorneys.

Mike Mills00:21:32

Yeah.

Carey Worrell00:21:33

After somebody has died. Yes.It's typically a probate attorney they talk to, but There are actually a lot of probate cases that people don't know are about to be probate cases, like the example of the surviving spouse in a house. So surviving spouse calls a realtor, I want to sell my house. Oh, tell me about it. How long have you lived in your house?Oh, well, I lived here with my spouse. They passed away.That is a trigger or should be a trigger to the agent to say, okay, you may need to talk to a probate attorney, because it seems cut and dry that you're the owner of the house, but it's usually not. And I have a list of things that real estate agents can ask at a listing presentation to kind of vet out these potential problems.

Mike Mills00:22:12

Yeah.

Carey Worrell00:22:13

So now not only are you adding value to your client by showing that you have expertise, you're going to make their deal close faster, which is going to help you and them.Even if there's not a probate issue, just by having asked those questions and bringing it to the forefront, you're going to show them, look, I'm not just an agent that's planning on taking pictures and putting on the MLS and then leaving you till we get an offer. I actually want to make sure that this runs smoothly.And then if there is potentially a probate issue, that realtor then can connect them with a probate attorney. So it really does have another opportunity to be able to give back to somebody that's giving you leads.

Mike Mills00:22:49

Now, is there much crossover between, say, a title company, for example?Because every realtor has a relationship with the title company, and title companies are, you know, sponsored or whatever by attorneys, so, you know, they're involved. So how much crossover between. Like, if they say, well, I already work with such and such title company, and, you know, do they do probate too?Sometimes? And, you know, is it. How does that work?

Carey Worrell00:23:11

So the big title companies that are, you know, even though they do have, you know, fee attorneys that work for them, typically those attorneys are not actually doing the probates.

Mike Mills00:23:22

Okay.

Carey Worrell00:23:22

They are looking at the file and they're saying, look, you need to get this person's estate worked out, but they're not working out that person's estate.There are some smaller title companies, usually in smaller towns that are independently owned by an attorney may have a, you know, different underwriter. Those sometimes will do the work themselves.But for the most part, in the big cities, in the suburbs, you know, your first American, Fidelity, Stewart, all those big ones, the attorneys that work for them are identifying the issue. But then you have to go find an attorney to actually do that for you.And a lot of times the title companies will refer to a probate attorney, like here, call this person. They could probably help you.

Mike Mills00:24:03

Yeah, so it's definitely one of those things where you can't assume that because you have a, you know, there's someone that works in real estate and you're, they're associated to the title company and they're an attorney that they're going to be able to do this because odds are they aren't. So, so just having a title relationship doesn't, doesn't supplant finding someone that handles these probate deals.

Carey Worrell00:24:21

Yeah, absolutely.I mean, a title company can usually refer you to somebody if you don't have anyone, you know, that can fix it for you, but they're not going to fix it for you. They will sometimes do like an affidavit of heirship, but if something needs to be filed in a probate court, they're not going to be doing that.

Mike Mills00:24:36

Okay, so this is kind of a weird, not a weird question, but just a little.I'm curious on your inside of this because I'm sure that you've had, because you've been doing it and you work with other agents that you've had people come to you and you know, want to form a relationship or want to refer you business and hope to get some from them, etc.So, so if you were a realtor, right, and you were trying to find, you know, some, some probate lawyers to get, you know, associated with or have a relationship with, you know, what would be your method?And I know you mentioned earlier about LinkedIn or whatever, but even just to sit down in the conversation of here's what I would say, here's what I would ask, here's how I would, you know, propose myself to them to say, this is what you can get from me, you know, what can I get from you? Like how would you approach that?

Carey Worrell00:25:21

I mean, I think, well, first of all, it's finding those people and then just getting a connection. If you can get a connection from somebody, you know, that's always going to be easier than cold calling.But honestly, cold calling can work or just sending out emails or messages in LinkedIn. But I think how the conversation, I mean, I'm a real proponent of the givers game, you know, philosophy.

Mike Mills00:25:42

Okay.

Carey Worrell00:25:42

I think just asking somebody if they will go to coffee with you or, or meet you over zoom and then just saying, look, I'm a real estate agent, this is my experience, this is where I'm trying To go. If you do a little bit of research on probate from the beginning so you at least kind of know the. The lingo that might be helpful.I have a webinar you could watch that could give you. Give you the lingo to. To. To listen to or to talk to them.

Mike Mills00:26:08

Is that on your YouTube channel?

Carey Worrell00:26:10

No, I don't have a YouTube channel. I need one.

Mike Mills00:26:13

No, I'm pretty sure that you do. Like, I'm almost.

Carey Worrell00:26:15

Do I.

Mike Mills00:26:16

Yes, yes. I'm almost certain that you.

Carey Worrell00:26:19

I have a YouTube channel. Somebody else has set it up.

Mike Mills00:26:22

It. It was. I don't.There wasn't much on it because, like, you know, one of the things that I always do whenever I find folks is I look, you know, I look for them on YouTube and, you know, along with their other sites and everything else. So, by the way, agents, anybody else listening to this, if you don't have a YouTube or.Or just if you're what I call a secret agent, don't have a social media profile of any kind.

Carey Worrell00:26:44

I'm a secret agent lawyer, certainly.

Mike Mills00:26:46

Oh, yeah. Okay. Let's see. Real simple tx, right? Isn't that what it is?

Carey Worrell00:26:52

Simple law. Simple law tx.

Mike Mills00:26:53

That's what I mean. Okay. My brain's not working today. Simple law tx. Yeah, there you are. You got a YouTube channel?

Carey Worrell00:27:05

Yes, I should look into that. Maybe I should put my webinar up there.

Mike Mills00:27:08

You've got four videos on here.

Carey Worrell00:27:11

I shudder to think. What is that about.

Mike Mills00:27:14

About a year. They've been up about a year, so.

Carey Worrell00:27:16

Really?

Mike Mills00:27:16

Yes.

Carey Worrell00:27:17

Okay.

Mike Mills00:27:19

Huh. Understanding immigration, green card versus Visa.

Carey Worrell00:27:24

So, all right. Yes, that is. That is great advice that you should all go look at on my YouTube channel.

Mike Mills00:27:29

That's right. See, you got to promote your YouTube.

Carey Worrell00:27:32

There you go. I need to actually put some good content out there.

Mike Mills00:27:35

And now I'm an official subscriber. So now you have a new subscriber.

Carey Worrell00:27:39

So you'll get an alert if I post something in the future.

Mike Mills00:27:42

That's right. That's right.

Carey Worrell00:27:44

But back to that conversation that you can have. I mean, I think you just need to. To let them know. Look, sometimes I have these deals.I always, you know, do you have a list of questions that I could ask my clients that might trigger me to know that they were going to have a probate problem? And then we could work together, because probate lawyers want you to be able to find that ahead of time also, because then you can refer to them.So if you can kind of pose it like that, I think that's a good Way to get the conversation started.But honestly, if you just show yourself as being intelligent and having the wherewithal to, like, set up a conversation and know that this is a relationship that could be symbiotic, most probate attorneys are going to say, yeah, okay, let's. Let's work together. If something comes my way, I'll call you. If something comes your way, call me.And then just, you know, all those things that you do as well, if you have education for them. There. There are things in real estate that, honestly, probate attorneys could be educated, educated on as well.I've heard some agents that I know say, oh, gosh, I sure wish that the probate lawyer would have told their client this. So, for example, some things like that would be.So those things that I hear agents say, a lot of probate attorneys tell their clients, okay, we're gonna. We'll. We'll go through the process. We will see what the court does. We'll figure it all out. And then. But in the meantime, don't pay the mortgage.You don't need to pay the mortgage. And that's not necessarily bad advice from a legal perspective, because a lot of times the heir.The heir is not required to pay the mortgage out of their own pocket. Right? But practically speaking, if the probate is not done yet, there is no access to the decedent's funds.So if somebody was going to pay the mortgage, it would be coming out of the heir's pocket, right? Sometimes that's possible, sometimes it's not. But what ends up happening is that you don't. They don't pay the mortgage.Now, we end up in a short sale. And now, now you really are losing substantial value, and you are making it harder.And by the time, if you call a realtor when it's already set for foreclosure, they're not gonna be able to do anything for you. Whereas if you had called the realtor at the beginning and said, look, we have this mortgage. What. What can we do? The.The realtor is probably going to say, you know, here's your options. This is what's going to happen if you don't pay the mortgage. These are some potential, you know, ways that you could get around it.How can I help you make this probate move faster? A lot of times it's the probate attorneys just not being that diligent in getting documents.But if you, you know, if you can go and offer that and say, look, I will help if you just give me the documents that you need signed by the client. I will get them all signed.Like I'm working with an agent now on a deal that it's a lot of people that have to sign documents and it's a pain for us to track them all down, but the agent is doing all of that. And so it's taking a huge burden off of us.And also, honestly, it's getting faster, getting done faster with the agent doing it, because they actually have a personal relationship with the, with the client. And this is one word that actually the agent referred the case to me, but they know them, they are willing to put in the legwork.Whereas I've got a long list of cases and that's kind of at the bottom of my, my list. I'll send all the documents to the client and say, hey everybody, get everybody to sign this. But then I just wait for them to come back.

Mike Mills00:31:18

Right.

Carey Worrell00:31:18

Sometimes that's right away, sometimes it's not. But if there's an agent out there that's like, hey, let's meet up.I'll bring you these documents and you can sign them and I will take them and deliver them back to your attorney, that like makes a huge difference. It sounds small, but that can make a case literally take months, less time really.And if there's a mortgage that's sitting out there not being paid, you know, that kind of stuff is, is huge. And it's pretty easy for realtors to do it. That's kind of what they, that's what they do.They like you know, getting the paperwork done and tracking people down and talking to them.

Mike Mills00:31:52

Well, I don't know if they like it, but that's definitely part of what they do.

Carey Worrell00:31:55

Yeah, that's different people. Different people feel different about it.

Mike Mills00:31:59

Yeah, it still work in their minds.But is it, you know, is it a weird thing to say to someone that, you know, a good place to kind of, you know, get familiar with these and you could also be giving back to a community, by the way, would be to kind of spend some time at some old folks homes and you know, get to know some people there and you know, bring them snacks and you know, whatever. I mean, I. That sounds terrible, but, you know, it seems like there's a, there's a place.

Carey Worrell00:32:29

No, I definitely think, I don't know how I feel about like actually approaching the residents of those old folks home, but the people that work there. Yeah, definitely. I would approach and just say, look, this is what we have to offer, this is what we can do. We can provide some education.I mean, even providing, you know, education on estate planning from an attorney's perspective. And honestly, what you could do is sponsor you. Yeah, yeah, exactly.You know, reach out to a probate attorney and say, look, I want to do this education for the people at this assisted living facility, but I don't have the legal background. Can we team up and, you know, put on a presentation and have it be about, you know, something actually useful?The people that work there will remember that you did that. All right? It gives their residents something to do. And if you're not charging for it and you're just truly giving information. No, absolutely.I think that's a great idea.

Mike Mills00:33:26

Yeah. Yeah. It's just, you know, it.This is always such a hard thing because I think people just get a little squeamish about it, you know, because it ultimately is the result of somebody passing away, which, you know, you never want to take lightly. And it's not something that you're, you know, hoping for or celebrating or anything, but it still happens. You know what I mean? And it's.It's part of life.

Carey Worrell00:33:44

It's going to happen regardless.And I would much rather work with somebody who has actually tried to be helpful, inform a relationship with somebody before the event, than somebody who tries to prey upon the event after it happens by cold calling everyone that has filed a probate case in the county, you know, in the past 30 days. You can do that. You do it enough, you'll probably get some clients. But I don't think it's the best way to get clients.I don't think it's the way to get the best clients.

Mike Mills00:34:09

Right, right. Well, I mean, look, like I said when we first started the, you know, this first part of this conversation, I really, you know, people are.Or agents are always asking each other, and, you know, they're always looking for, you know, should I buy leads here? Should I go do this? Like, where can I find some business?And, like, I really think this is one of those places, especially, again, not to be, you know, doom and gloom here, but the boomer generation, they're starting to die, you know, and there's a lot of them, and they own a lot of real estate, and, you know, they're the biggest holder. They're the biggest holder of real estate in the country, like, by a significant margin.And so over the next 10 years, like, I feel like you could probably build a pretty strong career if you just did this. You know what I mean?

Carey Worrell00:34:52

Yeah, you absolutely could. And once you got good at it, the deals would just come to you. You Wouldn't really need to.You get a few good relationships with a few good probate attorneys, and I definitely could have a career. Another sector that is overlooked.And this is really more of an investment type of opportunity or, you know, realtors who work with investors or realtors who are investors. There's this whole segment of homes, not necessarily homes, any type of real estate that is owned, you know, as a family property.So, like, it's been owned for generations.

Mike Mills00:35:27

Yeah. Lake house or something that mom, dad.

Carey Worrell00:35:29

Exactly. Or even just an empty lot or agricultural land. Whatever. Whatever it is, it's been passed down in a family for multiple generations.And typically what happens, or what frequently happens is that everyone in that family has an agreement of who's living there, Right. Uncle. That's Uncle Joe's portion, that's Uncle Tom's portion. They live there. They pay the taxes, they take care of the property. It's fine.Nobody cares. And that can happen for three, four, five generations. Eventually, they want to sell that property. Right? Somebody wants to sell it at this point.So, for example, I'm working on one right now. It's a house. Nobody's done anything with it for three generations. There's one guy that pays all the taxes. He lives there.Everyone's fine with him doing that. Nobody even wants the property. Half of those people that now own it as heirs don't even know that they own it. But he wants to sell it, okay?And he can't sell it because now there are four generations of probates that nobody has done anything about. So, you know, let's say it started with a couple, then it goes to their, let's say three kids, and then they have kids. Then it goes to.Then it goes to nine kids, then they go. I mean, it's exponential, right? So then by the time you get to the third generation, I mean, I think this one has like 14 owners.

Mike Mills00:36:49

That's messy. Very messy.

Carey Worrell00:36:51

Yeah. The guy that lives there, they don't even know some of these owners. I mean, it took us months just to figure out who owned the property.

Mike Mills00:36:58

Right?

Carey Worrell00:36:58

So once we figure out who owns it, then you have to find those people. You have to set the record straight in the real property records as to who owns it.Find all those people, convince them that they should give you or sell you their portion in order for you to get it. And a lot of times that generations of fixing the probate is expensive, Right.You have to go to court, you're going to have to pay your lawyer to do it. And a lot of Times, you know, if that's owned by 14 people, each person's individual 1/14 portion is less than the attorney's fees would be.

Mike Mills00:37:30

Right.

Carey Worrell00:37:31

So nobody is motivated to actually take care of that problem. And a lot of these properties actually just end up getting wasted, to be honest, because nobody has the knowledge or the money to work it out.So what a savvy investor could do, and honestly what a realtor could do, is find these deals for investors and then take a of it kind of as finders fee. But is you buy that property for something extremely cheap.So like the last one I did, I think somebody bought it for like $25,000, maybe even less 20, $20,000. They buy it knowing they don't have a clear title. Right. They know that they're going to have to do something to it, but they.

Mike Mills00:38:13

Have to get the person that's living there to sell it to them. Right.

Carey Worrell00:38:16

They got to get at least one person to sell it to them. Yes. So, right. And yes, you need to figure out who exactly owns it.If you had a probate attorney on your side or genealogist, you could work out ahead of time exactly what the risk is in going to this one.In this one, it actually was only one owner, but he still had several probate issues he was going to have to solve in order to prove that he was the owner.

Mike Mills00:38:41

Essentially, by the way, this is a cash transaction usually. Right. You can't get.

Carey Worrell00:38:45

It's going to need to be cash. I mean, you could probably maybe hard money. You could definitely get a hard. You're making me think of another idea, actually.I mean, this would be a good lending opportunity. We should discuss this.So buys a house from this guy, knowing that in addition to the $20,000 you pay him, you're basically buying a $30,000 lawsuit to fix the title.

Mike Mills00:39:09

Right?

Carey Worrell00:39:09

But that's fine because they have $30,000. My guy didn't have any money. So they pay the $30,000, fix the probate issue. They fix it up. I think they probably put.They bought it from my guy for 20,000. They probably had to pay about 30,000 in legal fees. They probably had to fix it up, use it with about 150,000, but they just sold it for like 450.So I mean, and it's a. There are a lot of those deals. Yeah, there are a lot of them. And they just sit there. Nobody does anything with them.When you see abandoned, completely abandoned properties, I bet a large percentage of those, it's for that reason that it's abandoned.

Mike Mills00:39:48

Well, and I wonder if there's a way too, because you could even take it a little step further if you want to be.And I wouldn't imagine would take a lot of work, but whenever there is a property, and I don't know how you would even find this, I'm sure there are public records, but a property that gets passed down, somebody dies, it gets passed to somebody.There's never at that moment there's no real intent to sell it or whatever, but you're sending out an email or something to them just saying basically like, hey, whether you intend to sell this property or not, here are some things you need to be aware of. Now that this is being handed down, here's some probate stuff you need to be conscious of, etc, if you ever have any questions, call me.You're, as an agent, you're just basically saying, hey, look, you know, before something happens to you or right.So on and so forth, you need to make sure that you get this stuff settled because the longer you wait, the more expensive it becomes, the harder it becomes to sell, etc. So I'm just, I'm not telling you I want to sell your house because you may not want to sell it.But what I am telling you is that when you do eventually want to sell it, these are some stuff you need to be aware of. And then you become kind of an expert on that and a go to once they are ready to sell, right?

Carey Worrell00:40:49

Or even tell them like, look, these are the things you should take care of now so that you can sell in the future.Because if you don't do it now, it's always more expensive and more time consuming in the future because by then someone else has died or someone's missing or someone's in jail or you're mad at someone. You know, it's always easier to take care of those, those issues up front.And you know, there are some AI tools that are starting to do this kind of mine for these properties. I don't know how they're doing it. I'm not. I wish I knew more about how AI works, but I have like a first grade understanding of it.But whereas what people used to do is just like look at court records and call people who had filed probates, these tools are finding properties that have not gone through probate because that's what's causing the issue is that they haven't gone through a probate process and they have these multiple owners. And so there are a couple of software companies that are working on Finding these properties using. I don't. I don't know actually how they do it.I suspect if I had to guess, like, what are the features they're looking for? You know, if a home in the real property records or in the tax records has had the same person as the owner for more than, like, let's say 75 years.

Mike Mills00:42:04

Yeah.

Carey Worrell00:42:05

Chances are they are dead and nobody has alerted the taxing authority or done anything about it. You know what I mean?So those are properties that are going to likely have something going on, or a property that in the tax rolls has been under a state of John Smith for more than 10, 20, 30 years. You find those, I can almost guarantee there's a probate problem.So you just go approach those people and if you can find out who they are using kind of genealogy tools. Hey, did you know that you owned this house? Oh, you didn't? Well, it's going to cost you, you know, $50,000 to get it.If you just want to sign over your portion right now, I'll write you a check for $5,000. They will say yes to that, because they didn't even.

Mike Mills00:42:47

Now you become part owner of this property.

Carey Worrell00:42:49

Now you're part owner.And once you're a part owner, you have access to those legal tools I was telling you about earlier to partition the property and get the other property owners to sell it.

Mike Mills00:42:58

Wow. Wow. Okay. We are. We are definitely mining some gold here. This is. This is great. It's crazy to me. I. I mean, obviously I didn't know any of this, and.And my wife's a realtor, so I'm sitting here going, oh, boy. But, but, you know, why do you think this is a thing that's kind of so far under the radar? Is it because, you know, for me, I'll say probably.Because for me, when I start thinking about law and title and attorneys and whatever, my eyes glaze over and I'm just like, oh, right. You know, like, I lose my.

Carey Worrell00:43:29

That's why. That's the reason why. I mean, I don't know.I think people kind of just get in this one track focus of what they think is easy, what they think is doable. They don't think about how their profession could. Could mesh with other people's professions to, you know, kind of come up with some symbiosis.I don't know. And I mean, they are. They're actually not necessarily harder once you know how to do it. I think they're actually easier. Yeah.Because you don't have to convince people to use you. You don't have to. You find investors that want these properties. You're not working on getting them up to par.You can deal in volume, and it's just a kind of a numbers game. I think that people, they don't have, though, education on it in traditional realtor training classes. And so people just don't even think about it.And honestly, a lot of people, it's just kind of inertia. You've learned something, you've done it some way, Your broker did it some way. All the agents you're around do it this way.And until you either come across a deal or you meet somebody that's kind of thinking outside of the box, you're just never going to do it.

Mike Mills00:44:38

Yeah, yeah, it's. It's very similar. Like, I experienced this when I first got into lending, and I've been doing it for about a little over 15 years now.But when I first got in, I would have other lenders, like people that I worked with. And, you know, because I'd always go around and ask people, okay, how'd you do it? What do you do? Blah, blah, blah.And they would say things like, well, you know, whatever you do, just don't mess with condos. Like, condos, like, yeah, don't. They're. They're terrible. You don't want to do it. Just steer clear of them.You know, they're not worth it, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, okay. Like, you know, I, I didn't know any better.So, you know, the first little while, you know, your condo comes up and you almost try to talk people out of it a little bit or whatever the case may be because you're ignorant of, of how it works.And then I did my first one within the first year of being there, and it was just like, literally, there's a questionnaire, there's some stuff with the HOA you got to take care of. There's a few issues with insurance, but for the most part, once you know what those little things are, it's just like any other loan.Like, it's just easy. It's just right. It's just the fear of the unknown that keeps people away because, like, oh, this is going to be way more complicated than I think.And the reality is, is, you know, it's not like you just have to do one. You know, I now, when people, when I have real or when I have lenders now that ask me, you know, what about this one? What about this one?I will always say, do one.Just do one like it might be hard, it might be difficult, you might fumble over it a little bit, but do it because you might also find that it's really not that hard to do if you just try. But if you shy away from it all the time, you're just limiting yourself on the type of loans you can do. And this is, this is the same exact thing.

Carey Worrell00:46:13

It's exactly the same. And yeah, it probably is going to be hard the first time.You're going to do a lot of stuff you don't know, have a lot of questions, but find someone to team up with that will answer those questions for you. But like you said, once you do it a few times, then it's not hard anymore.And now you have a niche that other people were honestly just like, too, I don't want to say lazy, but too scared to do it. Because some people just have an aversion to learning new things. And I think some of it is a, they're afraid they'll mess it up.But that's why you kind of just have to find somebody that's willing to help you. There are a lot of great people out there that are, are willing to help you.

Mike Mills00:46:46

Yeah, no, I, I think so.I, and, and I think that, you know, this is kind of like instead of paying money for Zillow leads or instead of paying money, you know, to some credit bureau or third party thing to get these leads, you know, when you're actually going about and, and creating your own system of, okay, how do I find these probate deals? What softwares am I using, what attorneys I connected with? And you build a process around this.Well, that can, once you build that and do it, it's a machine. And those things just run on their own. And all you got to do at that point is maintain it and close those deals.And I would imagine, again, not doing it myself, I would very much imagine that that's a pretty easy thing to do.

Carey Worrell00:47:26

Yeah, absolutely. Once you figure it out, it's really not that, not that hard.

Mike Mills00:47:31

Yeah. Yeah.Well, it's, it's, it's crazy that, you know, I was here coming into this thinking we were just going to talk, you know, some boring attorney stuff, and now I got all kinds of ideas.

Carey Worrell00:47:40

Rol, I'm not that boring.

Mike Mills00:47:42

See, see, I do it, I do it.

Carey Worrell00:47:44

I am kind of boring.

Mike Mills00:47:45

But no, no, this is, this is great. And, and it is, you know, in fairness, like, I, I have a thing I say all the time that I, I, I don't like attorneys, no offense.But because, honestly, a lot of the attorneys I know are men, and a lot of them are what I. I would say would are a little on the arrogant side. And it's. It's difficult speaking to them because they talk to you like you're an idiot, and you know what I mean?And it's just like, all right, well, I'm not dealing with you. You know, we're gonna. We're gonna move on from this. But. And then also, too, it's like CPAs.It's like any other professional deal, like most people, because when I do these interviews and conversations with folks that.That do these different jobs, I go on YouTube or go on different spots to look because I want to see if someone's, like, posting content, putting stuff out there, like they can actually hold a conversation, as opposed to just running through all the code and just saying, here's what you do, and it's a breath of fresh air, you know, to be able to talk to you and be able to understand that, hey, no, like, obviously, you know what you're talking about, but also you're able to communicate that to the layman, which I think is a. Is a challenge for a lot of people in your position.

Carey Worrell00:48:47

Yeah, no, there are a lot of terrible attorneys. You're not. I can't fault you for. There's a lot of them I don't like either. And I don't know what.You know, I don't know why attorneys give themselves that bad, bad rap, but.

Mike Mills00:48:58

I think it's probably built around what it takes to become an attorney. Right. Because, you know, if you've got to go through that many years of study and it's dense. Right? I mean, I'm guessing.

Carey Worrell00:49:08

Yeah.

Mike Mills00:49:09

I mean, it's. It's. It's a lot. You're reading massive books and taking huge tests and memorizing so much stuff.And I think that a person that's geared towards sales is going to be less likely to get into that profession because their personality doesn't fit it. And then it's kind of like doctors. Right. Doctors are great doctors, but they are terrible business people.

Carey Worrell00:49:29

People.

Mike Mills00:49:29

Right.

Carey Worrell00:49:30

So, yeah. You know what you're saying is now, I hadn't thought about that, but it is resonating with me because I grew up in a family that was very academic.

Mike Mills00:49:39

Yes.

Carey Worrell00:49:42

Focused on learning things. You go into a profession, you. You know, a lot of my families work 9 to 5, that type of thing. My husband grew up in a sales family.Everyone in his family sells something. They sell something different.And not in the, like, smarmy salesman type of way, but the way of, like, building relationships and helping people find what they need and in doing that, you know, helping yourself. And I really was not exposed to that type of profession, honestly, until I met my husband, and his whole family is in that.And they were not exposed to anybody in my type of profession. And I think that's probably where I ended up kind of realizing that both have so much to gain from each other.

Mike Mills00:50:27

Oh, yeah.

Carey Worrell00:50:27

And if you work together. And that's what I find with my staff, too.I started, started doing these like, personality tests for all my staff because I got some things that I'm really good at.I got some things that I'm really terrible at, and I am too old and too done with it to try and make myself better at the things that I'm not good at when I can team up with somebody who is already good at those things. Yes, absolutely. Obviously you have to have a base level of competence in everything that matters.But, but beyond that, I want to focus on what I'm good at and what I like, and I want to team up with people that are good at the other things. And I think that's how realtors and lawyers can work together.They do the things they like and that they're good at and they team up with somebody else to do the other part of it.

Mike Mills00:51:08

Well, and what you've done too, maybe even not fully realizing it to some extent, but just to pull the curtain back a little bit for folks like, when I do this show, I typically will find a topic or people that I want. You know, I go through LinkedIn a lot, look at articles and just whatever, it's like inspirational come up. Oh, I want to talk about this.Or this is an interesting person I'd like to meet or whatever. Right. And. But doing what I do, and as long as I've been doing, I've been doing the show a little over two years now. I do get.Not regular, but I get a fair amount of emails from, from people that say, hey, you know, we would like to be on the show. And what I found in doing that is, or what I found in, in taking people on in that circumstance is it's very hit or miss. Right.Either this person's going to be good or they're not. And there's not a whole lot of in between.And so, and so in your case, you had somebody and I can't remember if she was from your office or if it's a service.

Carey Worrell00:52:00

No, she works she works for me.

Mike Mills00:52:01

That reached out to me and was like, hey, this is something, you know, we'd like to talk about. And then of course, we met and kind of went over some topics.And that's one of the reasons, like, usually if I call somebody and like, hey, I want you on the show, I don't.

Carey Worrell00:52:11

Right, you've already done it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike Mills00:52:13

I don't meet with them ahead of time and go over, but anytime I have somebody come from outside, I always want to have a, a conversation. Right. Try to figure out what we're going to do and then also be like, is this going to work or not?

Carey Worrell00:52:21

Right.

Mike Mills00:52:21

But, but doing your profession and what you do as a lawyer is that that piece of it goes. Missed a lot. And now granted, you're. They have to have something for them to sell, which is you, which is great. You're a good product. Right?But, but you have to have somebody because if you're not going to do that, if you're not going to solicit yourself out and in this bad way, but you know, if you're not going to try to, to, to get, you know, appearances like this, or try to do more marketing stuff or realize that you have a YouTube channel like all.

Carey Worrell00:52:51

That, that's really where I get most of my leads.

Mike Mills00:52:55

But if you're not doing that stuff, then, you know, you're not going to have the level of success that you could. And, and even in your profession, the value for that, I think, is lost on attorneys because they just like, well, I'm great.They'll come to me when they come to me, or they have their tried and true methods of getting business or whatever the case may be. And, and the reason I say this is because it very much translates to real estate.Because realtors, they don't understand that, or many of them don't understand that your presence online, your, you know, the posting, and not just your, your walkthrough of your home that you're listing, but your actual, like, who am I? What am I about? What do I know? Where are my competencies in, in what's my niche?And if you're constantly putting that stuff out there on a regular basis, people will find you and they will be attracted to what you're selling at that point.And so it's such a crucial part of running a business that we all know I know how to do loans, you know how to do law, agents know how to do real estate. But the. How do I get myself out there in front of people so I can do more is the part that I think a lot of people miss.

Carey Worrell00:53:58

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I think that's, again, it's just connecting with other people. How does your network help me? How can my network help you? And.And that's kind of, kind of my approach. And I think it's an approach that works for most people if they are willing to take the time to figure it out.

Mike Mills00:54:14

So this is before we wrap up here. We only got a few minutes left. I don't want to take up too much your time because I know you charged by the hour, but. That's right, that's right.But I did, and I mentioned this to you before, and you kind of brought it up on your own, which is great. I always like to.Because a lot of the shows that I do around artificial intelligence and how they're impacting everything, because it's impacting everything, whether you, whether you're on board with it or not. So you mentioned earlier about an AI tool or some. You don't know who they are. Exactly. That's fine.But some AI tools out there that can actually help you find some of these probate leads and identify properties that could be going through this from your side of things.When it comes to, you know, law and a little bit on the real estate of stuff, where are you seeing AI start to kind of penetrate, you know, your business and where it's having impacts for you?

Carey Worrell00:54:59

So, I mean, it is having huge impacts on the legal field, just generally not even specific to real estate. In two, two, two big reasons. In some areas, it makes lawyers be able to do their job easier. Right? You can.I can draft stuff so much faster than I could before with good prompting.And, you know, most of my clients are paying by the hour and they would rather have something done quickly, even if it's done by AI, Obviously it has to be vetted to make sure it's accurate, especially if you're citing laws and cases. It's pretty notorious for messing that stuff up.But if, like, I'm writing a demand letter for somebody, if I just put in the facts, AI will give me a pretty good demand letter. It's maybe not as good as what I would have written from scratch, but it takes way less time. And most of the time the clients are going to be.Are going to prefer that they want to pay. If it's good enough, it gets the job done, and they paid less for it because I could do it faster.

Mike Mills00:56:04

All the better.

Carey Worrell00:56:04

Kind of on board with that. So in some sense it's really helpful for that type of thing. I mean, and that's the most basic type of AI. There's so much more to it than that.Where it can sometimes be annoying is when your clients are using AI and they're like, oh, but fact checking you, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, yeah, but you prompted it completely wrong. I mean, it's just so hard.You're now not just like educating your client, you're having to undo an education that they think they have learned from somewhere that they find as a reputable source.

Mike Mills00:56:39

Yeah.

Carey Worrell00:56:40

And it can take a lot of work to kind of undo that and say, well, here's the holes, here's what it's missing, here's what you didn't consider all of those things.So I know a lot of lawyers are worried that AI is going to put them out of business and it probably actually will put some mediocre lawyers out of business, to be honest.

Mike Mills00:56:56

I think it will. Some basic stuff.

Carey Worrell00:56:59

Yeah, exactly.But I'm a firm believer that, like, there's all these things out there that we haven't even tried to tackle yet because we've been using bandwidth on these simple things. If AI can do these simple things, like there's things we can't even imagine doing.

Mike Mills00:57:14

Yeah. It gives you more, it gives you your time back.

Carey Worrell00:57:17

Right, yeah. To figure out new innovations that AI can't do it. And then when AI can do that, we'll have to move on to the next thing.Yeah, well, it's still at the beginning stages of figuring it all out.

Mike Mills00:57:27

It makes every business more efficient and you just have to figure out what the lane is within that to use it. Because, you know, the, the fear that, you know, AI is going to become this all encompassing take over the world deal.I mean, look, maybe, I mean, you know, who knows? Who knows? I would still put it in the category of unlikely. What, what it really is right now is it's very specialized tools.They do very special things, very specific to something, and they do it very well and very quick, quickly, and as opposed to something that you would have to repeat a task over and over again. And, you know, it starts with basic stuff, but it builds from there.But I do have a, I'll give you a, a comeback to somebody who says, oh, well, AI told me this. So, so what a lot of people don't understand about Chat GPT, Gemini, Chat GPT is the worst for it.But Gemini and even Grok to some extent, these other large language models is, you know, I always start people off with saying, okay, when you're. When you're using social media. Right. Tick tock, Facebook, whatever. What is the goal of that platform? What is it?

Carey Worrell00:58:27

To sell you something kind of.

Mike Mills00:58:29

I mean, that. That's an end goal, but ultimately, like.

Carey Worrell00:58:32

It'S to get you hooked on their platform.

Mike Mills00:58:34

Correct. They're trying to get you engaged. Right.They want you to stay on there as long as you can or as long as they can keep you, because they can sell you more stuff. They can put more stuff. Right. Well, these large language models, unfortunately, are no different. Okay. They're very much the same.And one of the issues that. That you run into with them is that if you don't prompt it correctly, then you get two things that happen. One is it tells you everything.Every idea and every question you have is brilliant. Like, you are the smartest person I've ever spoken to. Where did you even come up with this? This is amazing, Howard. How did you know? You're so.You're so insightful. Blah, blah. Like, it makes you feel. You're like. Like, oh, yeah, I'm pretty awesome. This is great. Right? So it does that.And the second thing it does is it will not tell you if it doesn't know the answer. It'll just make something up. Right?

Carey Worrell00:59:20

Yeah.

Mike Mills00:59:21

And. And so it will fill gaps by just making something up.And until you point out to it that, no, that's not correct, and this is what it is, then it's like, oh, yeah. Oh, gosh, you're so smart for noticing that. Thank you so much. You know, you're absolutely right for pointing that out. And.And for me, because I use it every day, all the time, and, you know, it's. It's a big part of my. What I do every day. But I have found that, you know, it's very difficult. It's a hurdle you have to cross sometimes.Because when I'm doing stuff like trying to figure out a new software or trying to, heck, you know, fix a water fountain in my studio or, you know, whatever the case may be, all these little things. My golf cart. I'll ask you questions, and it'll start taking me down a rabbit hole, and I'm like, wait a minute. Like this. It's getting nowhere.None of this doesn't even line up with what I'm looking at. And then I'll figure it out another way, and I'll go back to be like, hey, that was not even right. And it's like, oh, yeah, sorry, my bad. You know.

Carey Worrell01:00:11

Right. Yeah. So there's no, there's no repercussions for it messing up either. So.

Mike Mills01:00:16

No, no. So use it as a baseline.And I would even say when you brought up earlier about learning about probate, I would say very much to use chat, you know, and tell it to reference the certain Texas laws or wherever state you're in and, and get some basics about how probate works.Because then when you go approach somebody like you or, or an attorney here locally, you will have a base of knowledge and be able to speak intelligently about it to some extent. You may not know everything, but it gives you, gives you a quick little, hey, here's what it is.And a lot of times it's better than watching a YouTube video because, you know, they're usually made with somebody that's, you know, you're like, oh, God, this is going to take forever, you know, so. Or even better, use the YouTube video, take the transcript and, you know, summarize it from there.But, but there's a lot of ways to use it and a lot of ways to implement it into your business and to start learning more. But I think if, especially if you're a realtor and you're.You're wanting to go down this road, I think that, number one, it's going to be a great tool for you to be able to do, but also it will help you get in contact with folks like you and be able to educate yourself on the process a little more.Because, you know, like I said in the very beginning when we started this, there's, everybody's looking for business right now, and, and, you know, it doesn't get much better. At least, you know, I'm all fired up after you told me about all this probate stuff, so I'm sure.

Carey Worrell01:01:27

No, I mean, there's a lot of opportunities out there, there.And actually, something you just said made me think of another way you can try and connect with, with lawyers is that if you're an agent and you already have a relationship with the title company, call your title rep and tell them that you want to learn about probate and ask them to arrange a class for you and whoever else they market it to, they will do it because they are always looking for ideas on how to get agents into their office. They can find somebody. If they can't, I can call me. I can direct them towards someone.And now you have a connection with that person who just presented the class. You can reach out to them and, you know, kind of go from there. And so lots of opportunities out there.

Mike Mills01:02:08

Well, I know, we were going to get into, you know, some standard questions, but that just means you have to come back on another time.

Carey Worrell01:02:15

Yeah, absolutely. I have, I have some good stories for how realtors can avoid getting sued, so.

Mike Mills01:02:20

Well, hey, look, you're. You're the most fun attorney I've ever spoken to, so we'll, we'll definitely have you back on again.

Carey Worrell01:02:26

And I need that on a certificate.

Mike Mills01:02:28

Yes, absolutely.I, I need, I'm always looking for regular guests to come on and talk about topics that we've had before and, and go through new stuff and especially when the professionals like you. And after all, you are Harvard trained. So I can tell anybody.I was like, hey, look, I have a Harvard trained attorney on my side, so I don't know what to tell you. Yeah. But no, Carrie, I, I really, I can't thank you enough. This was, this was awesome.I learned so much from this, and I hope, hope everybody else that was listening also did. And, you know, I know you've been doing this a long time and, you know, you've got this dialed down to a science even though you're in Houston.I'll give you a little bit of slack for that, but I really appreciate your time and, and just remind everybody again of your firm, you know, how they can contact you if they ever have any questions, and then we'll go from there.

Carey Worrell01:03:11

Yeah, it's Simple Law tx. The TX is for Texas, not for tax. You can find us online@simplelawtx.com apparently I have a YouTube channel.I do have an Instagram that is also Simple Law Tx, and I have a lot of content there specifically for realtors.

Mike Mills01:03:27

Yes, yes, you do a lot of content on Instagram, so I very much encourage everybody to follow. And oh, by the way, all the content that you do on Instagram, you can put right over on YouTube.

Carey Worrell01:03:36

On YouTube. Yeah, I know they have shorts. I'll add it to my to do list.

Mike Mills01:03:40

They have shorts, too. It's. You don't even have to change it. Just copy and paste that sucker over and you're good to go. All right, Carrie, well, thank you so much again.I appreciate it. Thanks for everybody for sticking out, sticking around. I hope you found some, some good ideas on where to find some business these days.And I will have my market update for the week that'll be coming out today regarding interest rates and a couple more AI tools, some buyer seller tips. So check that out and I wish everybody a great weekend. Carrie, you too. And we'll see you next time.

Carey Worrell01:04:07

Absolutely. Yep. Sounds good.