A property we actually bought. No address and no names — the situation is the point.
A year of probate, and we ran the building while it went through
Seventeen units, and a widow who had ended up responsible for all of it. Her husband had handled the building for years, and when he died the whole thing landed on her. Her children were not in Miami.
She did not feel safe going to the building to collect rent. That is the detail that matters most here, and it is one that rarely gets said out loud. A property can be a perfectly good asset on paper and still be something a person cannot make themselves go to.
Getting it sold meant getting a probate started, and that needed a lawyer. We found her several probate and real estate attorneys to speak to, rather than steering her to ours. Somebody in her position should be choosing her own representation, not accepting whoever the buyer put in front of her, and the cost of giving her a real choice was a couple of phone calls. Then we covered the up-front costs so the legal process could actually begin.
It took about a year to reach a closing. Probate does what probate does.
And during that year, we managed the building for her. Somebody had to, and it was not going to be a woman who did not feel safe walking up to it. We did not own it yet and we were not paid for it. It simply needed doing, and we were the ones in a position to do it.
Read more about this
Open Permits & Violations — Open permits quietly kill Miami-Dade home sales. What they do to a closing, and how we buy houses that have them.
Spotting a Real Cash Buyer — The deposit, who holds it, and whether it's a FAR/BAR contract — what actually tells you a cash offer is real.
