🛠️ BUILD OF THE WEEK

How I found 7,476 off-market properties in Miami using free court records

Last week I posted this on LinkedIn:

The DMs were different this time. Instead of "send me the spreadsheet," I kept getting: "Can this actually work?" and "Is this legal?"

Yes to both. Here's the whole system.

Why probate is the most overlooked sourcing channel in CRE

Every deal sourcing conversation focuses on the same three things: distress, broker relationships, and off-market databases you pay $2,000/month for.

Nobody talks about probate. Here's why they should.

When a property owner dies, their building enters estate settlement. The heirs have a legal obligation to resolve the estate — usually within 12-18 months. Most heirs don't want to be landlords. They especially don't want to manage a 30-unit apartment building in a city they don't live in.

These aren't distressed properties. They're performing buildings with a motivated seller. The motivation isn't financial stress. It's "I inherited this, I don't want it, and I have a legal deadline to deal with it."

That's the cleanest acquisition profile in real estate. No competing bids. No broker. No auction. Just an heir who wants a check and a probate attorney who wants to close the case.

What the system does

Three data sources. All free. All public.

1. Miami-Dade Probate Court Records (free) Every estate case filed in the county. Decedent name, filing date, personal representative (the heir handling the estate), and the probate attorney.

2. Miami-Dade Property Appraiser (free via Open Data Hub) Every parcel in the county with owner name, assessed value, property type, units, sale history, and coordinates.

3. Florida Bar Attorney Directory (free) Contact info for every probate attorney — name, firm, phone, email, bar number.

The system cross-references all three. It matches decedent names from probate cases against property owner names from the appraiser, then checks whether the property has sold since the filing.

If someone died 10 months ago and the property appraiser still lists them as the owner, that property hasn't traded. That's your lead.

What 8 hours of Claude built:

• 11,392 properties linked to estate cases

• 7,476 in the "ready to contact" window (6-18 months since filing)

• $34.4 billion in total pipeline value

• 9,903 with a probate attorney on file and contactable

• Scored and ranked by acquisition potential (0-100)

• Full interactive dashboard with filters, map view, and detail panels

Total subscription cost: $0

The outreach playbook

This is the part most people get wrong. Do NOT cold call the family.

Call the probate attorney.

Here's why:

The personal representative (the heir) is grieving, overwhelmed with paperwork, and probably not a real estate professional. If you call them and say "I want to buy your dead mother's property," you're getting hung up on.

The probate attorney is different. They have a fiduciary duty to the estate. Their job is to settle it efficiently. A clean offer that simplifies the process is something they'll present to the heirs the same day.

One call to the attorney tells you:

• Whether the heirs want to sell

• Whether there are debts against the estate that require a sale

• Whether multiple heirs are fighting (which accelerates the timeline)

• What price range would get a conversation started

That's more intel than most GPs get after three broker meetings.

The timing window matters.

• Under 6 months since filing: Too early. The family is still dealing with grief and paperwork. The dashboard flags these as "Too Early" — bookmark them and check back.

• 6-12 months: Sweet spot. The initial shock has passed. The heirs are now dealing with property taxes, maintenance calls, and tenant issues they didn't ask for. They're ready to talk.

• 12-18 months: Getting urgent. The estate needs to close. If they haven't sold by now, they're either stuck or haven't been approached with the right offer.

• Over 18 months: Either they decided to keep it or it's tied up in litigation. Lower probability but still worth a look.

The math on one deal

Take one property from the dashboard.

30-unit multifamily in Hialeah. Last assessed at $1.2M. Filed for probate 8 months ago. Decedent still listed as owner. Probate attorney on file.

The heirs live in New Jersey. They've been getting calls from tenants about a broken elevator for three months. They don't know the first thing about managing an apartment building in Florida. They want out.

You call the probate attorney. They tell you the heirs would consider $1M if it can close in 60 days.

Market value is $1.2M. You're buying at 83 cents on the dollar. Not because the building is broken. Because the ownership situation created a motivated seller.

Your basis: $1M. Stabilized NOI at current rents: $96K. Cap rate: 9.6%. Refi at 65% LTV, pull out your equity in 18 months.

That's one property. The system surfaced 7,475 more.

Why this beats what you're doing now

Most GPs source deals one of three ways:

1. Broker relationships. Works, but every deal comes with competition. By the time it hits your inbox, 15 other funds have the same BOV.

2. Paid databases. PropStream, Reonomy, CoStar. $300-$2,000/month. Good data, but everyone has the same data. No edge.

3. Driving for dollars. Time-intensive. Doesn't scale. Limited to markets you can physically visit.

Probate sourcing is different because:

• Zero competition. Nobody else is systematically scanning probate records and cross-referencing against property ownership. You're the only call the attorney gets.

• Built-in motivation. The seller has a legal deadline. They can't hold forever even if they want to.

• Repeatable. New probate cases file every week. Run this monthly and you get fresh pipeline every cycle.

• Free. Florida Sunshine Laws make all of this public record. No subscriptions. No data fees.

The reason nobody runs this play is the manual labor of cross-referencing court records against property data was prohibitive. Claude collapses that into minutes.

📋 THE FULL PROMPT

Copy this. Paste into Claude Code (Opus model recommended). It'll pull the data, cross-reference, score, and build the dashboard.

Find Every Property in Miami-Dade Entering Probate — Free Estate Deal Sourcing Engine

Build a deal sourcing pipeline that identifies every multifamily and commercial
property in Miami-Dade County where the owner has died and the property is
entering estate settlement.

Everything in this pipeline must be free. No paid APIs, no subscriptions.

Step 1 — Download property data from Miami-Dade Open Data Hub
(https://opendata.miamidade.gov or https://gis-mdc.opendata.arcgis.com/).
Get every parcel with owner name, assessed value, property type, units, sale
history, year built, zoning, and coordinates. Filter for multifamily (5+ units)
and commercial ($500K+ assessed value). Exclude government-owned.

Step 2 — Search Miami-Dade Probate Court records
(https://www.miamidadeclerk.gov/clerk/records.page — Civil, Family and Probate
Courts Online System). Pull every estate administration case filed in the last
18 months. Extract: case number, decedent name, filing date, case type, case
status, personal representative name, attorney name.

Step 3 — Cross-reference probate decedents against property owners. Match by
name (fuzzy match at 85%+ threshold). For entity-owned properties (LLC/Trust),
search Florida Sunbiz (https://dos.fl.gov/sunbiz/search/) to check if the
decedent was a managing member. For each match, check whether the property has
sold since the probate filing by looking at sale history on the property
appraiser. Classify: "Not Sold — Decedent Still Listed" (best leads),
"Transferred to Heir," "Sold," or "No Probate Yet."

Step 4 — Score each property 0-100. Weight: estate timing (30 pts — 12-18
months open scores highest), property complexity (25 pts — more units = harder
for heirs to manage), owner profile (25 pts — older acquisition date, entity
structure), distress signals (20 pts — delinquent taxes, violations). Classify:
75+ High Motivation, 55-74 Moderate, 35-54 Monitor, under 35 Low.

Step 5 — For top 50, look up probate attorney contact info on Florida Bar
(https://www.floridabar.org/directories/find-mbr/). For entity-owned, look up
LLC details on Sunbiz for registered agent contact.

Step 6 — Build a React dashboard (dark theme, #0d0d0f, DM Sans font). Three
tabs: Estate Deal Flow (filterable table with score, address, type, units,
value, decedent, attorney, status, months open), Geographic View (map + city
summary cards), Pipeline Timeline (bar chart of filings by month, stacked by
sold vs available). Include detail panel with property stats, estate info,
attorney contact, and outreach timing recommendation.

Step 7 — Export CSV, JSON, and standalone HTML dashboard.

400 words. Runs in about 30 to 60 minutes depending on the size of the tax sale list.

To adapt to other counties

Replace these three things:

• "Miami-Dade" → your target county

• Update the probate court URL → most Florida counties use the same system

• Update the property appraiser URL → each county has its own

Works best in Florida (Sunshine Laws make everything accessible). Also works in Texas, Arizona, and most states where probate filings are public. Harder in states with sealed probate records (some Northeast states).

Counties with the best data for this play:

• Miami-Dade, FL (what we built)

• Broward County, FL (Fort Lauderdale — same court system)

• Palm Beach County, FL (same court system)

• Harris County, TX (Houston — strong open records)

• Maricopa County, AZ (Phoenix — excellent open data)

• Clark County, NV (Las Vegas — good court access)

🎁 GET THE CLAUDE SKILL

I packaged this whole pipeline as a Claude Code skill. Drop the folder into your skills directory and it runs end-to-end without re-prompting every time. Different county, different date range, different property type filter. Just say "run the probate sourcing skill for Broward County."

Reply to this email and I'll send you the files.