It's Only 1 Day, What Difference Does It Make?

This week I saw two different sales cancelled by one day. What?

In a probate real estate sale that requires court confirmation, the court requires the property to be publicized for sale in a legal classified advertisement. While these small and seemingly boring advertisements may seem silly, in fact, there are companies that scrape this data and distribute it to create a market for these activities. In the advertisement copy, the attorney or seller puts that date after which offers will be accepted, in order to give all buyers a chance to bid on the property. This is designed to benefit the estate to get the highest price by ensuring competition. Too often, unscrupulous listing agents try to hide the property from other agents in order to represent both sides of a transaction, both earning more commission but typically netting their client, the seller, less money.

In Los Angeles Probate Court, there is a rule that a contract accepted BEFORE the indicated date is invalid. If a listing agent and/or attorney ignore this mistake and bring the sale to court, the probate attorney working for the judge most often will catch this, and not only invalidate the sale but also require the estate to start over again by re-advertising the property for a few weeks, then accepting another offer, then re-applying for a court hearing, all resulting in typically a 60-day delay. In some cases, the original buyer gets frustrated and cancels, leaving the estate with a lower sales price.

How do you prevent this? Well, as a probate expert, I check the date of the sale on the advertisement and make sure the contract is not accepted before. One trick is I put the details of not being able to accept a contract in the private remarks so the buyer's agents considering offers see this. Additionally, I put a reminder in my calendar system to remind me the day we can accept contracts.

While there are many agents that can sell a house, it requires a probate expert to successfully sell a home in probate court.