Probate real estate specialist — Los Angeles

What they came in with

Established probate-focused agent in the LA metro with deep court-process literacy — knows the 850 forms, knows the 60-day notice timeline, knows when an executor is ready to list versus when they are still grieving. The skills are there; the marketing infrastructure is not. Generic agent website with one paragraph mentioning probate buried on a services page nobody finds. Lead acquisition runs almost entirely off court-list scraping — which is rate-limited, time-intensive, and produces cold-cold inbound. Small attorney network (4 estate-planning firms) but no structured outreach calendar against them. No probate-specific content, no executor decision-tree assets, no inbound moat. The competitive position is "I understand probate better than the generalist down the street" but nothing on the site or in the marketing communicates that to the executor or attorney searching for the answer.

What we built

Probate is the kind of niche where the marketing infrastructure IS the credibility — a probate-specialist site signals authority an executor will pay for. Phase 1 build: site rebuilt around probate as the primary niche (not a sub-page), with a court-timeline calculator (interactive: enter the date of death, surface the 850 form deadlines, the 60-day notice window, the IAEA petition timing), an executor checklist (12-step, downloadable, captured behind a soft email gate), and a dedicated probate FAQ resolving the questions estate attorneys answer for free three times per week. Phase 1 SEO: three money pages targeting "probate real estate Los Angeles," "selling inherited home California," "executor responsibilities California real estate" — schema-tagged, internally linked, with FAQ-eligible bolded first sentences for AI engine citation. Phase 2 deployment (week 3 to 8): structured attorney outreach to estate-planning and probate firms in the service area — 15 to 20 named firms, sequenced touch (intro letter, follow-up call, referral-partner deck, lunch ask) with each firm getting a custom-prepared overview of the agent. Sphere reactivation: attorney closing-dinner contacts, past executor clients, family-network names — quarterly market-update cadence with executor-specific value (current valuation lift on inherited properties, market velocity for as-is condition listings).

What to expect

Probate engagements run on 6 to 12 month sales cycles because the executor is rarely ready to list within 30 days of the will being filed. Early signal is the ATTORNEY pipeline, not the listing pipeline — the right metric in months 1 to 3 is "how many estate attorneys have us in their referral mental shortlist." Month 1: first inbound attorney call expected from the outreach campaign — usually one of the 15-20 firms responds and asks for a coffee or a closing-cost overview for an executor client. Month 2 to 3: first executor-sourced inquiry through the niche site — typically driven by the timeline calculator or executor checklist surfacing in search. Month 3 to 5: first listing referral closes. Month 6 to 12: SEO compounds. The probate-specific money pages start ranking on long-tail "selling inherited home [LA neighborhood]" queries that have low competition and high intent. Verified case study with real numbers lands July 2026.