Five missing heirs found to close one Houston probate deal
Went beyond the transaction to advocate for her client, proving relationships drive repeat business.
About
Leslie Luna is a Houston wholesaler and flipper who spent 10 years as an ICU nurse. She and her husband started with a house hacked duplex in 2017, and she began wholesaling in 2019. A DataSift user since 2021, she specializes in probate deals that demand deep heir research.
Operating market
Houston, TX
Favorite features
The Challenge
Leslie Luna spent 10 years as an ICU nurse before real estate. She and her husband house hacked a duplex in 2017, and she started wholesaling in 2019. By 2020 he had quit his W-2 so they could flip houses together. She had been a DataSift user since 2021, but admits she was not using it for what it could be. That changed when she watched a user interview with Josh Wagner and copied his list stack: deceased plus tax delinquent.
One property stood out near a flip they were running. The house sat untouched, matching its Google Maps image from two years earlier, and the county appraisal record signaled the owner had died. Then the trail collapsed. The owner's only son had died back in 1997. Her birth certificate listed a father by initials only, the way records worked back then. Obituaries hid women behind married names. None of it was digitized, and no living heir appeared anywhere on paper.
What They Built
Turning a death record into a family tree
Texas birth certificates go public after 50 years, so Leslie pulled the owner's from the county. The father's initials sent her to a courthouse two hours away, flipping through paper records for hours until she found the parents' marriage certificate and his real name.
I was literally like Erin Brockovich in there taking pictures.
Bringing in a specialist instead of guessing
In over her head on her first deep heir search, she called Stephanie and they split the digging. They combed old newspapers where women appeared only by married names and initials. The mother's obituary finally cracked it: two half siblings, leading to a living nephew in his seventies and four great nephews.
Contacting heirs nobody could find
One great nephew in Austin ignored every channel. She found his house from a Facebook photo with a Google image search, then tried the pizza method. He refused the pizza, so she sent Crumbl cookies with a note listing his brothers' names. He called right away.
I added him on cash app, I try to send him a message, I was trying to email him, I literally did everything.
The adopted-out heir signed over through her title company. For the heir jailed before sentencing, she used a visitation app to get a notary onto his visitor list.
Advocating past the closing table
Inside the house everything sat untouched, down to the pillow and phone by the owner's chair. Nobody knew where the woman was. Leslie's nursing instincts read the broken door as first responders. She called the county examiner's office, then the funeral home, and found the owner cremated and unclaimed on a shelf for two years.
Before and After
Before DataSift
- A VA Works Every No-Contact Lead in DataSift
- Daily Follow-Ups Run From the Sift Line Tasks
- Nine Deals Under Contract After the Stacked Niche Switch
- Cold Callers Sent KPIs by Hand Outside the System
- Expensive PPC Spend With No Return
- Follow-Up Leads Vanished Into an Abyss in the Old CRM
- 60,000 Records a Quarter Feeding His Bulk Callers
- Four Contracts Signed in 10 Days
- Three Deals a Week, Two Weeks Running
- First Direct to Seller Push in 30 Years of Business
- A $10,000 Mail Campaign That Produced Nothing
- 15 Years Buying Only From the MLS and Wholesalers
- New lender agreed 12 days after the first collapsed
- $105,696 net profit after closing costs
- Nine properties contracted at $360K, sold at $450K
- Hard money lenders would not lend on rural portfolios
- Local title companies refused assignments and passthroughs
- Seller would only sell one house, priced far over appraisal
- Still Runs on a $500 Monthly Budget
- An $85K Deal Off a 50-Name Stacked List
- 13 Contracts in Six Weeks From 250 Prospects
- About $40K Spread Across Six Months, Still Behind
- Five Contracts in a Row Fell Through
- Shotgun Lists Across Too Many Zip Codes
- One Contract Per 25-35 Leads, Half the Typical Ratio
- Each Caller Brings 16-18 Leads a Week
- 50,000 Free County Records Called on a Four-Month Cycle
- Two Partners Dialing Everything Themselves From 2017 to 2019
- VA Cleaned Every County Download by Hand in Excel
- Another Blanket ListSource Pull Whenever the Pipeline Ran Dry
- Same county-data system expanding into Texas and Miami
- $800K in revenue from six or seven deep-research deals
- About 20 people across data, calling, research, and sales
- PropStream tax delinquent lists arrived after owners had already paid
- Two years hunting a golden list that did not exist
- Bandit signs at intersections, cold calling all day from a coffee shop
- Four deals closed faster than his first three
- 8,200 dials and 25 leads in one November
- Four VAs running one calling and texting protocol
- Generic YouTube advice with no sequence to follow
- Back at a sales job four months after going full time
- Spent $35,000 on marketing with zero return
- About 35 Leads Per Deal Across 347 Total Leads
- $253K In Cash And Equity From One Package Deal
- 40 Properties Wholesaled In Under Four Months
- 12-Hour Days And A 45-Minute Commute
- No Deals Found Through Realtors, MLS, Or Craigslist
- Cold Calling From A Printed Spreadsheet In The Parking Lot
- Pulls Nearly All His Data Straight From the County
- Runs Jacksonville Virtually on $1,000 a Month
- Locked a Contract Four Days After His January Restart
- Scattered Across SMS, Facebook Ads, and a Website
- Partner's $2 an Hour Caller Hit a 1% Contact Rate
- Called Lists Three Times Then Trashed Them
- 50,000 sqft warehouses in negotiation, one to two leads daily
- $59,000 spread on his first big wholesale deal
- Every eviction filed in New Jersey, worked daily
- Old CRM buried callers in highlight and right-click drama
- Phenomenal months, then crickets for months
- Overnight pharmacy shifts, 84 hours in a single week
- Knows the playbook works and is replicating it
- First off-market contract four months after starting
- $250,000 assignment fee on deal one
- Weak cash position after funding ground-up projects
- Questioned whether real estate money was even real
- Two years spending on development deals, not making much back
- $40,000 month tracking with fixed costs
- Five first to market deals since April
- Probate filings pulled daily in multiple counties
- Two mail campaigns, response rates he did not like
- Costs fluctuated month to month with list spend
- Custom Podio build, broad absentee and vacant lists
- Owner buried beside her son after two years unclaimed
- Runs every heir search solo now
- Five heirs found, contacted, and signed across Texas
- Needed a specialist for her first deep heir search
- Paper records only, fathers listed by initials
- Probate leads dead-ended with no findable heirs
- Every No Recycled On A Two-Year Rehash Cycle
- Three VAs Clean Data Before A Single Dial
- Three First To Market Niche Filters Worked Daily
- Loose Onboarding And Under-Corrected Bad Hires
- Team Swung From Large To Small To Solo
- Broad Marketing Across Every Niche At Once
- Mornings and evenings back with his family
- 8 person crew handles whole projects in sets of two
- 40+ properties across three portfolios in about six months
- Afraid to take on payroll and a crew
- The bottleneck on his own projects
- Software job eight to five, real estate five to midnight
- 55% Answer Rate On One-By-One Click To Call
- Free County Data Replaced Every Paid List
- $45K Fee Closed One Week After The Callback
- Podio, Slack, And Multiple VAs, No Traction
- 30,000-Record Lists Dialed Two Or Three Times Through
- At Least $40K Wasted On Lists And VAs
- Four Marketing Attempts on a Couple of Lists
- A Three-Person Team at About $1,800 Cost Per Contract
- Almost Two Years Nomadic Across Asia, Europe, and the Middle East
- Behind a Jacksonville Desk 95 Percent of the Time
After DataSift
- Achieved Data Clarity
- Consistent Deal Flow
- Inconsistent Deal Flow
- Poor Marketing Flow
- Little Data Clarity
- Relied On Google Sheets
- Consistent Deal Flow
- Data Clarity / Organization
- Wholesales, Flips And Does Retail
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Didn't Understand Data Management
- Strong Real Estate Agent
- Wanted To Break Into Wholesaling But Didn't Know How
- Healthy Scale
- Data Driven Decisions
- Consistent Deals
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Inconsistent
- Little Data Insight
- Unorganized Bulk Marketing
- Strategic Focus on Niches
- Enhanced Lead Flow and Certainty
- Streamlined Marketing Process
- Efficient Use of Data
- Direct Mail & Deep Prospecting
- Broad, Unfocused Strategy
- Inconsistency in Results
- Dependency on Luck
- Marketing Clarity
- 6 Figure Months
- High Deal Volume
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Proper Data Management
- Weak Marketing Flow
- Poor Data Management
- Lack of Focus
- Manual Efforts
- Successful Scale
- Total Data Clarity
- Clear Marketing Approach
- Large Deal Spreads
- Improper Data Management
- Poor Marketing Method
- Inconsistent Deal Flow
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Clear Data Management
- Clear Data Management
- Successful Scale
- Many ways to close deals
- Large deal spreads
- Poor data management
- Unable to scale properly
- Poor marketing flow
- Smaller Deal Spreads
- Increased Deal Volume
- Platform Utilization
- Realtor Collaboration
- Funding Efforts
- Lots Of Deals
- Data Driven Decisions
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Sales And Marketing Clarity
- Poor Data Management
- Poor Marketing Flow
- Relied On Bulk Marketing
- Lack of Clarity
- Automated Acquisition
- Strong Marketing Flow
- Data Driven Decisions
- Structured Follow-ups
- Increased Lead Generation
- Achieved Sales And Marketing Clarity
- Manual Acquisition Processes
- Ineffective Marketing Flow
- Minimal Lead Insights
- Poor Follow Up Flow
- Inconsistent Lead Generation
- Lacked Sales And Marketing Clarity
What changed
The moment was not at closing. It was at the cemetery, standing with a worker over a $350 opening beside the son's grave, holding ashes no relative had claimed in two years. Her husband got caught at work, so she went alone. The worker asked if she wanted to say a few words. She told the woman she had tried to respect her things, then watched her buried with her son at last.
Even if I only made five dollars on that deal, as long as I was able to put her where she was, like, that's all that mattered.
The Results
The deal closed with five heirs signed: a nephew in his seventies and four great nephews spread across Texas, one of them adopted out at 16. The heirship research took Leslie and Stephanie two to three months. The jailed heir stretched closing out to many months more. She never names her fee on this deal, and that is deliberate. Her own line is that five dollars would have been enough.
What the deal actually paid was capability. It was the most in-depth investigative work she has done on a deal, and it trained her to run heir research on her own. She has not needed outside help on a deal since. And the seller came home. Leslie claimed the ashes, paid $350 for the opening and closing, and buried her with her son, under the double headstone that already carried her name.
I would not be able to even be here without REI SIFT. I mean truly like it been so life changing.
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