Probate & Pre-Probate
Pre-Probate Now Carries a Number in St. Louis County
Bottom line: in St. Louis County, a home still in a deceased owner's name, with no probate case on file, changed hands 6 times in 100 over about twelve weeks. For scale, a home picked at random in St. Louis County sells 2.8 times in 100 over six months, and the pre-probate range, 4 to 9 in 100, sits above that. As of today the pre-probate rate is a published figure, with its count and its range, the same way our probate odds are published.
Until now our service menu said that pre-probate carries no odds and that we expect low returns from it. The probate side of the product has carried measured, versioned odds since September. We can now replace the caution with a number. St. Charles County pre-probate now carries its own provisional rate too, and every pre-probate record carries its county's rate, labeled provisional, with the date it is measured again.
The number
| Homes | Changed hands | Rate | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Death on record, no probate case yet | 365 | 22 | 6 in 100 (range 4 to 9) |
Every home in the first row is a single-family parcel in St. Louis County where an obituary matched the owner's address, the death was on record before July 8, 2026, and no probate case existed for that home on that date. We then watched the county's owner roll from July 8 to October 2 and counted how many of those homes had a new owner by the end. Twenty-two did.
The scale is the St. Louis County baseline sale rate: how often a home picked at random sells in six months, 2.8 in 100, from a random sample of 2,804 homes drawn from homes our sales scrapes had not yet visited, so it may understate the county rate slightly, with nothing matched to the pre-probate group. It is the same baseline the probate odds are read against, because in both a homeowner has died. Two things keep the comparison from being exact. The pre-probate window is about twelve weeks and the baseline's is six months, which works against pre-probate. And the pre-probate figure counts any change of owner, not only sales, which works the other way.
What this counts, and what it does not
The outcome here is an ownership change recorded by the county, not a priced sale. The owner roll records every transfer, including ones with no price attached. So the first question is whether these are sales at all or inheritance paperwork, a house moving from a parent's name to a child's.
We checked. On the changes where the old and new owner were both readable, the surname survived on 23 percent of them. Across the whole county, it survives on 27 percent. Retitling inside a family keeps the surname by definition, so a group dominated by it would carry a surname-survival rate above the county's 27 percent, not below it. We read 23 percent as a group of arm's-length moves.
What we have not measured yet is the price. A priced-sale rate for St. Louis County pre-probate needs the same window as the baseline and the sales those homes recorded afterward, and recorded sales lag by about eight weeks. That rate is the next measurement, and it will be published as a new version with its own date, with this one kept on the record.
The homes a probate list could not have shown you
None of the 365 homes had a probate case when the window opened. A list built from court filings could not have carried them, because there was nothing filed. The probate filings of the same vintage, measured on the same window with the same method, read 5.7 in 100. The two intervals overlap, so the honest claim is that a death with no case yet is at least as strong a signal as a filed case, not that it is stronger.
The 58 homes that had both a death on record and a probate case changed hands at 21 in 100. That is a small group and an early reading, with a range of 12 to 33 in 100. Even its low end sits above the 6 in 100 for a death with no case and the 5.7 in 100 for probate filings of the same vintage, which is why we read both records together as worth more than either alone.
Why there is no grade on each record
Our probate odds are not one number. They are published by grade, set by how long the family took to file, with a measured rate for each grade. A reader might reasonably expect the same here.
We can see the shape of a grade. The obituary names who survived the owner, and that splits the 365 homes in a direction that matches what the probate side found.
| Named in the obituary | Homes | Changed hands | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| A child | 138 | 12 | 8.7 in 100 |
| A spouse | 122 | 6 | 4.9 in 100 |
| Nobody we could identify | 75 | 2 | 2.7 in 100 |
That pattern matches the probate side, where a case naming a surviving spouse sold at 1.4 in 100 inside 90 days of the filing against 9.1 in 100 for a case naming none. But six events against twelve is not a measurement anyone should price a record on; the difference between those rows is inside the noise. Separating them with normal confidence takes roughly 1,400 of these homes, and we have 365. At the pace St. Louis County deaths match to parcels, that is about a year away.
So every record in the lane carries one number, a provisional grade that is due to be regraded by April 2, 2027. It will carry a grade of its own when that grade has been measured, not before.
What is published
The pre-probate rate and the baseline sale rate each have an entry on our stats ledger, dated October 2 and October 14, 2026, with a figures-through date, the command that regenerates it, and a review date. A number on the ledger does not change. If a later measurement moves it, that is a new version with its own date, and the old one is kept so a record you were shown in October still resolves to October's figure.
A list tells you something happened. A rate tells you what usually happens next. St. Louis County pre-probate now has one.
Measured on the St. Louis County owner census, single-family parcels, window July 8 to October 2, 2026 (86 days). Cohort: deaths matched to a parcel by the obituary address, recorded before the window opened, with no probate case on the parcel at that date. Rates carry Wilson score intervals; the baseline sale rate is a random sample of 2,804 single-unit St. Louis County homes not yet sales-scraped, measured over monthly start dates from April 2021 to December 2025. The survivor table is a cross-tabulation of the same cohort and is not a published statistic.