Mosaic Research · St. Charles County probate Research brief · pre-probate and probate timeframes · figures through 2026-07-26

You have been buying a list of probate leads. Do you know whether it beats knocking on a door at random?

It does, and not by as much as the price of a list suggests. We put 1,448 St. Charles County estates and 140,386 ordinary homes on one clock and counted which of them sold. This is what a list can tell you, what it cannot, and what we sell instead.

Seven in a hundred is better than one in a hundred. It is still not great. Of every hundred names on the list you bought, about 93 will not sell inside the ninety days you spend working them, and the list cannot tell you which. If you buy from someone else, 7.3 in 100 is your best case. That is where you stay until you know the odds inside the list. We measured them. The spread inside the list is wider than the list's average is high.

The records worth pursuing

What the record says	Sells within 90 days	Measured on	95% range
Filed within 3 months · independent administration · no spouse named	15 in 100	28 of 190	10.4–20.5
Will admitted · no spouse named	13 in 100	17 of 128	8.5–20.2
Filed within 3 months · no spouse named	12 in 100	47 of 401	8.9–15.2
Filed 3 to 12 months after the death	7.6 in 100	38 of 497	5.6–10.3
Small estate affidavit	5.2 in 100	19 of 366	3.3–8.0
Will admitted · surviving spouse named	1.8 in 100	2 of 114	0.5–6.2
Refusal of letters · surviving spouse	0.8 in 100	1 of 129	0.1–4.3
Filed more than 2 years after the death	under 4 in 100	0 of 98	0.0–3.8

Some records are better than others, and the record itself says which. A case filed within three months of the death, under independent administration, with no surviving spouse named, sells at 15 in 100 inside ninety days. A case that names a surviving spouse sells at 1.4. Both arrive on the same list at the same price. The cases naming a spouse are 23% of every probate lead in the county; the cases filed a year or more after the death are another 14%, at 1.2 in 100, which is the random door again. A buyer who never calls those rows gives up almost nothing and spends a good deal less time. Every rate here is measured on the homes in its own row, with a 95% range beside it, so you can see which readings are firm and which are thin. We go into every row, and we show you the row behind every record we send.

Why we think you should buy the pre-probate records anyway

The odds on a pre-probate record are low, 3.2 in 100, and we will not dress that up. We think you should buy them anyway, because they are not a sales list. They are the opening of a conversation, and the clock says when it has to open. The typical family files the case 111 days after the death, and a probate lead is measured over the ninety days that follow, so the whole arc from the death to the end of the probate window runs about 201 days. The filing is where the record first shows what the family has chosen: the same homes, measured a year before they filed, sold less often than an ordinary home, at 0.7 in 100; measured from the filing, 7.3. The pre-probate record is the only part of the clock where you can reach a family before that point. Unless they mean to keep the home or hand it to the lender, the value in that house is draining while the estate sits, and you know how to help with that part of it. This is your chance to introduce yourself as the advisor who does, before anyone is selling anything.

When the probate comes, that is when you know they are serious.

What the filing tells you

Nothing about the house predicts which family files fast. Names on the title, assessed value, years owned, how many heirs, an heir out of state, a surviving spouse: every marker lands between 36% and 48% fast filers across 1,386 cases. Filing speed is something families do, not something houses have, and the sooner they do it the likelier the sale: 12 in 100 for cases filed within two months of the death, 7.0 between two months and a year, 0.6 after a year, on 1 sale among 164 homes. The first and last are 19 to one apart, and their 95% ranges do not touch. We read a fast filing as a decision already taken by the time the case appears; the record does not observe the decision, only the filing and the sale that follows it.

Then you have about four months, not ninety days

Of the 842 filings we have watched for a full year, 205 sold inside it, and only 31.2% of those closed within ninety days of the filing. The tallest band is days 90 to 120, with 35 sales; half of all the sales are still open on day 127, and the middle half of them runs from day 77 to day 217. Of the 96 sales that fall inside the ninety-day windows above, 100% are arm's-length transactions at a median of $295,000, not paperwork moving a house between relatives.

Six months roughly doubles the odds. We publish ninety days anyway, for now

Every rate in this brief is a ninety-day rate. Watch the same estates for six months and the odds roughly double: the whole probate list goes from 7.3 in 100 to 15.2 in 100, 7.9 more sales in every hundred names, measured on 1,083 homes and 165 sales. The random door doubles too, from 1.2 to 2.4 in 100, so the list's edge over it holds at about 6 times either way. We publish the ninety-day figure because we have been measuring for a short time. A six-month rate needs six months of recorded sales after every death or filing, and the pre-probate record is too young to give one: 17 homes have been on the clock that long. Ninety days is the measure we can stand behind on every row today, so it is the one we print. In spring 2027 we will reissue this brief with six months as the published measure.

What we sell

We cannot sell you polished statistics in exchange for leads that do not perform, and we will not. Every figure in this brief is written from the county record by the same code that builds our lists, with its 95% range beside it, and a test fails if any figure stops matching the query that produced it. We will show you your odds on every record, and the proof behind them. Use them to save money, and to spend your time on the families who are moving. This brief carries no prices; the rate card is a separate document.