The broker your clients can be handed to without a follow-up call.
Estate and trust real estate goes wrong in predictable ways: a price nobody can defend to a co-trustee, a notice served late, a Prop 19 claim missed because someone rented the house out. You are not paid to babysit that. I am.
Broker since 2021, licensed since 2006, CFO before that.
I spent years on the finance side — corporate property-tax consulting early on, then a stint as a CFO — before real estate became the whole job. That is an odd background for an agent and exactly the right one for a file where the numbers have to survive scrutiny from someone who was not in the room.
What I actually do for your clients: price the property so it holds up, keep the sale inside the timeline the administration is already running on, and tell them plainly when selling is not the right move. That last one costs me commissions and buys me the referral after this one.
Santa Clara County and Santa Cruz County, both sides of the hill. CA DRE #01724888, Broker Associate at KW Thrive SC.
“Lance took on the sale of my property at the most traumatic time in my life… tenacious and empathetic and genuinely caring and responsive… I felt like I had a family member helping me, rather than a realtor.” — Estate seller, 2024 · ★★★★★ on Zillow
Things I’ll do for your client at no charge, whether or not there is ever a listing.
- A written retrospective opinion of value as of the date of death, with the comparable sales behind it. Useful for planning conversations and for context alongside a probate referee’s appraisal. It is not an appraisal — for a filed Form 706 you want a licensed appraiser’s retrospective appraisal, and I will say so rather than sell you my opinion instead.
- A net-proceeds analysis that actually stacks the county and city conveyance taxes correctly. San Jose, Palo Alto and Mountain View are charter cities whose transfer tax sits on top of the county’s, and San Jose’s Measure E applies to the full consideration once it exceeds $2.3 million — crossing that line by a dollar costs about $17,250. Most net sheets I see miss at least one of these.
- A Prop 19 sequencing review for a 55+ client, or a §63.2 cap calculation for a parent-to-child transfer, run against Rule 462.540(c)(2) and Rule 462.520 rather than the loose phrasing in the BOE’s public pamphlet.
- A condition and cost read on an inherited property — what has to be done before it lists, what does not, and what the clean-out and vendor sequence realistically costs and takes.
- A straight answer on whether to sell at all. If the right move is to hold, or to wait for a beneficiary to move in inside the twelve-month Prop 19 window, that is the answer your client gets from me.
- A conversation with your team, in your office or on a call, on how Prop 19 changed the keep-versus-sell math for inherited homes. No charge, no pitch, and I do not offer MCLE or CPE credit — it is just the material.
I am a real estate broker, not an attorney or a CPA. Nothing here is legal or tax advice, and I do not give it — that is your side of the table, which is exactly why this works.
No referral fee. That is not modesty — it is the law.
Reciprocity, not compensation
California permits a broker to pay compensation for licensed activity only to licensed persons. So nothing changes hands between us. What you get is a client who comes back to you handled, and a broker who sends estate and trust work back the other way — because I meet families every month who need an attorney and do not have one.
A name and one sentence of context
Where the administration stands, whether there is a probate, and whether anyone is talking about moving in. That is enough for me to know which conversation to have. I will report back to you after the first call, and I will not put your client on a drip campaign.
Send me a name, or just start with a question.
This comes straight to me — not to an assistant, not to a lead router. If you would rather talk first, call or text 408-375-1223.
Things you can send a client today, without involving me at all.
All free, all ungated, all written by me. If they are useful to your practice, use them.
The Trustee & Heir Playbook
The whole job in six steps, with the statute behind every deadline — and a fourteen-minute video version for the client who will not read a page of citations.
The Inherited Home Deadline Clock
Enter a date of death, get every California filing deadline that touches the house on one timeline. Prints cleanly for a client file.
Sell Now, or Let Them Inherit?
The §1014 step-up against the Prop 19 §63.2 cap, side by side in dollars, including what happens when the heirs rent it out.
The Surviving Spouse’s Guide to the House
§121(b)(4)’s two-year $500,000 window, §121(d)(2) tacking with no time limit, and the California community-property step-up under §1014(b)(6).
The Net Proceeds Calculator
County plus charter-city conveyance tax stacked correctly, §121, federal brackets, NIIT on the lesser of net investment income or MAGI over the threshold, and California’s 1% mental health surcharge computed separately.
Have a file open right now?
Call or text. If it is a question I can answer in five minutes, that is what it will take — and there is no client attached to it on my end.