What are decedent property leads?

Decedent property leads are homes owned by someone who recently died. The property usually transfers to heirs through probate or sworn affidavits, and those heirs often want to sell. Public estate records - affidavits of heirship, small estate affidavits, affidavits of death, and executor or administrator deeds - are the earliest public signal that a property changed hands because of a death.

How do I find recently deceased property owners in Texas?

Deaths that affect real estate are recorded at the Texas county clerk as estate and probate documents. You can search those records by county, document type, and recorded date to find recent filings, then pull the decedent name, heirs, and property address. Texas Estate Records aggregates these filings across counties and updates daily.

What is an affidavit of heirship?

An affidavit of heirship is a sworn document filed in the county real-property records that identifies the heirs of a person who died without a will, establishing who now owns their real estate. It is one of the strongest early indicators of an inherited property that may come to market.

Can I use an AI agent to find probate real estate leads?

Yes. With an MCP-connected AI client like Claude, you can ask in plain language - for example, 'find affidavits of heirship recorded in Tarrant County in the last 7 days' - and the agent calls the Texas Estate Records API, returns structured leads, and can parse each document into the decedent, heirs, and normalized property address.

Is Texas estate and probate record data public?

Yes. Documents recorded with a Texas county clerk are public record. Texas Estate Records collects, structures, and indexes those public filings so they are searchable and machine-readable. Use the data responsibly and in compliance with applicable contact and privacy laws.

How current is the data?

New records are added daily as counties publish them. You can filter by recorded date to see only the most recent filings and check for new leads each day.

Is it legal to contact heirs of a deceased homeowner?

The underlying records are public, but outreach is regulated. Follow the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, honor Do Not Call and Do Not Contact requests, respect each person's wishes, and approach grieving families with sensitivity. Consult counsel for your specific use case.

How to Use AI Agents to Find Recent Decedent Property Leads in Texas

When a property owner dies, their real estate becomes one of the most motivated-seller situations in the market. Heirs who inherit a house they do not live in, cannot maintain, or want to split among siblings tend to sell - often quickly and often below market. The hard part has never been the motivation. It has been finding these properties early, before every other investor does.

This guide shows how to use an AI agent, connected to live Texas estate records, to surface recently inherited property and turn raw county filings into clean, contactable leads.

The signal: Texas estate and probate filings

Texas counties record specific documents when real property changes hands because of a death. These are public records, and each one is an early marker of a potential sale:

Affidavit of Heirship - identifies the heirs of someone who died without a will, establishing who now owns the property. The single strongest "inherited property" signal.
Small Estate Affidavit - used to transfer a modest estate without full probate, listing distributees and their shares.
Affidavit of Death - records a death to clear title, frequently filed right before a sale or refinance.
Executor's, Administrator's, and Personal Representative's Deeds - the estate actually conveying the property, which often means it is already being sold.

Together these are a daily stream of "a property just changed hands because someone died" events. Browse them live on the records page or see what is covered on the counties page.

The old way vs. the agent way

The traditional approach is grim: log into each county clerk portal, run the same searches by hand, copy results into a spreadsheet, then manually read each scanned document to pull out the decedent, the heirs, and the property address. It does not scale, and the freshest leads are gone by the time you finish.

An AI agent collapses that whole workflow. Because Texas Estate Records is exposed as an MCP server and a REST API, an agent can search, filter, and parse records on your behalf - in plain language.

Step 1: Connect the data to your agent

If you use Claude, Cursor, or any MCP-compatible client, add the Texas Estate Records MCP server (full setup on the MCP page). Once connected, the agent gains tools to list records, fetch a single record, and parse a document into structured fields. Prefer to build your own tooling? The same endpoints are documented in the API reference.

Step 2: Ask for recent leads in plain language

With the server connected, you describe what you want and the agent does the searching. For example:

"Find affidavits of heirship recorded in Tarrant County in the last 7 days, and list the decedent and property city for each."

The agent calls the list endpoint with the right county, document type, and date range, then hands you back a clean table. You can keep narrowing - "now only the ones in Fort Worth," or "expand to Dallas and Collin counties" - without touching a single search form.

Step 3: Turn a filing into a contactable lead

A list entry tells you a death-related transfer happened. To work it, you need the details: who the decedent was, who the heirs are, and the property address. Ask the agent to parse the record and it returns structured data:

{
  "decedent": { "name": "Jane A. Doe", "dateOfDeath": "2026-02-22" },
  "property": {
    "address": "1933 Oak Highland Dr, Dallas, TX 75243",
    "addressSource": "stated"
  },
  "parties": {
    "grantees": [
      { "name": "John Doe", "role": "Heir (Child)" },
      { "name": "Mary Doe", "role": "Heir (Spouse)" }
    ]
  }
}

Now you have a normalized address and named heirs - the foundation for skip tracing and outreach. The parsed detail call is the one metered action; searching and browsing the index are free (see pricing).

Step 4: Work the lead responsibly

These records are public, but how you use them is regulated and personal. You are reaching out to people who recently lost a family member. Lead with empathy, give them an easy out, and stay compliant:

Honor the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and Do Not Call lists.
Respect Do Not Contact and data-removal requests immediately.
Be transparent about who you are and why you are reaching out.
When in doubt, consult counsel for your specific outreach plan.

Why structured, daily-updated data wins

Speed and clean data are the whole game. Two things make the agent workflow effective: records are added daily, so you see filings while they are fresh, and every document can be parsed into the same structured shape, so your agent (and your CRM) can act on it without a human re-reading scans. That is the difference between a pile of PDFs and a pipeline.

Getting started

Browse the live index on the records page, connect your agent via the MCP server, or wire the API into your own stack. Start free, parse a few records to see the output, and scale up when the leads start closing.