Real estate agents keep mailing me, annoying. Is this ethical?

Just ignore. Have you ever been given the advice "don't personalize"? Over the yeatrs, I've found it useful to assume that folks are contacting me are doing it through internet stuff, not because i know them.

Barbara, this is one of the drawbacks of Probate. The records are public. Realtors go through them and contact the PRs to try to get listings. Expect this to occur for several months, depending on your particular location and the number of realtors trawling for business.

If you want to feel some sense of retaliation, call a few of them and tell them that you were in the market for a realtor but wouldn't consider someone like him/her because they prowl the public records searching for clients. Tell them you've selected a prominent, well respected, realtor who DOESN'T snoop through public records looking for potential clients.

After my mom passed, my dad also got many of these letters. I think these people look at the death notices and get your info from there.

Hadnuff, it is normal business as those letters are sent to everyone who own a house and are a certain demographic. Such addresses can be bought from companies that do demographic type mailings.

Dad also gets personal letters asking if he wants to sell. There is no way anyone knew that my Mom had passed. We had no obituary. There must be some State record that businesses can get their hands on.

Heavens, even I get the very same letters as my Dad... we are both senior citizens. Dad's mail is forwarded to my house. Most mailings say they will buy your house today and you can settle next week. These are flippers who want a bargain deal hoping the seniors who live there are strapped for money, want out, and don't know how much their house is worth.

My parent's home is on the market For Sale by the company where I work as we occasionally sell residences. And even then, the company will get offers to purchase the house for some ridiculously low price. Forgetaboutit. Ain't going to happen. I had my parent's house Appraised, so I know how much it is worth.

Hadnuff, just be lucky you aren't getting telephone calls... thank goodness for the Do Not Call List :)

We get letters and cards from a local real estate business. The business is circling her house like a buzzard, hoping she'll sell it if they show interest. We don't pay attention to them. I imagine they will want to buy cheap and revamp the place. It's all about money now and courtesy is out the window.

At one law firm for which I worked, the attorney handling estates used to get solicitations to sell houses for families of deceased clients. I knew they had to come from a source related to the client's death. I vaguely recall one of the other attorneys stating that this was normal practice - comb through the Probate files to see who had died, then try to get a listing to sell the house.

Call the local Board of Realtors and ask them how to put a stop to it. I bet they can help you.

When I gave the post office the forwarding notice for Dad's mail to come to my house, my gosh all the different advertisements he would get, as companies would purchase such mailing lists whenever someone moved. "Welcome to the neighborhood" type ads.

Some ads I had to chuckle about, like memberships to a gym, children's day-care centers, college courses, new car advertisements, etc. Dad, at 94, better not need a children's day-care center :P

I did get one nice letter from a Realtor who had clients who lived next door to my Dad's previous address, and their son was interested in my Dad's house. So I did contact him, but the son found the house needed too much updating, which is understandable, not a first-time-buyer type of house.

Usually when I get the mail from my mailbox out front, once in the garage those types of letters get tossed into the recycling without even opening.

It's been 6 months since my last posting to this thread. And my Dad is still getting letters and post cards asking if he wants to sell his house quickly, yada, yada, yada. Don't think so.

I still think it is demographic type mailings, as there are mailing companies that can sell addresses depending on what demographic a client is needing. These are mass mailings, big time.

If I had the guts, I would love to call up these quick sell places and tell them they can meet me Saturday morning at 9:30 at the house. But I would hate to do that to the new owner.

I am a Realtor. I think it's wrong to use obituaries but some realtors do. Mail outs to whole neighborhoods thpugh is common. If it really bothers you, call the company and speak to the broker and demand that your dad's name and address be put on a do not mail to list.

What I've done is call the annoying realtor and advice that the harassment demonstrates that he/she doesn't have the qualities I want in a realtor, and therefore would NEVER consider that person. The silence on the other end of the phone is palpable. They don't expect a whiplash effect.

Most Realtors who do mass mailings don't even see the names/addresses to whom they are mailing. There are companies that they sub-contract to do the mailings, and those companies don't scrub their lists.