Find The Owner In A Flash

Vacant houses can be gold mines to real estate investors. During the 2008 downturn, it seemed like vacant houses were breeding like bunny rabbits. These days, they are in much shorter supply.

Regardless of when you find the vacant house, the problem is the owners are usually MIA, making them hard to find. Many investors give up looking. But that just means less competition for the investors who can find the owner.

Let’s say you found a vacant house that’s not owned by a bank, but you can’t locate the owner through the mail or talking to neighbors. The next step a persistent investor might take is to hire a skip trace service.

If you’re not familiar with skip tracing, it’s an in-depth search of particular information that is not generally available to the public. Skip-trace companies have access to different database sources than most of the public.

Skip tracing gives you a competitive advantage and the opportunity to close deals and put money in your pocket that other investors pass on. Generally, the more difficult it is to find the owner, the better the deal.

Ways to Do a Skip Trace

There are multiple ways to find an owner:

1. Look Up the Seller’s Name

This is probably your first instinct when finding the seller, because without knowing who the owner is, you can’t possibly move forward and close a deal.

Google Search: If you know the owner’s name, you can search for them on Google. If the owner’s name is John Smith, there are 46.5 million webpages on google. (Good luck finding the real John Smith).
Tax Assessor’s Website: You can search for the homeowner here and find out if the property is owned by the bank or not.
Phonebook: You can also look up the owner’s contact information in your area’s phonebook. (Yes, they still make them.) Don’t rely on this method too much, though. Their phone number could be obsolete because it’ll be disconnected whenever the homeowners move out of the area.

2. Talk to the Neighbors

You can ask the neighbors who live beside, behind and across from the vacant house. There is a huge possibility that these people can share valuable information about the owner, but most of the time, the conversations can be WTMI (way too much information).

Before you know it, they’re telling you everything about the neighbor. And when I say everything, I mean everything – when their neighbor died, the husband did this, or the wife did that... and sometimes, you just don’t have the time to listen to all of that.

But, a lot of this information can be useful if you do eventually track down the owner.

3. Put a Sign in their Yard or on the Door

You can put a sign in the property’s yard or tape a piece of paper to the front door with your number on it.

And if you get lucky, the neighbors or relatives will inform the owner – or better yet, the owners themselves will see it and call you.

4. Send a Letter

You can also send a letter to the owner’s vacant house address. Write ‘address service requested’ because it compels the postal service to inform you of any forwarding address that’s on the file.

Your letter will not only be forwarded to the owners, but the post office will also send you a photocopy of the letter with the owner’s old and new address attached to it.

Let’s say you want to find out the addresses of vacant houses and the names of their owners in a particular area…

You can send a postcard or your marketing material to all the addresses in that area. You should include ‘return service requested’ (instead of ‘address’). When the mail arrives at a vacant house, the postal worker will mark your letter and send it back to you. The returned letters let you know the house is possibly vacant.

5. Use a Skip Trace Company or Software

This is by far the easiest and most convenient way to track down an owner. It will cost you some money, though. But a skip trace company will do all the work for you.

find There’s also skip trace software that will do a lot of the same work as a full-fledged company...

Come Out, Come Out Wherever You Are

Find The Seller is an online skip tracing software that can locate the owners of vacant houses for you. No need to drive around the neighborhood, put up a sign on yards, send postcards and all that.

All you have to do is type in the address of the vacant house and the owner's name to run a comprehensive search about them.

Find The Seller knows that there will be times when you don’t know the name of the owner. If this is the case, you can run a tax roll search to find out.

The comprehensive search on the software can return the number and address information for the following:

The homeowner
Past and present neighbors
Known relatives
Likely associates

The following information may also be provided depending on the plan you choose:

Previous addresses and phone numbers for the homeowner
An indication if the owner is deceased
Historical information that can date back a decade
Property ownership and personal details for homeowner and relatives

Find The Seller offers individual searches and bulk plans, too. They also offer a lot of tenant screening options for landlords, and info about judgements and bankruptcies, various background searches, employment verification and more.

All the pricing is on their site.

This information would possibly take days, weeks or months to gather on your own. With Find The Seller, you get comprehensive information in just a short amount of time. This platform lets you focus all your energy on finding more vacant houses and generating more money for the success of your business.

Have You Skipped?

Tell us about your experiences with skip tracing in the comments below.

Be Persistent –Remember that the best deals are the hardest to find. That’s because they have the least competition.

Learn about the Owner – Knowing their likes and dislikes will really help build rapport when sitting down with the owner to discuss the sale of their home.

Do Your Due Diligence – Just because it’s a vacant house, doesn’t mean it’s a good deal. If the numbers don’t look good, walk away.