Visit to the Tax Assessor's Office

[Doug Haisten]

After doing some Driving For Dollars I had the addresses of a number of abandoned SFHs. I went online to the county tax assessor's website to look up the owner's and their addresses. The first thing I learned was to find a property at all I had to input the addresses EXACTLY the way the property was input into the system. For instance if I input "Drive" and the property was input as "Dr" or "DR." or any slight variation the site search came up no property found. Same for "123 Dr "West" if West was input as W. It took me over 5 tries to find my house. Out of 5 properties I found 2 but the information provided did not give the owners' address. Is that the way others are set up?

I made a trip to the Tax Offices to look these properties up myself. Apparently the county doesn't let people "in the back" but have to go to a window and makes a request to a clerk behind the glass. The person provided me the information (gave me a print out) for the two properties but I felt after I asked for the 2nd property that if I was going to ask for 5 or 10 properties that was going to be a different story.

I was curious what others actually find when they try to look up absentee owners either online or at the tax ofice. After finding the names of the owners I plan on using a online people search to track them down. Any recommendation to a good people search (low cost) is appreciated.

Thanks, Doug