Finding the phone number of a pre foreclosure owner

[Kyle Doney]

I was driving down the street and found an abandoned looking house, so I looked it up when I got home and found its in pre foreclosure. I've looked at the Assessors Records and found the owners name, purchase price, loan amount, and some liens, but cannot find his current address or phone number. How do I tracked this info down? 

[Nick Paul]

When I've encountered this situation I do a couple things....1.) There are companies online that offer skip-trace services that help locate phone numbers and addresses that are associated with that particular name. In my experience, the majority of the time this information is not of much value. Numbers are disconnected or an old number the person may have had 5+ years ago. Same with the addresses you get back in the skip-trace. 2.) I go talk to the neighbors and just let them know that I noticed the house was vacant, I'm a real estate investor and was trying to contact the owner to see if they might have a need to sell. Often times the neighbors have some type of information that proves to be useful. I've had more success with knocking on doors and talking to neighbors than skip-tracing people. That's just my personal experience though.

Does the assessors records still show the mailing address for property taxes as the address you are targeting? If so, then it will likely take some work to track this person down. If you are able to view records online regarding how long this person has owned the property that help to determine whether or not they have any equity in the property. If they've only owned for a couple years there may not be much  equity, making it difficult to swing any kind of deal that would be worthwhile. Just my two-cents.