Where to go to find property information

[Tim Moore]

Hey BP! My wife and I have been talking about buying a multi family as our first home, house hacking and then building on from there. We were at one of our friends' houses the other day and she mentioned that the duplex on the corner had been owned by a couple that passed away and was now in possession of their son who has left it vacant. Intrigued, I wanted to try and find more information on the property and see if we could reach out to him. Just from a quick look on the easy sites (Zillow, Trulia, etc) it said that the deed to the house had been sold for 10k in December of 2015. I'm a little confused as to what that means to be completely honest. Does it just mean that my friend, who has been living on the street for 20+ years, doesn't have her information right on who owns the property? Or is there some sort of transaction that would've happened when this guys' parents passed away? I was under the presumption that if you have property passed down to you in will or trust etc there's no sale that needs to happen, but I could just be naive about the whole process. Let me know what your thoughts are because we want to reach out to the son and make an offer if the property is just sitting there. Thanks for the feedback!

[Hugo Alves]

@Tim Moore Easy way that I've been able to find this information is on the county tax assessor site. It will give you the information such as: date of sale, type of sale, who owns the property, and what book and page the transaction is recorded. Once you have that, you can check public records to check for the owner and read the documents posted on the site. Once you have that information, you can go a few routes. If it was a deed transfer to the heir, you can reach out to the attorney involved and ask if they would touch base with the individual to see if they are willing to sell. Other route is contacting the person directly through mail or seeing if you can locate a phone number for them. 

Just a few ideas