Tracking down the owner of a property

[Blaine Alger]

I see properties everyday that peak my interests, however in most cases I can't just knock on the front door and talk to the owner. Where do you start to begin the search for the owner of a certain property?

[Josh Stack]

Hey @Blaine Alger,

You want to start with local county records.  Most counties will have a GIS system.  Find your county's GIS and start searching.  You may be able to search on address, you may not.

Counties give each piece of land a parcel or unique identifier number, you may need to search on this.  When I can't search based on address, I often can find the parcel number buried in the Zillow page of a given property.  You can then search based on this parcel number.

Once you have found the property in the GIS, you can then likely see the owner of the property and perhaps even their mailing address.  If you can't find their address in the GIS system, go look up the property in the Tax Assessor's system (they will also likely have a webpage).  The mailing address for the tax bill is typically a good place to start to find the owner's real address.

If the property address and the tax mailing address match, you have an owner occupant, if they are different, it's likely a rental property.

Try starting here: https://propaccess.trueautomation.com/clientdb/pro...

Good luck!