Finding the owner of a distressed property thats off market ?

[Alec Newman]

Hi all ! First post on BP , quite new to the game , and have spent more time reading all the threads on here to answer questions I’ve had and for educational purposes rather than posting !

But, now I just wanted to pop in and introduce myself, plus, I have a question I’m having some issues solving !

First, I’ll briefly let everyone know a bit about the direction I’m moving in!

My (soon to be fiancé) and I have purchased our first home in which we close on Feb 7th, we purchased this home before we really started digging into REI, however we are both very very happy with our purchase. Now though , we are looking to do our first investment property and have chosen the BRRRR route. Still learning and exploring options on how we will fund it , better understanding estimating rehab costs, estimating ARV, building our team , etc.

Now, for the question ! So we were driving around today and drove past a distressed property, it instantly caught our attention and we began trying to find out who the owners were , I get in contact with a good friend of mine who’s an agent after we failed to find the information on the county assessor website. She comes back to me with names and I’m pumped!

I then come to find out after doing some research that both individuals who are listed as owners have now passed on. My agent is going to try and do some more digging for me, but I just wanted to ask the BP community if there were other options I could explore as we are very interested in this property due to potential we saw during the drive by as well as hearing on podcasts and webinars about the benefits to finding deals that are off market and others who have done so !

Thank you all in advance for the insight, again, this was partially just me wanting to start interacting more with everyone :)

[Anson Young]

Alec, congrats on taking action!!

Your best bet from here would be to try and get a hold of the next of kin in any way possible.  Send a letter to the house, if its being forwarded, you can catch them that way.  Skip trace the owners and get a list of next of kin, and skip trace them.  Look on facebook.  Look up obituaries to see if next of kin are listed.  Its a lot of work, but this is how some of the best deals are found for sure.