Finding Owners of Commercial Properties

[Account Closed]

Hey all,

My day job is as a listing agent for a brokerage of self storage on the East coast. The problem that I have right now is identifying the owners for self storage facilities in an efficient way. Our mailers to facilities with managers often never make it to the owners because the manager takes one look at it and thinks, "I don't want my job to be sold out underneath me!" So our goal is to acquire the home/office addresses for owners of facilities in order to insure they see our mailers.

My methodology so far has been to go county by county, identify all self storage facilities on Google Maps (double-checking with our database to make sure I don't miss any not on Google,) and entering the addresses into a tax parcel GIS unique to the county. Once in a blue moon the county will have the owner's name and address listed with the tax parcel info. More often, it'll be listed under an LLC specific to the property. So my next step is to go into the state corporation search and try to find out more info that way. Usually that's fruitless, too -- the entire state of NJ has no useful info with the LLC data.

So how would you solve this problem? My next thought is to try to search filed deeds and liens in individual counties, but this is all obviously extremely time intensive and potentially expensive.

Regards,

Isaac Rothermel

[Tim Johnson]

Hi Isaac. In many cases the owners have structured their business in an LLC because they don't want to be contacted. To find out who they are may require creativity.

I am an IT Director for my day job.  Because of the huge number of sales calls we get, we have added a policy that the front desk doesn't transfer any calls to me unless they know my name.  So if they ask for "The head of the IT department" they don't get to talk to me.  

One vendor got through.  I asked them how they did it and they told me,  "I called saying I wanted a job and asked to speak to HR.  When HR answered I told them 'Oh, I was supposed to be transferred to IT'.  And they sent me through to you."  I told the vendor, "I'm not even mad, that's amazing". :)

I'm not sure how this translates to your situation.  Will it require creativity?  Yes.  Will it require deception? Maybe.  I don't think you will find what you're looking for in any county records.  

Good luck!