Best Way to Find Owner, Building, and Sales Data

[Kim Hopkins]

Hello Again!

I am trying to make a list of properties and owners to reach out to directly to discuss purchasing their properties. Commercial (not multi-family). It's in a relatively small market but one I know pretty well (but do not live in). Ideally, my list would meet the following criteria:

• Property built after 1980
• Last sale on or before 2014
• Property is 20,000 - 80,000 squarefeet
• Building is multi-tenant (vs single tenant)
• Owner of the building (or LLC) is an individual or couple in their 70's or older

My question is primarily about finding the last 3 bullet points, ESPECIALLY the tenancy (multi vs single). 

Currently, I start with a title search to get a basic list, but the owner name is not provided and the square footage is often incorrect. 

Then I have to go to try to find it on Loopnet or Google or go to the Property Tax Website to try and confirm the square footage. 

Then I have to try to find out if it's multi-tenant which is sometimes impossible and involves a bunch of Google searching with the address to see if multiple suite numbers show up or tenant names appear in Yelp, and occasionally finding it on the Property Tax website. 

Then I have to go to the Secretary of State website to enter the entity name and see if I can find the name of the actual owner (human) who owns the LLC and then cross-check the mailing address provided by the Title Search report to see if it's a residence and if it's the residency of this person.

It's not only highly inefficient and not scalable but also highly inaccurate. 

I feel like I'm on an episode of Shark Tank - there's got to be a better way!!! 

Anyone know a better way to do this? Again, the multi-tenant part would save me a lot of time alone because I ONLY want multi-tenant properties.

Thank you!
Kim

[Joel Owens]

Tax assessor codes properties and what is available and in what form for lists varies by area. It depends on if you have a rural, suburban, or urban core area.

Some places are doing things like it was done 40 to 50 years ago. Other urban core places might be using cutting edge technology.

It is a lot of work to find the owners. I use some of those same techniques you do.  If it was easy everyone would be doing it. Some of these people do not want to be found so you have to try hard to locate them. Many times they have an attorney as the reference so we go through the attorney and they contact the owner. If the owner wants to call us they do. We cannot force the attorney to tell us who their client is.