Finding Heirs of Deceased. Is there time?

[Darla Holtzclaw]

Hello All,

This may be an academic exercise, but I want to learn how to approach contacting heirs of deceased owners of distressed and pre-foreclosure properties.   I was researching a house that is coming up in a tax foreclosure sale.  I did a drive by and there was a gentleman cleaning up the yard named Michael.   He said the city pays him to do so.

He told me that the owner died around 2006-2007 and that she has some family in California.  My sister in law is a closer at a title company and said she would do a title search for me.  My own review of public records showed that the property has at least 43K of back taxes and charges from the city, maybe more, but the lot is probably worth about 150-200K.  

I was reading another post by @Rick Harmon. He suggested joining ancestory.com, which I plan to do.  I'm wondering if I'm lucky though and actually find an heir, would there even be enough time to do anything in Texas before a May 5 tax sale?

[Rick H.]

As this is an action-oriented business, it's time to follow up.

Ancestry will only help you find the "who" but not locate them. 

What you are venturing into is called skip tracing. Although we use some pretty sophisticated online application software, I recently bought some seven different books on the topic from Amazon for about $300. 

Finding people is largely an art; less so a science. There are some very smart people who are better at finding others than my team. Michaela Graham and Kristine Poe among them.