Public records- mortgage note doesn't show equity?

[Jose Falconett]

• I am trying to figure out what the loan amount is for motivated sellers who do not know what they currently owe on a property, their interest rate, and their monthly payments. When I get calls from sellers I want to be able to filter out the ones that do not have equity in the property.
• Investors have suggested to let the title company worry about this since they do a preliminary search...but that would mean it would cost money for every search on every prospective seller and of course most don't have enough equity in their property.

                                                 The advice I've gotten was that their are 2 ways to find this out: 

#1. Have the seller call/request by mail a "payoff statement" for the loan.                                                                                                    This would take 2 weeks time waiting for the mail. For phone calls, I would need to 3-way it and that's awkward since I wouldn't have legal right to their private information.  (I assume most investors don't request this based off this).

#2. Make an educated guess from the public records mortgage consideration balance by using an Amortization schedule calculator...                                                                                                                                                                                             So the calculators want me to put things the mortgage note does not publicly show; like interest rate, monthly payment, tax, and whether or not it is interest first or combined interest & principle together. 

Use this property as an example if you will please, it had been refinanced years later if that matters. 

http://216.255.240.38/wb_or1/details.asp?doc_id=41.... 

I assume all investors use the Amortization schedule calculator to find out what their prospect owes.