How do I locate a Tenant that moved out?

[Eve Oliver]

I evict a tenant last week and won a judgment. He moved out of town and he owes me 5K +. I can only go after what he owes me if I know his new address. Do you know any tools I can use to successfully locate him? Thank you

[Kyle J.]

@Eve Oliver  Here's a few ideas:

1) Try Googling the tenant's name to see if an online database (i.e. Whitepages, MyLife, Spokeo, etc) has his new address.  If it's not there yet, keep checking.  It'll probably appear at some point. 

2) A good starting point might be where he works/worked.  Did he transfer offices?  Hopefully you collected a lot of good information on your original rental application about his place of employment/type of work.  However, even if you didn't or he's no longer employed in the same place, you can check online social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc to see if he's updated his employer info.

3) Pay a private investigator or skip tracing company a small fee to run his name and provide you with his new address.  They have access to paid databases like LexisNexis, TransUnion TLO, etc that make it very easy to find someone's new/current address in a matter of minutes with a few keyboard clicks.

4)  Mail him a letter to his last known address (I'm assuming your rental address) with the words "Return Service Requested" printed above the delivery address.  (It doesn't even have to be a letter.  It can just be an empty envelope.)  If he's filed a change of address with the post office already, you should get his new address back.  (If he hasn't filed a change of address yet, just keep trying this until he has. I'm guessing he will at some point.)  Here's some more about how to do this: How to Find Someone’s Forwarding Mail Address Without Them Knowing

5) Hopefully with all these suggestions you should be able to find his new address.  However, if for some reason you just can't find it, consider at least turning the debt over to a collections company like Rent Recovery Service or AOA Debt Reporting Service that will report it to the credit bureaus so other landlords can be warned about this deadbeat tenant.  Who knows, they may pay you off some day just to get the debt off their credit report.

Good luck!