Driving For Dollars but without the Driving!

[Pablo Avila]

Using your city's 311 service you can "Virtually D4D" to find off market deals that might not be in commercial realestate software such as propstream/wire/listsource, etc.. that everyone uses. Look at your city's 311 service, it's public data and will have hundreds if not thousands of reports such as abandoned lots, homeless/drug activity, high grass & unkept properties, trash being dumped and [insert your favorite "Karen" complaints here]. Again, No need to spend gas $ driving around to identify distressed properties, this is what I call truly "Virtually Driving For Dollars VD4D.

Majority of the time this is what most major Metropolitan cities utilize to determine code violations/enforcement, so if you request that list, typically it's the result of those "311 complaints". Additionally, these are updated daily and typically have the "incident opened date" which you can easily sort by along with some sort of description and "case type" (i.e. High grass, abandoned vehicle, water leak, etc.)I'm ready to Virtually Drive For Dollars - How I accomplish this?

1. Find your city's 311 website (Google 311 service request your city name)
2. Locate the full data list (This will be raw data, you will need to open it with excel or a text editor (Notepad ++ works great for large datasets)
3. Format the data (Depending on the city, this might already be categorized such as Vacant/Overgrown Property, or it might have a full description. If it does have a descriptionHere's some of the keywords you can look for:ABANDONDED,unoccupied,homeless,squatting,Prostitution,uninhabitable,disconnected,destroyed,water leaks, ,damage,rodent,utilities,moved out,not secure,maintain property,Encampment (You can DM me for a comprehensive list).

4.Determine the full address and now tie this information together to your county appraisal data which should have the owner name/mail address along with the type of property.

5. Once you tie these determine the parcel # and identify if there's any tax delinquencies, or whatever other indicators you typically use to increase the likelihood of a motivated seller (i.e. tax liens, evictions, etc..)

6. Take action and call them - The information you found will give you an intimate profile of the property in question as you'll know exactly what kind of issues it currently has.

Q: But what if my state/city do not have these "311" list that you are referring to?A: Many cities have private 3rd party vendors/mobile apps that are advertised to citizens to raise these complaints. You may find yours via "SeeClickFix", "PublicStuff", "Citysourced","NextDoorNeighbor","Qscend","neighborlysoftware", and many more. Some of these may have a public view for you to review current opened complaints and manually review them.

Again, This is a great way to find vacant properties as neighbors or people that have an intimate knowledge of those neighborhoods are the ones that report these properties which tend to be eyesores for their communities.

[Kandis Adams]

Thanks for this information. I am new to wholesaling and Iooking for a better strategy than driving because I also work part time and homeschool. This is awesome.