Making my own list versus buying one?

Question

Most wholesalers buy their lists from vendors such as Listsource.com, Listgiant.com, etc.

I just bought all the properties in the neighboring counties from the property appraisers. Do you think I would be just as well off using the lists I made myself?

Steven Leigh · Answer

@Sean OToole When will Property Radar start covering Ohio? Tomorrow? It's tomorrow, right?

And I assume you are going to give me a 2-year exclusive on the data before you release it to the public? Yes? :)

Patrick Philip · Answer

Yes, I just purchased the list of every parcel in the county, some of them let you narrow it down by "absentee owner," etc.

I spend a total of about $200 getting the complete lists from 9 nearby counties, which is over 400,000 absentee owners, I believe.

A lot better than the over $1,000 Listsource wants for 1,500 leads.

Steven Leigh · Answer

I'm not entirely sure what you mean when you say you bought the lists from the property appraisers. Do you mean they came from the county?

In answer to your question, though, lists that come from the city or county are generally going to be much more up-to-date and more lucrative than the ones you buy from Listsource and other places. It's not that those purchased lists are bad, but they have a lot of competition.

Lists like tax delinquent and code violations can be very hot leads, and the harder they are to obtain, the less competition you will have. There will generally be several investors mailing to the equity properties on Listsource, for example, but if you track down really hard to find lists, there is a chance you might be the only one mailing to some of those properties.

This can also be true for "driving for dollars". For example, I saw what looked like a vacant house the other day. Knocked and looked in the windows and confirmed it was vacant. Went to look up the mailing address of the owner and it's the same as the property address. This means the county doesn't even know it's a vacant property, and Listsource wouldn't know it's an absentee owner. So no one is mailing to this owner yet. If I can track them down, I'm probably the only one offering to buy their property.

Steven Leigh · Answer

Account Closed That's very interesting. I'm jealous. I can get a lot of info, but not quite what you are talking about. I have to compare different lists to get the full spectrum of what I need. Congrats!

Steven Leigh · Answer

Account Closed did that come from the county assessors? Did you buy it from their site, talk to them on the phone, or what?

Account Closed · Answer

Yes i got the list directly from the assessor's website. Also I use beenverified.com to track down the owners current address, emails and phone numbers. @Steven Leigh

Account Closed · Answer

I bought the Orange Counties complete list of more than 450,000 properties and every piece of information on each property that you can imagine for only $25. I can use it as many times as I want and create as many lists that I want. So yes I believe that making your own list is better unless you are getting specific info that is not on the assessors website. But you can get that data typically online or at the courthouse. I get probate basic data from an online source then I have to go the courthouse and use their computers to get the attorneys and personal representative info. On bankrupcty you have to go to the Federal Bankruptcy website. For tax deeds you can go to the counties taxing authority website. For preforeclosures you can go to another website.

Paul Amegatcher · Answer

I created my own list from both driving for dollars and also the county assessor data.  Using the help of some programming I was able to create a very good vacant property/ tax delinquent list.  This is the only list that I use now.

Sean OToole · Answer

This really depends on the list that you need and the availability of data from the county you work in. For example, of our 200 criteria, you can buy way less than half directly from the county. Many come from recorded documents and have to be abstracted (manually looked up and written down) off of each document. Others, like equity, come from sophisticated computer models that we've developed over years. Etc.

If you just want a basic absentee owner list, then yes the county can be a great source. But adding fields like estimated value, equity, whether or not the property is already listed for sale, etc will typically save you more money in mailing costs, then you will spend on the list.

Where you can really get a jump on the competition is abstracting your own lists for things like those that @Steven Leigh mentioned - code enforcement, tax delinquencies, and other specialty lists that aren't widely available from providers. And as he also mentioned driving for dollars can be better than any list, because many situations on the ground don't actually make it on to a list. Even with these it helps to do that in conjunction with online property information tools to fill in the rest of the picture, like owner name, equity, etc.

Patrick Philip · Answer

@Stephen Anderson thanks. I will continue doing what I'm doing then and forget all the people telling me otherwise

Making my own list versus buying one?

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