Direct mail letters returned

[Drew Poniewaz]

When mailing letters to vacant houses, what do you do when there is no forwarding address but the letter is returned to you as vacant. How do you track down the owner or find another way to buy the property.

[Rob Sawyer]

Hey Drew.  You can always print "Address Service Requested" on the envelope which should prompt the USPO to indicate any forwarding address on file for the owner,although if there is none on file (many times the case) it will not help you.

You can also get a Skip Trace done to try to find them. It's basically a Big Data sweep of all available public records on the person but sometimes pull erroneous information from someone else with the same name so need to review carefully. Nonetheless, it should give you some numbers and/or emails to try to smoke them out.

There are several providers of this service out there and most have a fee of some sort attached.

It can be frustrating (hence our earning our profit margin) but it's doable. Like most of real estate, it's a numbers game where the more letters you mail, the better chance of some of them finding their way to the owner.

Hope this helps and best of luck to you!