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Updated over 9 years ago, 03/24/2015
Question about finding absentee owners
I called my local court house looking for a list of absentee home owners.. I asked the clerk to filter a list of just a owners who live abroad. The gentleman said that he was unable to filter any lists by my parameters and that he was only able to look up homes by addresses.
I have read on here about lists that you guys are getting. Where do you find them and how are they filtered? Do you do this at the court house?
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#3 Guru, Book, & Course Reviews Contributor
- Investor, Entrepreneur, Educator
- Springfield, MO
In many areas you can pay a fee to have access to courthouse records. I can see where you could dump the data into your system and have other search variables than the Assessor might have. I'm far from being a techie, I always identified properties of interest first. I can see alot of effort and expense in contacting shotgun style owners who would have little interest in selling or doing a deal of some kind. But, it's done, so I guess some have luck with it. Sorry I can't give you a name or a hard target....
Great Question Travis! To answer your questions I get my owners lists from the CITY tax records dept filtered by Sales Amount under $40k within the last year in a target zipcode. I don't think courthouse will have what you need.
However, I need some clarification on what your looking for when you say 'Absentee' owner- if your talking about vacant homes with the Tax and the Mailing address being the same then you're going to have to track the name on record down yourself (in my experience)
However, as you may or may not know, if you're looking for absentee owners who may have a vacant INVESTMENT property, then the tax address and mailing address will be different as the tax bill will be sent to the owner's actual home address (not Renter's/ Subject House Address) In the essence of expediancy, trying to get a list of Tax Addresses and Real Address which are different is the smart approach IF you can create a contact/relationship with someone who will take the time to process your request as opposed to the classic clock-watcher city employee (zinger). The MLS is the alternative but much more time consuming process.
Since the parameters you're giving the person at the courthouse that may be the first pitfall as they may really not have the information you need. In Detroit, I go to the City Tax Records department and ask for the name's/addresses of anyone who bought a home under a wholesale price in a certain zip code for cash only(no mortgages) this is an indicator that the person is an investor and may not live there but even if they do and have paid cash (my parameters) under say, $40k, then I know I have a lead on a potentially motivated seller(is that what it's all about?)
The list I got under those parameters was used to find inactive but motivated sellers- Absentee or Owner Occupied. This is obviously the shot-gun method but you could lazer focus your approach by driving your target 'hood and cherry-picking individual addresses that look vacant/potential deals and search for the owner on the City Tax Record. Hope this helps!
Patrick
Patrick
I know that the tax address and their personal address are different. I am trying to find a list of all of those people who have a second home that is vacant or that is being rented out currently. I am trying to do this by searching for out of town owners. The city/county (they are one here) cant filter them for me so I am not quite sure how to go about this. I hope this made sense.
You can get lists from:
1.Your local title company
2.Listsource.com
3.Melissadata.com
Also US Lead List or Click2mail now has out of area owners also. If you have the time, you can go through the tax data base on line and compile your own list. I just copy and paste the info into an excel spread sheet. Working on a macro that will convert it to a form I can mail merge...
Mr investor--
So in your experience most title company's are able to filter owners by where they live and house price? Do they charge?
Ed how is it that US Lead List or Click2mail have lists but I cant get one from the court house?
Some do and some don't you just have to check and see.
In my county they provide this list via download on the property appraiser's website or by calling them for a mere $60.
Usually they are unwilling to narrow down your search by request. However, once downloaded in excel format, you can break down the list specific to my needs.
This is the cheapest way to get the list. The list services out there will cost hundreds more for the same info and is an expensive alternative.
So I spoke to a title company and they never heard of doing that, I went back to the court house and the guy said he is mailing out tax statements and couldn't help me until February. Some luck I guess. I dont know how a service could get me a list if I cant get is locally.
You are probably not talking with the right people. I'm assuming you want Montana.
Get with Land Records at:
Land Records
Phone: (406) 497-6336
Tell him you want a list of properties where the property address does not match the tax mailing address. This is probably the best list you can get from them. Some counties require landlords to state the property is a rental, not sure if they do it in Montana.
Wheelhouse thanks for the info.
Tell me why it is that I read on other threads about going to the courthouse (treasurer) to get this info.
Because the courthouse is the official keeper of such public records; all other services gather those public records and offer them to others in a more useful form.
Michelle I think you had the best idea here so far. Get ALL of the data on the tax rolls for your county. But get it in EXCEL format.
Once you have that, just match mailing address with property address and cut out the people you dont want to mail to.
That is exactly what the lead companies are doing, and charging you a premium for.
Genius! Michelle you should go into business selling leads now.
;-)
I get my lists directly from the customer service department of my Title Company. I guess this might not be a possibility in all areas of the country. I'm located in Corona, Southern California.
Good Luck.
I've gotten my data from listsource.com, as well as my local county.
I ask for the filter of owner address not equal to property address.
It comes to me as a delimited file, which I import into Excel and manipulate from there.
I remove the banks, and I remove the other investors I recognize.
In my county of residence, that list would cost me 45.
In a neighboring county, it cost 90, until I told them their neighbors only charged 45.
In a county to the south of me, they wouldn't sell me the data. Too sparsely populated, and transaction records are still manual.
The best way to get this data is in a excel format and you can filter it to whatever your want.
One county gave me the entire database, so I could find recent sales, properties with sale dates over 10 years ago, out of state owners, etc. ... that was a gold mine for my potential mailing.
The hardest part is washing the data in excel if it's not formatted friendly. .. .
Chris that is interesting.. I guess my courthouse is behind the times since they cant filter out much.
The one list that I did get is a notice of trustees sale list. Tell me if this sounds correct. I live in an area with thirty five thousand people. The NOTS list only has ninety names on it. Does that sound small to you guys?
Once I filtered out all of the higher dollar houses and went after the ones that are sixty five thousand and below I only had twelve available places to mail to.
I sell leads on the side, as part time partime work, actually is really to help other investors, keep me busy if im not doing my removal in inquiries. -when i get order's because i don't do this anymore. I charge .23 cents per lead for absentees. and is updated every 6 weeks. Make sure the list you buy is up to date. a lot of list companies are not updating their file and they sell you old lists.
Also www.yellowletter.com they provide list and write the yellow letter for marketing.
John & Donna Mcneil (Ron-Legrands friend) owns the yellow letter ( they are the originator guro for yellowletter.com, she's a friend of mine and they sell leads as wells or at least provide that option when they do the marketing for yellow letter.
Originally posted by Travis Elliott:
The one list that I did get is a notice of trustees sale list. Tell me if this sounds correct. I live in an area with thirty five thousand people. The NOTS list only has ninety names on it. Does that sound small to you guys?
Once I filtered out all of the higher dollar houses and went after the ones that are sixty five thousand and below I only had twelve available places to mail to.
One courthouse didn't want to do any filters, they just sold me the list.
It's a real hit or miss game to deal direct with the courthouse.
If you can get a list, but don't know how to use excel to slice and dice to get what you want, I can help you with that off list.
Originally posted by Travis Elliott:
...
You're in Montana, a state with lower foreclosure rates right now than what other areas are seeing; so that probably is accurate. For how long of a time period is that list?
Steve
The list is for 2010
Chris
Yes I can use help all that I can get.
What do you propose?
Hello guys, I have also checked this out in bunch of website, and it is NOT free. I have one website I use in searching people called INTELIUS.COM.
If the price at this website in not competitive for RE investing business, then you will need to use those that are really meant and targeting absentee home owners like melissadata.com and the rest of them.
I DON'T have any link or affiliations with these websites, good luck guys in your searches.
