All Forum Posts by: Larry Higgins

If you send me an email I don’t mind sharing the scripts I’ve used for years.   My approach is to sound as little like an investor or telemarketer.    

Hi Mike, I own a skip trace service and I have skip traced thousands upon thousands of property owners and the heirs when needed.    It sounds like you have a decent lead if it's been abandoned for a while and is in some level of disrepair.

If you email me one of the owner names and the property address I don't mind pulling some reports for you.   Generally it's just not that hard for me to find relatives and their contact info.    In some cases, there are no close living relatives or heirs and it can require some deep digging, but those are more the exception than the rule.    And I actually like the ones that I have to dig harder for because they tend to be even better deals.   

Just for some background info......the only reason I started and own Skip Genie now is because I specialized in highly distressed vacant properties and learned the ins and outs of how to efficiently find and contact the owners/heirs and then be able to close on them.   A lot of times there are some title issues with these types of properties that you'll have to clean up, but they are generally fairly easy to resolve.

 The reason they can give free skip trace data is because it's such dated and poor quality they are getting it at little to no cost.   It will get you in touch with some people, but definitely can't be counted on.....especially for more distressed assets/people.   It's worth trying if you already have an account since it's free, but I would never rely on it even if I had an account.

Those services you mentioned are terrible for vacant houses for the reasons I mentioned in my post.   Using services like those will cost you deals because of the poorer data and limited data sets they offer.  

When I got started in real estate in 2014 and I was struggling with marketing I fairly quickly got really good at driving for dollars and researching properties and ultimately getting in touch with property owners and heirs.    It didn't happen over night, but I focused on it and got really proficient at it.   I'm in the Houston area so there was not and still isn't any shortage of vacant properties to pursue.    

As a solo operator I soon ran into the problem of having too many properties to pursue at a time.....like 100's of them and I figured out that I needed to prioritize my efforts in some way. So after I started getting legitimate leads and closing deals I looked to find out what things the leads/deals I was getting had in common.   The short answer is distress, but specifically it was what I call the trifecta:

1.  Vacancy

2.  Delinquent Taxes or Loan in Default

3. Deceased or Likely Deceased owners

If you can get good at finding deals with this criteria you will absolutely close deals and you will learn that your ratio of leads to deals is really tight even if you aren't all that great at sales or negotiating.   Not only will you get deals, these types of leads tend to produce your home run type deals.   I tell our customers all of the time, when you're steadily pursuing highly distressed leads with this criteria it's not a question of if, but how often you will contact the heir to a property who either didn't realized they owned, or they though the property had already been auctioned off by the bank or county.  It seems crazy to there are people that don't know they have ownership in a property and can sell it, but it's not that uncommon at all.    Another circumstance is that they may realize they have ownership, but for some reason or another they don't believe they can sell it, which with rare exceptions generally isn't the case......they can almost always sell.

These are absolutely great leads for newer investors because you don't have to have a huge marketing budget to pursue them, they are much easier to negotiate and contract, and much easier to access and show to investors because generally the heirs to the property will tell you to help yourself to viewing the property and inspecting whenever you want without them being present.   I always loved this last part because I hated having to bring a buyer, or several buyers at once, through an occupied property to look at it.

The two common challenges with these types of deals are:

1.  SOME CURATIVE TITLE WORK NEEDED.   Usually there is a minimum of an Affidavit of Heirship or Probate court action that has to take place so that the heirs can sell.    Very fixable and doable, just something you have to know and understand going into this.   You'll have to research your respective state to see if you can go through the Affidavit of Heirship process or if Probate/Surrogate court is the only option.   Affidavits of Heirship are convenient in the states that allow them because they are much cheaper and faster to do.    You'll find other things like liens and such that will have to be dealt with to clear title, but generally it's not too difficult and the title company or your title attorney will help you get title cleared.  Don't be intimidated by this.   

2.  CONTACTING HEIRS.  Probably the biggest mistake guys make pursuing highly distressed vacant properties is they are using the junk skip trace data.  By junk skip trace data I mean poor data quality or an incomplete data set.    I started out trying the cheapest data I could find like white pages etc.... and was running in circles trying to find and contact heirs.   Once I got great quality data it was an absolute game changer for me.  Not only were the phone numbers, addresses, and email addresses better, I was getting a much more complete data set showing me DECEASED indicators and ages as well as the names and associates of relatives I could contact.    For example, if I'm pursuing a highly distressed vacant property and I have a data set that shows me the owner is deceased or 97 years old I know immediately the owner is either deceased or likely deceased and the databases just aren't showing it yet (by law, they have to wait a certain amount of time to post death record) and that I need to zero in on the relatives and associates.    So many people are using poor data and are trying to call or text someone they don't know is deceased.  FYI, even with the best skip trace databases, you will at times have to really research outside of them to identify a relative to skip trace.  At times I've even had to bring in a genealogist, BUT it was absolutely worth it because these were home deals.

If you're a new investor struggling to get that first deal or to get any traction, don't get overwhelmed, get TARGETED.   Once you get some deals closed you can invest in different marketing channels and spending more on your marketing.   

If you want more info about this you can always google Larry Higgins Skip Tracing or Larry Higgins Vacant Houses and you can find podcasts I've done discussing this topic in depth over the years.

Best of luck.......

There's so much bad info and just poorly informed opinions on the quality of skip trace services it can be difficult for someone to know what's legit and what isn't.   

Some basic things to look for

- Does the service only offer up to a certain number of phone numbers or email addresses like 3 or 5 of each.   Anything with a cap is an inferior service.   Sometimes it's the 6th or 8th number on the report that is the best phone number to reach that person.   And regardless of whatever claims a company makes regarding the ranking of phone numbers, it's 100% not accurate and they are just trying to make it sound better.    It's one reason why they are generally a cheaper service.

-  Does the service make ridiculous claims like having data scientists and engineers on their staff?    This makes me laugh.   If they claim to have "data scientists" and "data engineers" on their staff, ask for resume's of these people.  These companies are strictly resellers of some widely available skip trace datasets out there and all they need is average IT guy to set everything up for them to resell the data they buy.  There's a reason why there are so many almost identical real estate skip trace services out there with minimal or no difference in their offering or pricing.

I began researching skip trace data and services in 2014 and started Skip Genie in 2017.   As an investor who specializes in finding owners/heirs to highly distressed properties, I understand more than most the importance of quality data when it comes to getting more deals.   

Eliott mentioned TransUnion.   If you can get access to that it's absolutely a great service.  I used to have an account with them from 2014-2016.   That was back when you could still get approved for an account with a home office.    Since then they have really cracked down on real estate investors  because investors for the most part use the data for marketing purposes which is absolutely not a permissible use for that data.    Because the data they provide includes sensitive information like SSN, DL number etc...it's considered GLBA data which has strict legal guidelines on how it's used.

If you're curious about how much I truly understand about skip tracing data and different strategies on how to implement it into your marketing, just google Larry Higgins Skip Tracing and you'll find some podcasts I've done on the subject.

Good luck on your search.

Where were you buying your skip trace data before?    

Skip tracing and texting/calling a somewhat generic list with poor skip trace data is the perfect recipe for the results you've experienced so far.

Since I got started as an investor I learned really fast that paying a premium for the best skip trace data available was worth it.   Especially for vacant houses and extremely distressed properties.  Generally speaking these property owners and the relatives of the property owners are harder to reach for quite a few reasons.   With poor data you simply aren't getting the best contact info and you're not aware of which properties you really need to zero in on and to try and contact the relatives/heirs.    

Regarding your script you might try a less business like approach and change it to sound more like just a private individual looking to buy a property.   I've fairly good success with that approach.

When it comes to skip tracing and cold calling/texting the most frequent mistakes can be broken down in these areas:

Poor Data - speaks for itself.   Good data is more expensive and there's no way around it

Incomplete data sets - if you're only getting a few phone numbers and a few email addresses you are missing out on deals. You should be getting AGE and DECEASED INDICATOR in your data sets as well information on relatives at a minimum.  SIDENOTE:   If your skip trace data set is capped at 3 phone numbers or 5 phone numbers it's a sign you are using an lower quality service.   

Execution - If you're only calling or texting one time or only calling texting the owner on the more distressed properties, your results will suffer.    On highly distressed properties I can't stress enough how important it is to contact relatives of property owners as well.  Taking this step will absolutely make the difference on whether or not you get some deals.

Messaging - using VA's vs local callers and the actual script you use. Even good VA's can't get the same results as a good local caller. I've split tested this and local callers have always gotten more leads than VA's....even well trained VA's with little to no accent. And obviously the better the script the better the results over time.

Lastly, just understand the more distressed the list, the fewer calls/texts it requires to get a lead or a deal.    

Good luck.

Just to really drive the point home on how easy most of these owners are to find if you're using a true quality skip trace service, feel free to message me and I'll personally run a couple for you and send you full reports on the owners and possibly the owners' relatives if I see anything that makes me think you should be contacting relatives.  I'm a big fan of newer investors pursuing distressed vacant properties for a litany of reasons.

If you google Larry Higgins Skip Tracing or Larry Higgins vacant houses, you’ll find podcasts I’ve done on the topic of utilizing Skip tracing for deals.  I think the two most informative ones I did were with Chris Chico and Chris Bruce.    Implementing a solid skip tracing strategy into your marketing mix can be extremely valuable.   Most people just blindly call as many people as they can….. and usually with the cheapest and worst data they can get their hands on.   Generic lists + poor skip trace data = horrible results.  

@Tracy Levy I own Skip Genie and we may have what you're looking for.   We have a dashboard that allows for individual searches and also do the bulk searches if needed.   We also just released an unlimited search plan which is one of the best deals out there.  And you won't find more accurate or complete data.  Good luck with whatever you decide.