All Forum Posts by: Dennis S. Gelbart

Dennis,

Yeah, we’ve been deep in the skip tracing game for a while. My son and I used to do tax deed and mortgage foreclosure recovery, and we were running through over 1,000 traces a month. We tested a bunch of paid services and, honestly, found that some of the free ones like TruePeopleSearch and FastPeopleSearch were just as good for most cases.

Now, I’m not saying you can’t find a better paid option, but you have to ask yourself what you’re really paying for. If you need volume and speed, automation is key. My son Jack actually just wrote a Google Sheets script two days ago that skip traces 997 people in under 4 minutes. If you're doing high-volume targeting in a specific area, something custom like that could be a game-changer.

But if you want an off-the-shelf paid service, it depends on what you're prioritizing batch processing, accuracy, or deep data pulls. What’s your main use case?

Dennis,

Yeah, we’ve been deep in the skip tracing game for a while. My son and I used to do tax deed and mortgage foreclosure recovery, and we were running through over 1,000 traces a month. We tested a bunch of paid services and, honestly, found that some of the free ones like TruePeopleSearch and FastPeopleSearch were just as good for most cases.

Now, I’m not saying you can’t find a better paid option, but you have to ask yourself what you’re really paying for. If you need volume and speed, automation is key. My son Jack actually just wrote a Google Sheets script two days ago that skip traces 997 people in under 4 minutes. If you're doing high-volume targeting in a specific area, something custom like that could be a game-changer.

But if you want an off-the-shelf paid service, it depends on what you're prioritizing batch processing, accuracy, or deep data pulls. What’s your main use case?

It's pretty dangerous to start RE with money in your pocket. It makes you move faster than your learning curve.

RE is a great long term investment done right, but it takes time to learn the craft. I am a learning-it-from-the-ground-up guy.  Like swimming, you can't  really learn it ALL from a book, a lot of it is street smarts and hands-on experience. 

I would say it takes about 10 deals to graduate from rookie status. Ideally you handle acquisition, bank financing, all of the rehab (with contractors) and self manage for full first hand experience. 

This should not take that much money, keep the rest invested based on your existing experience until ready.

Here is what the terms are: 

FHA loan rules allow non-occupying co-borrowers and FHA home loan transactions are approved for such cases but there are down payment requirements that may apply above and beyond the FHA minimum of 3.5%.

If you are applying for a loan with a co-borrower who will not occupy the home with you AND is NOT a family member, the maximum loan-to-value ratio for the loan is 75% of the adjusted value of the home, which means your down payment requirement is 25%.

This does NOT apply for family members in certain cases. FHA loan rules in HUD 4000.1 state, "For Non-Occupying Borrower Transactions, the maximum LTV is 75 percent.

The LTV can be increased to a maximum of 96.5 percent if the Borrowers are Family Members” according to HUD 4000.1 IF the transaction does NOT involve a family member selling the home to another member of the family who will be a non-occupying co-Borrower. The number of units in the property may also be an issue.

Hope this helps!