All Forum Posts by: Pablo Avila

With real-estate wholesaling the primarily goal is to find "off-market" properties so that you can get it under contract typically for less than it would be purchasing it on market via a realtor. The post above gives you early indicators of various factors that a property owner may be going through in which if you contact them, you may help them with their situation, one of them being taking over their mortgage or just purchasing it (obviously doing your due diligence). 

It's been a long while since I've put together a comprehensive helpful post, but here it is!

This post focuses on my experience in the fastest way of using your local county clerk documents to find real-estate leads, specially pre-foreclosures. I mean the fastest because even your commercial data reseller vendors won't be as fast as your local counties, trust me I run a real-estate data company :)

Here's a bit of background:

The county clerk's office is responsible for recording and maintaining public records (related to property and legal matters) It tracks documents like deeds of trust, mortgages, liens, Lis Pendens, probates, and related foreclosures docs, etc. These records help verify ownership, track legal claims related to real estate and legal transactions.

Below is a table I've put together on these Document types (or some counties call them instruments) which get recorded daily. I've also added a simple explanation of what they mean, and estimated time before they go into a foreclosure or auction state. I know some of you who are truly experienced in real-estate go directly to the foreclosure pages on your local county which get published daily; however, these document types below often occur much earlier.

The point of these is to get hold of a property owner and work something out to help them deal with their situation (i.e. creative financing, subject to, etc..).

County clerk documents like lis pendens, mortgage loan modifications, and similar filings can reveal signs of financial distress in a property. A lis pendens indicates that a foreclosure lawsuit has been filed, marking the property as legally contested and likely in preforeclosure. Mortgage loan modifications suggest the homeowner is struggling to keep up with payments and is attempting to renegotiate terms to avoid foreclosure. Other filings, such as loan defaults, tax liens, or bankruptcy notices, can further signal financial hardship.

Those are a few examples of some highly relevant docs. They will typically contain information such as the Grantor, Grantee (Current property owner), the document type, and the property's legal description (i.e. "Lot 5, Block 7 of the Meadowbrook Subdivision) - I add this because may of the documents (unless you open the attached documents which are often pdfs or images), won't have the actual full property address (some counties such as Cook county in Illinois will have both the parcel ID# and address which makes it easier to search your local property appraisal district and pull the property information.

Some counties have hundreds of document types which may be a bit overwhelming (You can always ask ChatGTP or similar to tell you which are highly relevant as some states have additional docs or they may call them something slightly different) below are few others that may be relevant , or sometimes they may just give you an acronym - for example in Harris county you may see L/P as Lis Pendens.

• Notice of Default (NOD)
• Notice of Substitute Trustee Sale (NOSTS)
• Appointment of Substitute Trustee (AOST)
• Mechanic’s/Materialmen’s Lien (MML)
• Tax Lien
• HOA/POA Lien
• Abstract of Judgment (AOJ)
• Lis Pendens (LP)
• Deed of Trust (DOT)
• Loan Modification
• Bankruptcy Filing Notice
• Release of Lien (ROL)
• Partial Release
• Assignment of Deed of Trust (ADOT)
• Notice of Acceleration
• Federal Tax LienFTL
• Probate Filing / Affidavit of Heirship
• Eviction Filing
• Quiet Title Action
• Notice of Trustee's Deed

I wanted to give a bit of background as many of you are trigger happy on commercial products by selecting “Preforeclosures” without really knowing what it means (Many of you who are seeking easy money and aren’t running a viable real-estate business ).

I will say the primary challenge you'll have is that there's a lot of manual processing involved here such as

• - Reading manual documents (PDFs or images) - This is how you'll find the true address, or find the deed of trust instrument # so you can reference the deed of trust and find all the property information.
• - Some may only include the legal description - So you'll have to manually cross check with the county property appraisal district sites to pull the property.
• - Some counties (Specially in states like Georgia) will want you to register and pay for some of these documents.

Anyways, I hope that helps as many commercial products will publish these after 30+ days! So speed is on your side! This will differentiate you from thousands of so-called investors who are hitting the same lists as everyone else :)

Let me know if you have any questions!

If you want to tackle it, i would suggest doing it with Python. see if you can create a small spreadsheet/csv/txt file with the data similar to the one on your file. Then go to chatgtp and upload that file you created that mimics the actual file you're working with. Have it convert the data however you want it to be. Chatgtp can generate the entire python script, and it'll make life easier for you. I'm sure there's tons of examples on youtube as well. I automate everything with Python, specially with larger realesate datasets.

Perhaps document type Order or Notice ? Assuming you're looking at the County Clerk page https://ccweb.co.fort-bend.tx.us/RealEstate/SearchEntry.aspx

Simple steps on getting your first Deal! Don't overthink it, just do it!

Boils down to these simple steps:

1. Buy a list of records
2. Skip Trace the list
3. Call the list OR Text Blast

In Detail:

1) - Buy a data list (Can be any of the following)

• - High Equity Absentee Owners
• - Potential Absentees (Some individuals may not have changed their mailing address)
• - 20 Year Owner Occupants
• - Potential Vacant List
• - Age 55+ 6.
• - Vacant Houses
• - Empty Nesters
• - Tax Delinquent
• - Code Violations & Others (Probates, Pre-Foreclosures, water shut-off etc.)

2) - Skip trace the list (you can use any providers)Here's some reputable ones that I've used:Batchskiptracing or "dataskip"

If you're dealing with probate or if the primary owner is passed on

Skipgenie (For manual individual skiptrace, these will also show the relatives of the person ).

3) - Call the list - Pick up the phone and dial those numbers.You can use Calltools or Readymode (Whatever youre preference is)

Cold calling is too hard for you? Then send SMS.You can use Launchcontrol to send mass text messages.

That's it! I know I'm simplifying this, but the main thing is don't be afraid of failure! Take action, YOU WON'T HAVE EVERYTHING FIGURED OUT. Just do it! You'll thank me later!.

Lastly, make sure you reach out to potential buyers and network, your buyers will tell you exactly what kind of property (and where) they're looking to buy. Reverse engineer the process!

Lastly, use whatever call tools, sms, skip tracing tools you want, I have no affiliation with the ones I showed above. Additionally, if you're serious about doing this long term, invest in an inbound leads channel and create a "we buy house in _____" so long term you can get motivated leads come to you. 

I believe there's 90% of great, practical, free content on Youtube! Don't spend your $ on these Gurus (Also note that many folks here are paid for by some of those big Gurus). 

My advise: 

1. Educate yourself for free on Youtube

2. Anything that you're unsure about, ask questions here in BiggerPockets, Reddit, and or other communities in Discord that are also free and everyone is willing to chip in. 

3. Attend local Real-Estate events locally, and perhaps find someone who's already doing deals, offer your help in exchange of Mentorship.

Lastly, use those thousands of dollars for marketing (Building a good website for inbound leads, ads, and hiring some help later).

Best of luck!

 Yeah, you'd save precious time and gas $ doing this. 

 Good idea!

Using your city's 311 service you can "Virtually D4D" to find off market deals that might not be in commercial realestate software such as propstream/wire/listsource, etc.. that everyone uses. Look at your city's 311 service, it's public data and will have hundreds if not thousands of reports such as abandoned lots, homeless/drug activity, high grass & unkept properties, trash being dumped and [insert your favorite "Karen" complaints here]. Again, No need to spend gas $ driving around to identify distressed properties, this is what I call truly "Virtually Driving For Dollars VD4D.

Majority of the time this is what most major Metropolitan cities utilize to determine code violations/enforcement, so if you request that list, typically it's the result of those "311 complaints". Additionally, these are updated daily and typically have the "incident opened date" which you can easily sort by along with some sort of description and "case type" (i.e. High grass, abandoned vehicle, water leak, etc.)I'm ready to Virtually Drive For Dollars - How I accomplish this?

1. Find your city's 311 website (Google 311 service request your city name)
2. Locate the full data list (This will be raw data, you will need to open it with excel or a text editor (Notepad ++ works great for large datasets)
3. Format the data (Depending on the city, this might already be categorized such as Vacant/Overgrown Property, or it might have a full description. If it does have a descriptionHere's some of the keywords you can look for:ABANDONDED,unoccupied,homeless,squatting,Prostitution,uninhabitable,disconnected,destroyed,water leaks, ,damage,rodent,utilities,moved out,not secure,maintain property,Encampment (You can DM me for a comprehensive list).

4.Determine the full address and now tie this information together to your county appraisal data which should have the owner name/mail address along with the type of property.

5. Once you tie these determine the parcel # and identify if there's any tax delinquencies, or whatever other indicators you typically use to increase the likelihood of a motivated seller (i.e. tax liens, evictions, etc..)

6. Take action and call them - The information you found will give you an intimate profile of the property in question as you'll know exactly what kind of issues it currently has.

Q: But what if my state/city do not have these "311" list that you are referring to?A: Many cities have private 3rd party vendors/mobile apps that are advertised to citizens to raise these complaints. You may find yours via "SeeClickFix", "PublicStuff", "Citysourced","NextDoorNeighbor","Qscend","neighborlysoftware", and many more. Some of these may have a public view for you to review current opened complaints and manually review them.

Again, This is a great way to find vacant properties as neighbors or people that have an intimate knowledge of those neighborhoods are the ones that report these properties which tend to be eyesores for their communities.