All Forum Posts by: Pablo Avila

I've been able to determine good cash buyers by doing the following.

1. Get your county appraisal data district data (Google: Your county appraisal district)- Some of these are in .csv which are fairly easy to open with Excel. If you come across some bigger ones, you can break the .csv file or open it with applications such as ultraedit.

2. There's 4 columns I typically look at which are Mailto Address, Owner, and Deed Date (Purchased date), and zip code.

3. Do a count on Mailto Address and Owner which will show you the individuals/llcs/corps that own the most houses. Now break this down by zip code (Those zip codes that you're currently doing business in), and look at those that purchased in the last 2 years (Or more recently). You'll start seeing recent purchases of companies/individuals based on your zipcode needs. These are your buyers list. 

4. I typically also pull a list of all public real estate agent records which contain contact information (First name, last name, company name, phone, and email address). I then match the address to the Mailto Address I pointed out earlier. I've found a high amount of real estate agents also working for companies that are purchasing these properties (Most likely investors who want early access to properties and/or MLS).

5. This is how I find their contact info and establish initial relationships as I know exactly what zip codes/cities they're currently purchasing in based on recent purchased data.

And there you go, now you have a solid list of buyers!

If the real-estate agent data isn't helpful, then just follow your standard investigative skills to find a contact information which should be easy as well.

I continue seeing folks asking for niche lists, etc, to determine motivated sellers. I'll make a series of posts on how I find these. Using your city's 311 service you can "Virtually D4D" to find off market deals that might not be in commercial real-estate software such as batch leads and/or prop stream. Look at your city's 311 service, it's public data and will have hundreds of reports such as abandoned lots, homeless activity, high grass, etc..

Majority of the time this is what cities utilize to determine code violations/enforcement, so if you request that list, you'll be ahead. Additionally, these are updated daily and typically have the "incident opened date" which you can easily sort by.

1. Find the 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).

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 description 
Here's some of the keywords you can look for: ABANDONDED,unoccupied,homeless,squatting, uninhabitable,disconnected,destroyed,water leaks, ,damage,rodent,utilities,,moved out,not secure,maintain property,Encampment.

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

5. Take action and call them

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.

You can go to your clerks district office and request a list of probates, alternatively you can pull your counties' appraisal district data and look for parcel information in which the "mail to name" contains "Estate of", these are typically probates, from there you can do a bit of research online to find potential relatives. 

Quote from @Faye Hill:

What is a good lead source please! Little cost to no money?

Thanks 

Most of these lists you can get for free as it's mainly public accessible data (or free to request from your county). 
Here's some tips for niche list acquisition and ideas: Debt Claims, Divorce, Evictions, Felony Convictions ,Foreclosures, Probate, Small Claims, Tax Delinquencies, Tax Exemptions, Vacant Properties, code violations.

Here's some of the sources that you can utilize if you'd like to get ahead of those using the same data solutions (i.e.. listsource/propstream).
-County appraisal data - Absentee owned, Probate
-County District clerk (Criminal/civil data) - Divorce, Tax delinquency, Foreclosure, Felony convictions
-Justice of peace courts (Lookup your Precinct) - Debt claims, Evictions, Small claims, etc..
- Public real Estate Agent records - Many real estate agents are actually buyers (you can pull up their company info and match it with appraisal district data and identify cash buyers to build your cash list).
-Regrid[.]com is a great place to pull USPS vacant lists.
- Public City Works - Code violation data, Water shutoff (although there's been privacy changes with this),
- 311 Service requests data - Great to identify bad land lords, vacant properties, etc.
-Other Public sites such as nextdoor[.]com & Facebook - People will tell you what's going on in their neighborhoods (complaints about homeless camps, breaking into houses, etc.)

DM me if you have additional questions!

Most of the information you're looking for is already in Youtube for free, in addition to legitimate forums such as biggerpockets. Look at Facebook Groups related to Wholesaling, some of them have many members who are very active and can quickly answer any questions related to contracts, ARV calculation, etc..

My advise would be to focus on specific criteria's, absentee owners are a good place for conversion, and this changes very frequently. In my Market (Harris county), there's about 140 absentee owners every 7 days and up to 1k in a given month. Depending on where you get your list, you may be the first one that reaches out to these individuals. Follow ups are really important too! Keep these lists and reach out again (5-6 months).

Propstream is a good and inexpensive way to get started, specially their MLS comparison so you can quickly learn to estimate ARV in comparison to recent properties that have sold within the last 6month-1year. They have a 7-day free trial as well, so take advantage of it (But don't use their skip tracing service as it's low tier quality data).

I run a data company based out of TX, and pull this information on a daily basis. Let me know if you need any advise, or assistance!
We can provide with Absentee owners, Debt Claims, Divorce, Evictions, Felony Convictions ,Foreclosures, Probate, Small Claims, Tax Delinquencies, Tax Exemptions, Vacant Properties, code violations.

I've used Prostream in the past, I used to like their MLS comparisons. You can try it out for their 7-free day trial and pull up to 10k records based on your criteria. As some people mentioned, some of their data might not be up-to-date. In my market (Harris county, TX), there's about 140+ new absentee owners in a 7 day period, and up to 1k new absentee owners every month. These records show up on Propstream weeks later, so unless you pull them in a timely manner, there's a high chance that many of their users already called those individuals.

I run a data company based out of TX, and pull this information on a daily basis. Let me know if you need any advise, or assistance! 
We can provide with Absentee owners, Debt Claims, Divorce, Evictions, Felony Convictions ,Foreclosures, Probate, Small Claims, Tax Delinquencies, Tax Exemptions, Vacant Properties, code violations. 

There are plenty including myself! I'm in the Harris county market for the last 2 years. Let me know if I may help with any lists for Harris County/Dallas county!

Most of the vacant lists are coming from the USPS so only companies such as propstream/listsource will have them; however, you can find them as well in regrid[.].com, I pay about $10 a month and it limits me to 50k records, good enough for my market in TX. Additionally, you can "Virtually Drive for Dollars" to find vacant properties. Look at your city's 311 service, it's public data and will have hundreds of reports such as abandoned homes, homeless activity, high grass, etc..Here's some keywords you can look for: 

gutted

rotted

ABANDONDED

unoccupied

homeless

squat

mold

boarded up

prostitut

uninhabitable

disconnected

collapse

destroyed

unlivable

window broken

MISSING SIDDING

damage

very bad shape

mold OR rotten

deterior

rodent

utilities

dilapi

unsecured

NEGLECT

vagrants

landlord

moved out

tenant

not secure

maintain property

rodent

Encampment

Let me know if you have any data- acquisition questions, I run a real estate data company and we pull data from various places (most are publicly accessible).

You can "Virtually Drive for Dollars" to find off market deals that might not be in Propstream/listsource or other places. Look at your city's 311 service, it's public data and will have hundreds of reports such as abandoned homes, homeless activity, high grass, etc.. Applications such as nextdoor[.]com will also have similar reports. These will give you great results on finding distressed properties. 

Here's some of the keywords you can look for.

gutted
rotted
ABANDONDED
unoccupied
homeless
squat

mold
boarded up
uninhabitable
disconnected
collapse
destroyed
unlivable
window broken
MISSING SIDDING
damage
very bad shape
mold OR rotten
deterior
rodent
utilities
dilapi
unsecured
NEGLECT
vagrants
landlord
moved out
tenant
not secure
maintain property
rodent
Encampment

Let me know if you have any data- acquisition questions, I run a real estate data company and we pull data from various places (most are publicly accessible).

Hello ya'll, I'm Pablo, and I've been doing wholesaling for the last 2 years, like many of you I started during the pandemic and quickly adopted it. I've recently focused on real-estate data and want to share some tips for niche list acquisition for those of you focusing on niche niche criteria's here's some ideas to look for: Debt Claims, Divorce, Evictions, Felony Convictions ,Foreclosures, Probate, Small Claims, Tax Delinquencies, Tax Exemptions, Vacant Properties, code violations.

Here's some of the sources that you can utilize if you'd like to get ahead of those using the same data solutions (i.e.. listsource/propstream).
-County appraisal data - Absentee owned, Probate
-County District clerk (Criminal/civil data) - Divorce, Tax delinquency, Foreclosure, Felony convictions
-Justice of peace courts (Lookup your Precinct) - Debt claims, Evictions, Small claims, etc..
- Public real Estate Agent records - Many real estate agents are actually buyers (you can pull up their company info and match it with appraisal district data and identify cash buyers to build your cash list).
-Regrid[.]com is a great place to pull USPS vacant lists.
- Public City Works - Code violation data, Water shutoff (although there's been privacy changes with this),
- 311 Service requests data - Great to identify bad land lords, vacant properties, etc.
-Other Public sites such as nextdoor[.]com & Facebook - People will tell you what's going on in their neighborhoods (complaints about homeless camps, breaking into houses, etc.)