I’ve been wholesaling for about a year now and I seem to run across the same consistent problem. How do you find the owner of and abandoned house?
I’ve heard put your sign in their yard
Leave notes on the door
Isn’t an easier way to find the owner? When I look at the tax records, I don’t see any information that will help me find them.
Hire a skip tracer/ private investigator. They will find approx 65% of the names you give them if the address they last lived at. It will cost about $20-$25 per name.
What state are you in? Usually the city does not have a problem getting the tax bill to the owner… they find out where they are. If not, the property goes up for auction. I use my county’s tax records and have had very little problems getting the correct address (although I do some)… If you are running into that, then the above poster was correct, skip tracing is the best solution. I just wasn’t sure what kind of information your county was providing.
Go online to the tax appraiser for whatever county the house is in. Do a property search by address. It will pull up the owner information, what it last sold for, what the current property taxes run and whether they are current.
Isn't an easier way to find the owner? When I look at the tax records, I don't see any information that will help me find them.
I use this site http://publicrecords.netronline.com/ It lists most all of the counties that have web access.
Many people under estimate the power of asking the neighbors for information. Get out of your comfort zone and knock on the the doors of the next door residence.
They can provide you with many helpful tips. It sure beats spend unnecessary funds.
I always do a title search.
I knocked on a door and the neighbor came out and I said good morning, looking for johnny smith, she said he dead, his sister lives across the street. SOLD!!! I sent the neighbor flowers.
I was told to stick a for sale sign on the abandoned property with an anonymous number…the property owner calls REAL fast…I never had the gumption to do it though.
@jberry5…NICE!!!
Bingo…the great thing about this is they absolutely LOVE talking about this kinda stuff…
Signs in the yard are also GREAT. Learned this tactic from Sean Terry’s podcast. This is also a great way to build your cash buyers list.
The best way in my state is to check the Recorder’s office or whatever it might be called in your jurisdiction. Often non-owners pay the tax bill, however they will likely know the owner if they are paying but you would be surprised.
Interesting…how do you go about getting it? Ask them who paid the taxes on a particular house, and they just give it to you?
Often you can just go to a computer and type in the street address. In my state this will give you a brief legal description to start your title search, the total assessed tax on the property, the assessed value of the property, and who is paying the taxes, along with other valuable information.
I’d love to find some of those people to pay the tax bill for me 
But yes, we’re able to look this stuff up online to find out where the county auditor is sending the tax bill. However, we still get back about 25% of our mailings from this list so then need to track them down using a skip tracer service. Talking to neighbors is a great way to get information, but we are not as consistent with that. The best time to do that is when you are finding the vacant/ugly houses and we’re usually in too big of a hurry to find the next one…