My girlfriend drug me to an estate sale a while back to look at other peoples junk. While we were there I was looking at the house and was kind of interested in it. It is sitting vacant now and I have no idea who owns or controls it. I asked at the sale but the people didn’t have any info. I called the city tax assesor and got a name but they had him listed at the same address. Any suggestions on how to go about finding the right person to talk to about possibly buying this house?
Thanks,
Dan
There are a number of ways. Some cost time and others cost money. The first thing is to know on neighbors doors and see if anyone knew the people that lived there and if they know where they went. The second thing is to go on a site like Argali.com and enter the persons name. This will only work for rather unusual names.
Now start spending money. You can start with findtheseller.com and get a report or you can hire a skip tracer. Sometimes it is easy to find the missing customer and sometimes it is not.
Other ideas are to research your county records and look on deeds and mortgages to see if they own other properties and if there is an address on any of the documents. Findin MIA’s is challenging but a great way to get great deals.
Go (do not call) to the town tax collector (not assessor) office. They will often have the address of who is paying the taxes on the property - since you mention there was an estate sale the tax payer is probably the executor. Next, go to your county surrogate’s office (they probate wills and estate’s) and ask for help looking up the name you got from the assessor and/or tax collector’s office. You should be able to get the executor’s name and address from the documents in the surrogate’s office.
jmfd_forest
Thanks for the help. Lots of good info.