Most of the online tools I’ve found were from this site, but I managed to find one or two links on my own. At any rate here’s some of the tools I’ve found very useful.
http://people.yahoo.com/ - This is a free search engine that allows you to look up names based on city and state. It does’nt contain every name, but I’ve found it to be very helpful in the past.
http://www.sellmyhomebw.com/default.asp - I really love this site, but its only useful for people looking to invest in Illinois and even only in certain counties. Basically this is another free search engine provided by the real estate company Baird and Warner that allows you to conduct a search on past sales throughout the most of the Chicagoland area. It’s an excellent tool for determining what the comps are for certain areas.
http://reversephonedirectory.com/ - I found this link from another user on this site and I also saw a reference to it in one of my real estate books. I’ve only just started using it today with minimal results, it looks like it could prove to be useful. However it uses multiple search engines to pull data, some of those engines refer you to a pay site, while other engines provide free results. Worth checking out
http://www.netronline.com/ - This might be one of the most useful links that I have which I also found on this forum. Basically this site will direct you to places where you can find home and home owner information based on the county the property resides in. Not all counties have their property records listed online, but if they do this site can point you in the right direction. I was able to use this site to ID the owner of a vacant house this morning, I found the owner’s name as well as the currrent state of the tax record of the house. Definitely a good tool to have.
http://www.thedirectoriescompany.com/reos.htm - This is the last link I have to share and basically its a listing of a few banks along with whatever property inventory they have available. I’ve yet to do any substantial research with this tool but it looks promising.
If you have any links please share them, maybe one of the mods can make this post as a sticky on the top of the page. I’m sure a lot of new (and seasoned) investors can add and find some useful information here.