I have access to a list of properties that will shortly be demolished by the city. I want to take advantage of a wholesale deal. It would be my first one, but i’m excited and determined. I picked these types of properties because not many investors want to fool with them. While that makes my competition a little less competitive it makes the market more scarce. It’s a race against time at this point. There are two homes that are vacant and on the list where property all around is selling in the high 200k-mid 300k. I’m not sure if the property owner is dead, alive or what. A basic white pages search won’t do for most of the owner’s on this type of list. Got any suggestions? Also, what if the owner is dead is there a way to find out if the property was deeded over to the children. I’m thinking if this were the case the children’s names would appear on the tax report. Any help would be great. I’m excited about this, inspite my challenges! Thanks guys
First place to check would be your tax rolls in your municipality. Most of these are online these days. What you’re hoping to find is a mailing address that is different from the property address. Since you’re up against the clock you may want to take a trip to the mailing address (assuming it’s not a PO Box of course) and find out the situation. You’ve got great leverage because you can tell them with all honesty that their other house is about to be bulldozed. They should be motivated.
If that goes nowhere or if you can’t locate the owner you could always do a skip trace. The tax roll will show the owner of record, but be advised they don’t always update the info right away. And skip tracing fees can add up. I use www.findtheseller.com.
Good luck! By the way would you mind sharing where you got ahold of that list? :cool PM me if you don’t wanna put it on blast.
I’ve used findtheseller.com before and well I can’t really recommend it. They found almost nothing or really outdated info on several prospects and preceded to charge me for worthless info. nsu1997 I assume you had better results?
Check out the online recorders office. you can search by parcel number and it will give you ALL related documents to that parcel number…deeds, quit claims etc. Once you find the owners name (the last recorded doc is usually the owner) then you can do a reverse search using the name instead of the parcel number and it will reveal all documents related to the person instead.