When it comes to investing in real estate, finding the right deals makes all the difference. You need to spot a vacant house that is worth adding to your portfolio and figure out who owns it. While there are many ways of finding the owner of a property, checking with the local property records does not always work. In such circumstances, skip tracing usually comes in handy.
What is Skip Tracing?
Skip tracing is a process of locating the owner of a given property. Also known as a debtor or fugitive recovery, the process involves finding a defaulter, fugitive, or any person who cannot be located in typical places such as their home or residence, entertainment venues, or at work. The process helps to find the owner’s name, phone number, current physical address, and email address.
How Skip Tracing is Important in Real Estate Investment
Owners of distressed properties tend to abandon or set them aside for later deals. Since they no longer use such properties, buyers offering a great deal easily motivate such owners to sell. However, it is usually challenging to find such owners or determine the right channels of communication. Batch skip tracing is a popular and effective approach to finding property owners. The process involves finding contact information for an extensive list of property owners in a region at the same time.
Since the properties are readily available and owners ready to sell, real estate agents use skip tracing to find them. The simple process opens the lines of communication and allows interaction with interested buyers for a deal to be made. Skip tracing may also involve investors contacting property owners directly or indirectly regarding a particular property.
Free Skip Tracing Tools
Skip tracing is as simple as it sounds. Although effective skip tracing will require you to hire an expert and part with some cash, certain tools are freely and readily available for use. They include:
- Search Engines: Search engines like Google and Bing allow you to locate people using their full names and other personal identifying information.
- Social Media Platforms: Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter can be a source of vital information about specific people as long as they have an active profile on those sites.
- Online Directories: You can use tools like Spokeo and SkipEase to retrieve information from telecommunication services provided. With just the name of the subject or their telephone numbers, you can retrieve as much information as needed.
- Blog and WordPress Sites: If the person you are Skip tracing has a blog or website, you can pull more information about their whereabouts there.
- Email Checkers: Email checker serves like Emailsherlock and Email-checker allows you to check whether your list of email addresses are valid.
- Others: You may also consider checking with country assessors, people finder sites, genealogy websites, and obituaries.
When Free Skip Tracing Does not Work
If the free tools are ineffective in your efforts to find a property owner, you may need to consider paid services. Paid skip tracing is more effective and requires less effort from your side. However, it is crucial to ensure you are dealing with a proficient service provider such as Goskipit for more accurate results.
