Real estate investors are using a tool called skip tracing to find distressed properties and connect with motivated sellers. Skip tracing involves using specialized data platforms to aggregate information about a property and its owner, including contact information and financial indicators.
What is Skip Tracing?
Historically, skip tracing was used by debt collectors and bounty hunters to track down individuals who had skipped town. In the real estate industry, skip tracing has been repurposed as a lead-generation strategy. By inputting a property address or owner’s name into a data platform, investors can retrieve deep historical records, current contact information, and hidden financial indicators associated with the owner.
Many distressed or institutional properties are held under generic corporate names, making it difficult to find a viable contact. With skip tracing, investors can track down original corporate filings to identify specific managing members, registered agents, or individuals behind the company, giving them a direct contact.
Benefits of Skip Tracing
Using a property data search tool reveals context about the owners, including why the property is neglected and how motivated the seller might be. Property records can also reveal whether the owner is facing financial distress, such as elevated mortgages or tax liens. This information can help investors identify highly motivated sellers who may be eager to accept an off-market cash offer.
Advanced skip tracing can also help investors build predictable acquisition pipelines by providing layered and verified contact vectors. This allows investors to call the owner while still in view of the property, creating a higher-touch, relevant pitch.
Professional investors must operate within strict legal boundaries when using skip tracing, complying with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). Successful proptech platforms and investment firms must scrub their retrieved phone lists against the National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry and utilize clean, compliant outbound dialing systems.
Original reporting: KTVZ (Central Oregon) — read the source article.
