Real estate investors are using a tool called skip tracing to find and connect with owners of distressed properties. This process involves using specialized data platforms to retrieve deep historical records, current contact information, and hidden financial indicators associated with the owner.
What is Skip Tracing?
Skip tracing is a process that has been repurposed from the worlds of debt collectors and bounty hunters. It involves inputting a property address or the name of the owner into a data platform to retrieve information about the owner and the property. This information can include utility logs, credit bureau headers, and corporate registry entries.
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 for Investors
Using a property data search tool can help investors source off-market inventory and build predictable acquisition pipelines. Skip tracing allows investors to cross-reference hundreds of public, private, and proprietary databases to aggregate a comprehensive profile of the owner or legal entity holding the deed.
This information can be used to identify motivated sellers who may be eager to accept an off-market cash offer. Investors can also use skip tracing to track down the owner of a property that has been abandoned or is in the process of foreclosure, allowing them to make an offer before the bank repossesses the asset.
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). They must also scrub their retrieved phone lists against the National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry and utilize clean, compliant outbound dialing systems.
Original reporting: KRDO (Colorado Springs metro) — read the source article.
