Finding The Owner

Brent, start with your county tax records to find the owner. The tax records might show that the property address is different from the tax mailing address, i.e. the owner's an absent owner/landlord. Use the tax mailing address to contact the owner.

If the owner's no longer at the property, try getting their contact info with an online directory like Whitepages.com, or low-fee skip trace services like Spokeo, Intellius or PeopleSmart. Search "skip trace services" for others.

Hope this helps!

Liz Eastlake

I would call your title company. They are really good at such things.
Title companies are one of the best resources for many things in our business, and are always glad to help. If they aren't, get another title company/agent.

To give you and idea of what the title company will do. We were buying a four unit apt and when we pulled title, there was a lien that shouldn't have been there. Evidently, a person said he owned the building and took out a private loan against the property. He actually rented a unit once, but never had any ownership. He pulled a fraud on the people who lent him the money. Anyway, we had to clear the lien to close and didn't know where the lien holders were. The title agent finally found someone who knew the owners of the lien in a town about 300 miles away. Unfortunately, she found out that the people were on a church mission in Russia. By calling all the right people in their church they found a family member who, in turn, gave the title agent the proper contact info. She got hold of them and got the lien release signed and we closed the purchase. She actually did this in about 4-5 days.

Good luck,
Jim

The two post above a right on. I would just add one thing and that is many times the title companies will not look up property infor or do Preliminary Title reports for free for the general public. They will however do this service for free for brokers and agents who work with them. So, be sure to utilize your realtor by asking him or her to call the title company for the information needed. Also, if you use a particular title company over and over on different deals, they will most like be glad to add you to their preferrencial list and do services like finding names of owners of different properties for free.

Jan's, Jim's and Liz's comments above are outstanding. And Jan points out the idea of becoming a "preferred" client for the title company. This reminded me of something I was taught early on and have made a part of my investing business--that of making people feel special. Sometimes we need to utilize the services of a professional quite a lot before they ever get to payday. This would include agents and title companies. If you find yourself using them, find a way to reward them, like a fruit basket or box of candy to share around the office, or a gift card for them to go out to dinner. Make it clear to people that you understand they are working hard on your behalf with the expectation that it will pay off for them as well. I think this is just a very positive human thing to do, but it also gets you on people's "preferred" lists a lot more rapidly.