OfflineI really want to market and tackle absentee owners in my area by finding them and sending them letters. I would prefer not to drive all over town to collect addresses so I would much rather just get some lists online and do it that way. After doing some research I see that some people use companies online to get this information for a fee which all seems worth it to me. Has anyone had much luck with these online companies for absentee owner lists? I don't want to pay money for the info to be wrong or dated.
I also see people getting these lists through their county tax records or through the MLS somehow. Anyone have any pros/cons to doing it this way?
Any ideas on how to get a lot of great absentee owners lists for cheap or for free would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Nick
If you have a title rep, talk with them and see if they will help you.
My rep ran the cash buyers (names, addresses and properties bought) for the last six months and pulled a list of 6,661 absentee owners for my target zone. (I didn't even realize there were that many houses there!) She then printed FREE mailing labels for the cash buyers and I got them (free mailing labels) for 3,000 of the absentee owners.
Karen
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Hi there, Nick!
Going after absentee owners is a great way to find deals.
Anyway, if you are willing to pay melissadata.com or listsource.com are good. As for using tax records, what you look there is property addresses and tax payer addresses. When these two addresses are not the same, the properties are either vacant or rental properties owned by either by a local owner or an out-of-state owner. Who pays the taxes... is always the key question to find who the owner is.
These days you run into properties that are vacant (have been for some time), but the tax records show the property and tax payer addresses are the same... In this type of instances, the owner may have just walked away... Sad reality.
I have also heard that you could go to a title company to get a list of absentee owners, but I haven't tried that. Maybe I will look into that tomorrow.
Cheers!
Matt Inomata
Bothell, WA
..."(your town)list broker" and go with one of the local companies.
IMHO-Absentee owners aren't very motivated. Why would they be? Just because someone owns a property far from where they live is no reason to sell. If you're gonna buy a mailing list go for PROBATE!
"The harder you work, the luckier you get." -Gary Player
Hey Nick,
We used listsource for a list of about 3000 names in my area. We just sent out 100 letters yesterday and had one reply already today. We sent out 500 last month and had 30-40 calls and emails but we didn't do what we needed to for those. We hired an answering service to take the initial calls from now on to make it a little easier.
SEMPER FI
GET SOME!
I've liked using my Title Company. I've used several different title companies - some have provided a list for "free" and others charged me $20-$30 for a list.
KEEP MOVING FORWARD
"If it is important to you, you will find a way. If not, you'll find an excuse."
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Absentee owners are a great source for finding properties. There can be a great deal of motivation from them. When I send out a post card to people on my list I am getting on average about a 10% response rate. So every 100 cards gets me 10 calls.
I called up 2 title companies I had never done business with before and one of them said they would not provide a list. The other one gave me over 4,000 absentee owners in my local county. It's a great method!
Chris
"Faith is the eternal elixir which gives life, power, and action to the impulse of thought.
"Faith is the starting point of all accumulation of riches!"
- Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich