Posted by Jim Kennedy on March 15, 1999 at 21:38:58:
I am also live in the Houston area and would be very interested in learning more about the service you mentioned. What is the name of the company and how would one contact them? Thanx in advance for the info.
Best wishes for success!!
Jim Kennedy
Locating Out-of-town Owners?? - Posted by Bill S.
Posted by Bill S. on March 15, 1999 at 10:20:10:
What has proven to be the best way to locate “Out-of-Town”
property owners?? This would seem like a good way to find motivated sellers or possibly motivated. Locating a property and then going to the courthouse tax rolls seems like it’s way to time consuming and generally nonproductive. However, to take say a small geographical area, run it through somesort of “filter” that shows that the tax bill is
sent out-of-state and to what name and address and then sending or calling those people would seem like a better way to get an “assembly line” process started as this is a numbers game. Thanks for any help or insight !!
Re: Locating Out-of-town Owners?? - Posted by Bill K. (AZ)
Posted by Bill K. (AZ) on March 15, 1999 at 21:53:11:
Bill S.,
I learned this trick at the convention. A local title company just provided me with a list of “out-of-state” owners on disk and on “ready-to-stick” mailing labels. It cost me nothing. I just asked. Perhaps this would work where you live.
I hope this helps. Good luck.
Bill K. (AZ)
Re: Locating Out-of-town Owners?? - Posted by breeves
Posted by breeves on March 15, 1999 at 20:39:19:
I just subscribed to a local service that gives me access to the county tax records as well as MLS sales (not listed, just sales). The service also will produce a CD rom with whatever criteria you want if you do not want to use time searching the online service. Service starts at 60/mo and goes to 100/mo for more info (subdivision trends last 10yrs etc.).
I can use the CD to do a mail merge and can do an effective mailout program to out of town owners.
I’m in Houston, so I don’t know if this type of service is available in your town.
Re: Locating Out-of-town Owners?? - Posted by Carmen
Posted by Carmen on March 15, 1999 at 14:10:52:
A fair number of county/state tax authorities do make the tax information widely available, either on disk, or on-line, usually for free or at low cost.
Realtors also are able to access quite a bit of this info. If you find a friendly one, this could be done inexpensively.
Otherwise, there is a program called ISC in this area that will connect you (for about $100/month) to the tax rolls.
Once you find access through any of these methods, it should not be too difficult to “dump” or export the search data into an ASCII, Comma delimited file. This can then be imported into an Excel or Database file, and be filtered pretty quickly.
The key is the access to that database, and perhaps to break down your search criteria in a way that makes sense. After the initial “major” dump, it should be possible to do a date-filtered “dump” so that only the new or changed records will appear; this would indicate anyone who had to move and could not sell their property before moving; or those who want to try to be long-distance landlords. The first will be highly motivated; the second will probably need to simmer for a while…
Hope this helped.