I am curious to see what everyone uses in order to get the contact information of property owners.

In my experience, I have used the online version of White Pages to do a reverse address search on the mailing address listed. This would pull up a list of names associated with the address and then you would just scroll through until you found the name you were looking for. Once you found the owner, it would list 5-10 numbers related to that name. Some might be relatives, others might be non-operational and then eventually you hit the jackpot.  It is not the most efficient but more times than not, you end up getting in contact with the intended party. 

The only problem is that in the past couple years, they have changed up their subscriptions and now only allow a certain number of "look-ups" a month. You use to be able to pay $20/month and have unlimited access to the data base, but now you only get 100 look ups each month. If you want more, you have to upgrade your subscription but you still only get certain number of people you can look up. This significantly reduces my out put and I would love to find an alternative. 

Let me know what you got for me BiggerPockets!

-BA

@Blaine Alger Don't sleep on snail mail. You should be able to get an address from the county auditor / property search. It can be frustrating waiting on a reply or a call that will never come, but it's also pretty low effort and easy to do en masse.

I also use a very similar strategy to you as well though.

@Dave Spooner

I got nothing against direct mail, just prefer the immediate response of a call.

What do use to get the contact info for your system that is similar to mine?

@Blaine Alger Have you considered buying a list? You can work with a list broker to get a good filtered list for your area. Some of the newer lists include Owners with Low Financial Stability Scores (FSS) or Seniors with Long-Time Ownership. Once you have a list, a broker can run the purchased list along with ones you have through the National Telephone Database to find the best matches for phone numbers and email. 

Good luck.

@Blaine Alger  I've used a subscription service like White Pages. I've tried a few. There's not a clear winner in my opinion.

@May Emery

I have pulled list before but I am not exactly familiar with a list broker.

About how much does it cost to have them pull a list for you?

I am more interested in platforms that allow you to pull up owner information on the spot if you see a property of interest while you are driving around.

@Blaine Alger A list broker can help you find lists that aren't readily available on sites like ListSource.  This is good because you aren't competing with all the other investors mailing to the same absentee owners. Pricing is typically comparable to the online sites. 

If you have a full time job, a mail campaign can get you up and going a lot faster than driving around because you can get in touch with a lot more people with a lot less expenditure of time.

Good luck

@May Emery

What type of parameters do yall use in order beat out other investors?

From my understanding, a lot of this  data is available to the public. It might be a little hard for the average joe to obtain it, but if they want to, they can figure  it out.

My point being, is I don't see how one can gain a competitive advantage because most investors are going after the same type of list/categories (absentee, senior with equity, vacant, etc).

Originally posted by @Dave Spooner :

@Blaine Alger I've used a subscription service like White Pages. I've tried a few. There's not a clear winner in my opinion.

What was the name of the service you used?

@Blaine Alger the Owners with Low Financial Stability Scores is one that isn't as commonly available. It can be combined with both absentee and owner occupied, owner age 40+, 5+ year ownership, home value based on your market and the property type you are looking for.

@Blaine Alger There's not really a clear winner. I've tried Intelius, Been Verified, Spokeo. All fairly standard, all fairly mediocre.