How to locate absentee owners

Question

Can anyone advise on how to find absentee owners when phone numbers and emails no longer work and their house is abandoned and do not live there anymore (so direct mail doesn't work either). I've searched some of these people on social media and still no luck because in many cases they are over 65 and are not even on social media.

Jason Gurvitz · Answer

I appreciate all the advice! We use RealeFlowe and that gives us the owners name immediately, including bank owned or trust, but even when I have their full name, even though I can easily find emails and phone numbers, most of the time it's not current info. Getting to a bank is obviously pretty easy but it's the individual owners or trusts that's complicated. And sure, I'd be happy to talk about what you can do to locate some of these people. I'll send you my details in a DM.

Trent Ellingford · Answer

@Jason Gurvitz the county assessor is one way, or there are a lot of different software programs that can help, like Property Radar or Propstream. They give you the owner of the property's name, and if it's not their primary address it'll give you their primary address so you can mail them directly if you choose. If you have the address and owners name you can also pull phone numbers. Of course there are a lot of skip tracing websites that are relatively inexpensive that you can use as well.

Andy Eakes · Answer

There's an app called deal machine. I know that you have to pay for the service but you can plug in a property's address and it will tell you who the owner is and where they live if that property isn't their primary residence. Maybe they have a free trial you could try and to see how legit it is? I'm sure it is not that expensive.

Another option would be to search their name in the county assessor grantor/grantee database. In San Diego you can search the person by name to see all the properties that a particular person owns. I'm sure it's the same in LA. You can go through the documents listed, and eliminate the investment property or properties to narrow down where their primary residence is.

Phone numbers are trickier to get online without social media, so at that point, you may need to start door knocking if you can locate their residence online.

I use to work as an investigative journalist so if you need help locating people, I have some experience. If you would like some help, let me know!

Rene Owczarski · Answer

@Jason Gurvitz If they are older, I usually start by looking at obituaries for either the owner or their spouse/partner/sibling/child, etc. Since the obituary will give you a list of people, who knew/related to them as contact points.