Pittsburgh, PA | How Do You Pierce the Corporate Shroud??
Pittsburgh, PA · Member since 2015 · 52 posts · 26 votes
All,
I've identified plenty of distressed properties "Driving for Dollars", but am hitting dead ends when trying to "skip trace" corporate owners. Has anyone identified an easy way to identify individual owners of an LLC? In many cases, it appears (in the Allegheny County Real Estate Assessment website at least) that the taxes haven't been paid for at least 4 years.
Any tips, tricks would be greatly appreciated,
Dave
All,
I've identified plenty of distressed properties "Driving for Dollars", but am hitting dead ends when trying to "skip trace" corporate owners. Has anyone identified an easy way to identify individual owners of an LLC? In many cases, it appears (in the Allegheny County Real Estate Assessment website at least) that the taxes haven't been paid for at least 4 years.
Any tips, tricks would be greatly appreciated,
Dave
All right, Dave, as I said in my friend request, looking forward to meeting up with you after this pandemic crap is over.
And when we meet, I expect a Primanti-Bros-or-equivalent sammich outta this...any of you Pittsburgh BP lurkers see this and use it, I expect the same. Coffee ain't gonna cut it.
So the first thing you have to do is search for the LLC here: Pennsylvania Business Entity Records Search
An LLC that does business in PA has to be listed here. By and large, as a real estate business, the LLC will be registered at a residential address. With luck you'll find a name attached as an officer. If you have that name, do an internet search on the individual. If you don't, but the address is in Allegheny County, do a search on the residential address and see if you can find an individual listed as the owner of that home.
Have you tried reputable skip tracing companies? There are some that don't charge extra fees for skipping LLC's.
All,
I've identified plenty of distressed properties "Driving for Dollars", but am hitting dead ends when trying to "skip trace" corporate owners. Has anyone identified an easy way to identify individual owners of an LLC? In many cases, it appears (in the Allegheny County Real Estate Assessment website at least) that the taxes haven't been paid for at least 4 years.
Any tips, tricks would be greatly appreciated,
Dave
All right, Dave, as I said in my friend request, looking forward to meeting up with you after this pandemic crap is over.
And when we meet, I expect a Primanti-Bros-or-equivalent sammich outta this...any of you Pittsburgh BP lurkers see this and use it, I expect the same. Coffee ain't gonna cut it.
So the first thing you have to do is search for the LLC here: Pennsylvania Business Entity Records Search
An LLC that does business in PA has to be listed here. By and large, as a real estate business, the LLC will be registered at a residential address. With luck you'll find a name attached as an officer. If you have that name, do an internet search on the individual. If you don't, but the address is in Allegheny County, do a search on the residential address and see if you can find an individual listed as the owner of that home.
I’ll drive “dahn” the Primanti’s on 51 to talk. You tell me when. Lunch and beer(s) on me.
Dave
@Jim K. key thing is if they are Registered with PA as doing business there. if the LLC is involved with PASSIVE INCOME, and they are out of state, they do not have to Register with the State as a Foreign Entity doing business in PA. so a search for that llc will not even come up on that site.
@Jim K. key thing is if they are Registered with PA as doing business there. if the LLC is involved with PASSIVE INCOME, and they are out of state, they do not have to Register with the State as a Foreign Entity doing business in PA. so a search for that llc will not even come up on that site.
If an LLC is listed on a title in Allegheny County, it owns property in Allegheny County, it pays taxes in Allegheny County, it's doing business in Allegheny County. There is no vague "involved with passive income" out-of-state exception to this to my knowledge.
There are still multiple ways to hide corporate identity and defeat a simple lookup. If you look up "OCR Properties," for instance, you can see that the address is simply given as "Scolieri Law Group." I happen to know that OCR Properties is the LLC of this guy I know out of Ohio and Phil Scolieri is his lawyer. But you can still get a lead on most LLCs listed on the deeds of Allegheny County properties as indicated in the real estate portal with this method.
Ergo...
STOP TRYING TO VEIL-BLOCK MY SAMMICH!!!
@Jim K. key thing is if they are Registered with PA as doing business there. if the LLC is involved with PASSIVE INCOME, and they are out of state, they do not have to Register with the State as a Foreign Entity doing business in PA. so a search for that llc will not even come up on that site.
If an LLC is listed on a title in Allegheny County, it owns property in Allegheny County, it pays taxes in Allegheny County, it's doing business in Allegheny County. There is no vague "involved with passive income" out-of-state exception to this to my knowledge.
There are still multiple ways to hide corporate identity and defeat a simple lookup. If you look up "OCR Properties," for instance, you can see that the address is simply given as "Scolieri Law Group." I happen to know that OCR Properties is the LLC of this guy I know out of Ohio and Phil Scolieri is his lawyer. But you can still get a lead on most LLCs listed on the deeds of Allegheny County properties as indicated in the real estate portal with this method.
Ergo...
STOP TRYING TO VEIL-BLOCK MY SAMMICH!!!
Jim,
Just a little reading for you. But yes, an LLC will be listed on a property deed, then you have to find out who manages that LLC, maybe another LLC. I'm sure that most of the time you can find out who the owner is or who to try to contact if it is not the owner.
@Jim K. key thing is if they are Registered with PA as doing business there. if the LLC is involved with PASSIVE INCOME, and they are out of state, they do not have to Register with the State as a Foreign Entity doing business in PA. so a search for that llc will not even come up on that site.
If an LLC is listed on a title in Allegheny County, it owns property in Allegheny County, it pays taxes in Allegheny County, it's doing business in Allegheny County. There is no vague "involved with passive income" out-of-state exception to this to my knowledge.
There are still multiple ways to hide corporate identity and defeat a simple lookup. If you look up "OCR Properties," for instance, you can see that the address is simply given as "Scolieri Law Group." I happen to know that OCR Properties is the LLC of this guy I know out of Ohio and Phil Scolieri is his lawyer. But you can still get a lead on most LLCs listed on the deeds of Allegheny County properties as indicated in the real estate portal with this method.
Ergo...
STOP TRYING TO VEIL-BLOCK MY SAMMICH!!!
Jim,
Just a little reading for you. But yes, an LLC will be listed on a property deed, then you have to find out who manages that LLC, maybe another LLC. I'm sure that most of the time you can find out who the owner is or who to try to contact if it is not the owner.
I stand corrected! Hard to argue with "the passive owning of real estate for investment purposes does not constitute doing business." It IS possible.
All,
I've identified plenty of distressed properties "Driving for Dollars", but am hitting dead ends when trying to "skip trace" corporate owners. Has anyone identified an easy way to identify individual owners of an LLC? In many cases, it appears (in the Allegheny County Real Estate Assessment website at least) that the taxes haven't been paid for at least 4 years.
Any tips, tricks would be greatly appreciated,
Dave
You can occasionally find some low hanging fruit by looking up the mailing address for the taxes on the county site and then looking up that address on the county site. If it's their primary residence it will give you their names and you can use those to find numbers I suppose. I hate cold calls though so I'd probably just make it a more direct mail thing. You do you though.
You can also look up most companies on the PA LLC site. https://www.corporations.pa.go...
Most RE companies have their lawyer as their mailing address, but you can go through the same process as above by doing that to find names.
All,
I've identified plenty of distressed properties "Driving for Dollars", but am hitting dead ends when trying to "skip trace" corporate owners. Has anyone identified an easy way to identify individual owners of an LLC? In many cases, it appears (in the Allegheny County Real Estate Assessment website at least) that the taxes haven't been paid for at least 4 years.
Any tips, tricks would be greatly appreciated,
Dave
All right, Dave, as I said in my friend request, looking forward to meeting up with you after this pandemic crap is over.
And when we meet, I expect a Primanti-Bros-or-equivalent sammich outta this...any of you Pittsburgh BP lurkers see this and use it, I expect the same. Coffee ain't gonna cut it.
So the first thing you have to do is search for the LLC here: Pennsylvania Business Entity Records Search
An LLC that does business in PA has to be listed here. By and large, as a real estate business, the LLC will be registered at a residential address. With luck you'll find a name attached as an officer. If you have that name, do an internet search on the individual. If you don't, but the address is in Allegheny County, do a search on the residential address and see if you can find an individual listed as the owner of that home.
Should have read first and saw that you had already posted this.