How to Find Owners of Vacant Houses

[Jackie Lange]

I have received several emails asking how to find owners of vacant houses so I wrote this blog post to give you some ideas and a REAL DEAL Story:

Vacant houses are usually the best deals. They are obviously a house that no one is living in and a house that someone would probably like to get rid of especially if they are making payments on it.

To make a deal you have to find the owner. Here are some tips (and a story)for finding the owner of a vacant house.

1. Check the tax records to see if the owner filed a new address. If so, send them a postcard or letter asking if they would like to sell their house.

2. If there is no new address for the owner, send a postcard to the existing address and write DO NOT FORWARD – ADDRESS CORRECTION REQUESTED on the front of the postcard. The post office will send the postcard back to you with a sticker on the front with the owner’s not address. Why would you want to do this? Once you get the owners new address, you may want to just knock on their door instead of waiting for mail to get delivered. Sometimes time is of the essence, especially in foreclosure situations, so you need to act quickly.

3. Look in the white pages for people with the same last name. Call everyone asking if they know how to reach Mr. or Mrs. _______ . Be careful here. They may think you are a debt collector. So, explain that you are interested in buying their house at such and such address.

4. Hire a skip tracer in your town. Give a local private investigator the name and last address for the owner and they can usually find them within 24 hours. The cost is $10 - $20 per search.

5. Leave a note on the front door for the owner to find. Sometimes the owner will come back to check on mail or get more things out of the house. Leave a bright yellow note taped to the front door that says I’m interested in buying your house, please call me at ### ####

6. My favorite and most effective method for finding owners of vacant houses is to talk to the neighbors on either side of the subject property and perhaps the neighbor across the street. Once again, explain that you are interested in buying the house. The neighbors almost always know how to get in touch with the owner.

Here’s a real story about how I found the owner of a vacant property.

I noticed on the foreclosure list there was a property with an $8,000 loan balance. I knew the house was worth $125,000 to $130,000. At first I thought this must be a 2nd. But I did a little research and found out it was a 1st position note.

read the est of the story at my blog at

http://www.cashflowdepot.com/blog/article-details/articleid/404/how-to-find-owners-of-vacant-houses.aspx