Oyster Farmer · Asbury Park, NJ · Member since 2014 · 7 posts · 1 vote
Hi everyone. I'm assembling a Listsource list for a small marketing campaign and encountered a problem:
When I ask the site to narrow the properties in my target community down to only the 2-4 unit buildings, the number of it kicks back is far below what I know to be true. Also, if I ask it to select only duplexes, it says there are zero (same for tri and quad properties as well as multifamily).
Do some areas list the number of units on a property differently than others, making Listsource generate inaccurate and incomplete lists of multifamily units. How can I ensure that I'm not missing large amounts of multifamily properties in my campaign?
My target market is coastal Monmouth County, NJ communities, focusing on Asbury Park.
Thanks for your help.
-Scott
P.S. I love this site. It's the most honest, positive and helpful community I've ever encountered on the web.
Data services get their info from public records, and public records are notoriously inconsistent. If you filter for say, bedrooms, and a record does not have that data (even though the house most certainly does), it will return a zero.
I scoped out a couple of Duplexes in Ashbury Park and they are listed as Property type Multifamily. When I choose detailed property types on Listsource, All, the following are the only ones that came back greater than zero:
You can see there are no Duplex, Triplex or Quads, no "Multifamily" So leaving off every other filter, I just searched for 2 to 4 units, and got 142 hits. That's just the one zip....not sure how many you were expecting?
Data services get their info from public records, and public records are notoriously inconsistent. If you filter for say, bedrooms, and a record does not have that data (even though the house most certainly does), it will return a zero.
I scoped out a couple of Duplexes in Ashbury Park and they are listed as Property type Multifamily. When I choose detailed property types on Listsource, All, the following are the only ones that came back greater than zero:
You can see there are no Duplex, Triplex or Quads, no "Multifamily" So leaving off every other filter, I just searched for 2 to 4 units, and got 142 hits. That's just the one zip....not sure how many you were expecting?
Investor · Cranford, NJ · Member since 2012 · 303 posts · 153 votes
11y
I have some of the same issues with list source, in a market we flip in I wanted to try some direct mail and am looking for houses with at least 3 bedrooms, but in that zip code the public records must not upload bedrooms because the count comes back at 0.
BAsed on what @Jerry Puckett just showed I think you need to learn how to play with list source and ask the same question a few different ways to get the answer you are looking for.
Oyster Farmer · Asbury Park, NJ · Member since 2014 · 7 posts · 1 vote
11y
Thanks for your insight about the inconsistencies of public records, @Jerry Puckett - I figured as much. I suppose 142 seems closer to reality but it still seems low for a city like that. Another town further south, Belmar, only kicks back 50 2-4 unit properties, which is definitely low. I can think of one corner of town that probably has 50. These are beach towns with many properties consisting of multiple cottages. Maybe I'm just way off with my estimates...or chalk one up for bad public records.
A related question for you, Jerry: What site/service do you use to search for public record information for individual properties such as number of units and how their defined (i.e. duplex, multi, etc), past sales, etc? The table you pasted in your post is quite useful, as would be a site where information could be found in an easier format than the Monmouth County gov site. I'm sure there's one, I'm just a nube...
Again, thanks for everyone's help. I love this site.
Truth is, in some counties the Listsource data has big holes in (like no bedroom count). Add that filter and results go to zero.
I've found LS to be inconsistent on many of the secondary or descriptive filters, I'm assuming because there are no data standards across counties. You get what they get.
Good news is key filters like property type = SFR and Equity % seem to work in all the markets we're in...