@John Klaus
Finding phone numbers is actually pretty easy now days. In this age of Internet and public records and ease of access, It's very difficult to stay off the radar.
Everybody leaves a digital footprint somewhere.
Here are some basic tools I use to find people.
Free first:
Whitepages/anywho/zabasearch/
Google is the most underrated tool to finding a person. Starting with their name and hopefully city or at least state. You can find out pieces of the puzzle that make it easier to locate the person.
Ex: if they are a professional of some sort, i.e. Doctor, lawyer, now you have areas you can find them. If they are a part of a forum, it pops up.
I once pulled up a person that was a on a site for classic cars that posted a request for parts along with his phone number. (Bought the house and made a 20k flip profit)
Public records are amazing: if you locate the area where the seller lives, make sure you look them up in their counties property appraiser, and clerk of court/register of deeds.
Examples of places you can find them:
If they pulled a permit on a house the notice of commencement may include their phone number.
If they were in a lawsuit and represented themselves, most forms will include a phone number.
If they were a landlord and did an eviction, the 3 day notice or complaint will usually have their phone number.
There are quite a few areas the info will show up in public records.
Social media is the hands down best way to locate people.
I have found more people through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn then I can tell you.
My favorite example is where I located the owner of an abandoned home on Facebook. I had tried every tool I had available to me prior including free and paid services. Including high end skip trace tools. I had found out she had a daughter but couldn't find her either. Then I tried Facebook. Her daughter popped right up showing that she worked at the local Applebee's as a bartender. And on her page her most recent post was a request by her to her fb friends requesting a ride to work. And in the response was.... Wait for it... Her mom apologized for not being able to pick her up as she was heading into work right then. (Thank you oversharers) a quick click over to moms fb page revealed that she worked as a waitress at the crackerbarrel next door.
One of our bird dogs actually went over there and talked to her, set up an appt and we ended up buying the house for $600.
Cheap next:
Ussearch is a cheap skip trace tool that costs about $49 for a 3 month unlimited use service. There is a lot of junk in to sift through but many times you get lucky. The best tool in there is their direct link to social media.
More costly but worth it:
We have access to a service called tracers that, for .50 per pull, gets us some of the most up to date info on anyone out there.
We also employ a couple of private eyes that are somewhat entrepreneurial that will not only locate the owner but set up the appt for between 500-1000 per closed transaction.
These are a few of the tools we use to locate our sellers... And our buyers.
Hope this helps!!
P.S. I mentioned if the owner is a professional of some sort.
If they are, check your states Secretary of State corporation look up, manytimes in their filings you will find their phone numbers.
P.S.S. If they own or run a website, that turns out to be an easy search. Whois.sc is like a whitepages for domain owners. Unless they specifically use and pay for a private service, you will have their email and phone number right there. (Try Zillow for example. I used the tool to speak to someone at the company to learn how to get info on expired listings off Zillow)
Again, hope this helps