How do you track distressed properties across counties?

Question

I'm a developer based in NH and I've been manually pulling data from the county registries of deeds to track tax liens, lis pendens, and probate filings as part of a personal project. After doing it for a while I realized how scattered it is. There's 10 different county portals, inconsistent formats, and no way to see when a single property shows up in multiple signal types.

Curious how others handle this:

- Do you manually check individual county portals? Which ones?

- Are you using PropStream, ATTOM, or another national tool for NH specifically?

- How satisfied are you with the freshness of the data?

- Would a NH-specific weekly digest/dashboard that flags properties with multiple distress signals (tax lien + lis pendens within 90 days, for example) be useful to you?

I'm thinking about building this as a proper tool and want to understand whether I'm solving a real problem before investing the time. Any honest feedback appreciated including "this already exists and you're behind" if that's the case.

Chad U. · Answer

You can vibe code something like this in a matter of hours nowadays.

Dan Kohli · Answer

For Phoenix specifically, permit filings and deed transfer patterns from Maricopa county have been the most reliable early signal I've found. Been automating that cross-reference for a few months now. Happy to share what sources work and which are noise.

John Underwood · Answer

My business parter has developed a database that scrapes all this data from county websites. He knows everything about everything property in the counties and states he tracks.

Currently its just been for our use.

John Underwood · Answer

Sounds good

John Underwood · Answer

My partner has spent a substantial amount of money on developing this database, but he does have information at his fingertips.It is still crazy what people will pay for tax liens at auction. 10 to 15 years ago I was getting houses left and right for 2k to 5k each. I still have many of those houses today that are now rentals.

Travis Goodwin · Answer

One simple way to handle it is having a VA pull the county data fresh and upload it into something like DealMachine.

That way you are still getting the local data straight from the source, but it is organized in one place where you can tag, track, and market to the properties. It also saves you from constantly bouncing between different county portals.

A lot of investors end up doing something similar because the national tools are helpful, but the freshest data is usually still coming directly from the counties.

Michael McGonagle · Answer

Thanks, appreciate your insight. Really helpful perspective and you've basically confirmed what I suspected. Going to attempt to build it. Will post back here when it's live if you want to take a look.

Michael McGonagle · Answer

Interesting and this is what I had in mind for my state/area. Was curious if other investors did this enough and if it was painful enough to pay for the fresh data organized on a nice dashboard, with alerts or some type of weekly digest email? Plus, adding something that draws attention to multiple signals.I know there's big national products for this but I bet the data lags the counties in some of those. I believe they're not cheap in a lot of cases either.

Michael McGonagle · Answer

The VA approach makes sense as a workaround and I'm curious what that typically costs per month when you factor in the time? I'm building something that automates that exact workflow across all 10 NH counties(maybe other areas too) and flags properties that show up in multiple signal types (tax lien + lis pendens within 90 days, for example). Would love to hear if freshness is the main pain point or if it's more the organizational side.

How do you track distressed properties across counties?

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