Wholesaling right now as a freshman in college with very little money. Have gotten a couple leads under contract, but never further than that. For our deals we comb through county records and look for interesting properties that have opportunity if a creative approach is taken.

We are searching for a small amount of people in pre-foreclosure who have a great motivation to sell.

Reaching out to the community to see if someone has pointers or ideas how to:

Find online Notice of Default (NOD), lis pendens or for a Notice of Sale. (this is all public information)

Then a low-cost-per search skip tracing service so when we find these people and addresses we can get in contact via call, email, and mail almost immediately. 

Thanks!

William. 

How long have you been doing this for. Remember, other people have access to those records as well. 

It's all a numbers game man. 

@William Brown There's always driving for dollars.

For your skip tracing I would use SkipGenie or REISkip. Those are both low cost skip tracers compared to TLO or other skiptracers. I agree with Grant in that, at the beginning such as I did, you are going to have to put in the sweat equity. This includes knocking on doors, cold calling or driving for dollars (this one is my favorite). Good luck and keep us updated on the process!! 

Drive for dollars! Not many low cost ways to do this that are effective without putting in the time and work

Thanks @Sean Krause @Grant Rothenburger @Antoine Martel @Peter Pratti for the great advice!

I have gone driving for dollars many times and have compiled a list of 100-150 properties (yes I know I need more). We started by looking at the lowest cost skiptrace (whitepages.com) which DID NOT WORK in the slightest. So I have the names and addresses of very potential deals which are distressed properties or people in some kind of circumstance that might make them want to sell. 

@Sean Krause have you used either service you listed above? Their prices seem fair, I would love to talk with some people that have used them and talk about the pros and cons. We are close to pulling the trigger on some marketing, just want to aim the bullet in the general direction of our target.

Yes I have used SkipGenie. Pros is that it gives you a multitude of phone numbers, previous addresses and emails. Cons is that some of them are linked to numbers of organizations the subject used to be apart of. Could be inaccurate at times but most are. For the price it does a good job.

@William Brown

You're starting out with the right ideas.  But now, you have to begin to sort it out.  Like panning for gold, you have to get rid of the garbage before you get to the nuggets.  

Everyone, though, wants to try to get straight to the nugget.

In the end this whole thing is a numbers game.  For example, we just did a cold call blast and went through about 3000 prospects and came up with 18 leads that we are nurturing.  That may sound good but that's not to say we're going to do 18 deals.  Those are just people who have said they are thinking about selling.  Key word - thinking.

See, you winnow these things down but you have to have other things in place.  A list, an efficient way to call, a follow up system, people who make the calls, etc.  This takes time and experience.

Forget the gurus, forget the no money down, forget the pie in the sky ROI. If you make $1000 off your first deal and it didn't cost you $1000 to make it then you've made money.

And keep barking up that public information tree.  Remember, almost all of it's free.  What else can you get for free today that is so valuable?