All Forum Posts by: Sean OToole

@Ned Carey - I think you nailed it when you said:

"It is just the leading information about the file. So the "Thru" dates are just the dates of the report not meant to relate to the column they happen to wind up on top of."

Sure looks like that too me. In which case, @Duke George Brady you still might find your column headers in the text file if you delete that heading with information about the file using a text editor. These kind of issues are really common with text output from the old systems the counties tend to use. :-(

We have a lot of customers who do both pre-tax sale and tax sale work using our system. We don't track the tax sales because there just isn't enough of them to make it worthwhile. Plus our customers that do them would hate me for making it easier for their competition.

They typically get the lists from the county, then add those properties to a list, which makes it super easy to track status on each one, add photos, notes, etc. As well as research ownership, value, and title. Hope that helps.

My support team would be happy to hook you up with another trial. Just reach out an explain.

@Duke George Brady you may want to revisit Gary's suggestion. If you are going to pursue delinquencies, you are going to want to research value, title history, etc. ;-)

Thanks @Gary Holt!

@Duke George Brady that first row in your images definitely does not contain column headers. My guess is that the first row or two imported incorrectly, or that there is some garbage data messing you up. Try looking at the file in a text editor (not MS Word, you need a real text editor like programmers use that allows you to look at the raw text). Since you know what the delimiter is you should be able to look at the first few lines of text and find the problem.

Agree with others regarding getting W9's upfront, that avoids any misunderstanding.

That said, if the guy is a real jerk, you may want to make it clear to him that he might not want to call people and brag about never getting 1099'd. There is a 15% reward for turning guys like him in after all... https://www.irs.gov/uac/Whistleblower-Informant-Aw...

Yes! Narrowing a list of prospects to market to is a smart proposition for ANY business, from wholesalers, to the local spa dealer. :-) 

Drop bathrooms, or just make it 2+. Why would you not want a 5/4?

I spent significant time and money trying to find patterns to bank behavior that would allow us to predict the likelihood that a particular property would go to sale for our customers. You'd think that given the banks focus on process you'd be able to find patterns that would give you the ability to predict both the likelihood the property would actually sell on a given sale date, and the amount of the opening bid. Despite the efforts of our best data scientists, using the latest tools in predictive analytics (using predictive modeling, data mining, machine learning), we never got it to the point where I felt we should offer it as a product.

Outside of that, the only thing that really works is to research every property that meets your requirements and show up for every sale. When sales got really slow back in 2005 I had to research as many as 100 properties for everyone 1 I purchased at trustee sale. The only way to make that work, is to be VERY efficient. The best trustee sale investors I know are very process oriented and efficient. Radically different business then other forms of investing where relationship skills matter as much or sometimes more then process. As a result I tend to only recommend trustee sale investing to process vs people oriented investors.

@Tae Seung Kim you completely misunderstood my post, sorry if I wasn't clear. Neither Listsource or AgentPro247 sell "pre-nod" leads. They, like us, only sell leads based on public records data, and that is not subject to FCRA rules.

Only data on delinquency's >before< the public record notice of default (NOD) is filed is considered "credit data" and subject to FCRA. Just to be super clear, "pre-nod" is also called 30, 60, 90 day late, or 30, 60, 90 day delinquent. Only source for that data is a credit bureau, thus FCRA's role.

Landlord lists, are better known as "absentee owner" lists, and are one of the most common investor mailing lists available. Many sources. Listsource (Corelogic) is probably best known on this site and unlike my service has data in your state. AgentPro247 would be another.