Creating your own lists

[scostell]

Can a part time investor effectively locate leads by themselves using the county's public records?  or is a list service better?  For someone who has a limited budget as myself a list service seems a bit steep on pricing (was quoted $950 from Melissa data for a list of absentee owners).  If I trudge through the public records in search of NODs, foreclosures and search through the tax records for absentee owners will the time spent be considerable?

Just throwing it out there, I realize the only way I'll know is try it myself (which I plan on doing) but if I can get someone else's technique for looking up those records myself that would be great.

[fadi]

There are pre-foreclosure listing services that will sell you the information for around $50 per month flat regardless of the size of the data. You want the list as soon as it comes out, not a week or two later. Everyone and their mother (sometimes grandma helps too) are mailing to them so you want to be in contact with them from the beginning.

[b18bgone]

Getting access to 30,60,90 day late leads and mailing to them with proper disclosures
seems to work well, you can always look for NODs or substitution of trustee depending
on how your state works.

[scostell]

what is substitution of trustee?

[VicV]

b18bgone, 

When you mention "proper disclosures" what exactly do you mean?  I would like to learn more about certain disclosures one must include when marketing.

Regards.

[DataKing]

List services are really not that expensive (per record), plus they make it their full time job to reassure that you are happy.  The key to the great list is how many, and what type of filters can you use (and does it cost to use it).
 
Hope this helps.

[fadi]

Complaining about cost usually indicates you are either tight on cash, or not sure of your marketing and that it will yield any results.

If it is either of these cases, I would suggest you work on that first then work the lists. Like dataking said, the price per record is not much.

I estimate each suspect (name that I am mailing to but not replied) would cost me $5 in total after I mail and all. How much do you spend on each lead?

[matt-gerchow-real-estate]

WHOA WHOA WHOA!!

Stop the presses.  Here's a link to a video that will explain how to get the CD directly from the county for $30 bucks and then filter the data for your mailings.

http://tinyurl.com/6gyeyw

This is the same data that RealQuest charges you $60-125/mo for.

Hope this helps,

Matt Gerchow

[b18bgone]

what is substitution of trustee?

Depending on the state, a trustee is basically asuring the bank they are going to get
their money on a property or they will foreclose on it.  In many cases the actual trustee
doesnt do/or specialize in foreclosures, so they trasfer those duties to another attorney
that does, hence "substitution of trustee".  One of the first public recorded transactions
of a POSSIBLE foreclosure.

b18bgone, 

When you mention "proper disclosures" what exactly do you mean?  I would like to learn more about certain disclosures one must include when marketing.

Regards.

When you are marketing to 30,60,90 late leads, first of all you have to get them from a list
broker and he gets them from one of the credit agentcies.  There is a nice log paragraph you
need to include on your mailer.  The list broker will provide that for you, if you can even get
that list.

[vacationguy]

wow $950!!!!!

The hell with real estate, we should all be trying to figure out how to break into the list brokering business

[fadi]

Its simple... you need to spend around 0.5 to 1 million a year, and you can get access to the data to broker