[Jeff Williams]

Jeff Williams

Can anyone recommend the following:

A good skip trace service/background service

A good service for researching a property (title, liens, etc.)

All suggestion are appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help.

[Jeff Williams]

Jeff Williams

Thanks for the suggestions…it’s exactly what I was looking for!

[Rafael Vazquez]

Rafael Vazquez

I have heard about the following sites but please be aware that I have never used them myself:

http://www.reverseaddress.com
http://www.findtheseller.com/skipinfo.shtml

As for researching title, liens, etc is always best to pay a title company but you should be able to do a preliminary search in the public records online if your county happens to have this service. Using the owner’s name and the legal description of the property you you be able to find mortgages, lis pendens, liens, deeds, etc for that particular property.

Rafael

[Anonymous]

Anonymous

The best skip trace service is http://www.merlindata.com

Most of the other serviced charge $25 per search. Merlin was 25 cents(that’s waht I pay), but I think they are charging new members $1 per skip trace now. Still very affordable.

The way it works — you have to put up a $100 deposit. Everytime you do a skip trace, $1 is deducted from your account. When you’ve used up all the money, you have to put up a $25 deposit next time. So.. you pay in advance.

Merlin has been extremely effective in finding owners of vacant houses and long lost relatives.

For researching properties, some counties have a way for you to access the county records – some don’t – so you need to ask your county. You can also get a title company or ABSTRACT company to do the research for you. I really think it is better to get someone who is trained to spot liens, etc to do the research for you.

I know one investor here in Texas who didn’t want to pay the $40 for an abstract company to research a house he was buying at the foreclosure auction. The investor did his own title search and researched liens.

He got a heck of a deal on a house at the auction. Spent about $20,000 to fix it up. Then when he got ready to sell it, he got a nasty surprise… a $32,000 IRS lien that was placed on the property the year before he bought it.

Because he didn’t know how to do a thorough title and lien search, he missed the IRS lien and it cost him $32,000 – which was MORE than the profit he would of had on the property.

Some things are better left to a professional — like a title company. If they had done the title and lien search, then he bought it at auction, he could still buy title insurance. The insurance would have paid the $32,000 IRS bill if they missed it.

Jackie Lange