I have a nose for these. I can spot an empty house from 100 yards away. Once I was driving around looking for uglies and a cop stops me and asks to get out and walk a line. I said, “Officer its 11 am. Do you think I am drunk?” “Lady”, he said, “you were weaving”. I replied, “Of course I was weaving- there’s one, there’s one”
If you find a house that looks abandoned, there are 4 initial steps to take:
- Leave a flier at the property. Sometimes, people move and don’t give a forwarding address so they stop by to pick up mail.
- Talk to the neighbors to see if they know anything. (and of course give them your card and tell them that you pay referrals)
- Keep WE Buy Houses post cards with you so you can address 2 of them with the words- Home Owner and the address. One says Address correction requested and the other says, Please forward. Hopefully one will go to the owner and one will come back to you with the new address.
- Go home and look up the owner’s info. You can get this info from a good title rep (Call ED O’Bannon from Equity Title Company 562-505-2642).
If you need to go further, you need a skip trace service like Accurint or TLO. I have this service which we supply to my mentoring students for no charge… It is scary what information is available.
