How Do I Find Information on Vacant Properties

Foreign.

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Foreign Good morning, good afternoon, good evening everybody. Welcome this episode of the no Clothes Show. As always, Scott Carson. Excited to be here with you today. Today's episode I want to go into more about what I talked about in yesterday's episode. I really talked about, hey, can you buy the note on this ugly or vacant property that I drive by all the time? And I had several people that reached out to from the video and the audio asked Me, hey, if I could spend a little bit more time going more in depth than what I did to find the borrowers and how. I kind of engaged in conversations, because I've had conversations with two out of the three. And actually I've had conversations with all three of the parties. Two are in process. One, I'm working by the note once in the early process, and the third one finally came back. So we're not ready to sell. I'm like, why aren't you ready to sell? The property's in bad condition and there's nine grand in back taxes. So let me share with my process of, of going through this with you guys and gals, so you can do the same thing if that's something that you're looking to get more information on. Because a lot of people, like, they see it and they don't know where to go. They think it's a complicated process. And honestly, most of the information you need is literally at your fingertips, just a few keystrokes away from giving you an idea or giving you some answers or pointing you in the right direction. Okay. Obviously first you need to know the full address. Get the house number, the street address, obviously, you know, hopefully what city it's in. One thing that might throw a bit of a. A wrench into your due diligence is you got to know which county that city or the property actually sits in. Like in some counties or some cities, they lie on two different counties. Like where I live here in Austin, Texas. Austin thinks most people think Austin is Travis County. Well, I actually live on the north side here, which is Williamson County. Some counties, like down in Aransas Pass, where my mom lives, there's actually three counties that Aransas Pass falls into. San Patricio, Nueces and Aransas County. So depending on where that property is located, it's important to know because if you search at the county records, you may not find anything at first. So don't get frustrated. So like I said, know the street number and the obviously the address, city, state, and then know which, which county or potential two or three counties it might be in. And we like using Netra online, netronline.com we'll go and search first for the property address because I don't have the homeowner's name. Now sometimes you'll find the homeowner's name maybe like might list on that side, like the houses or the Stevens, you know, stuff like that. You may see a notice posted that gives the person a borrower's name. Stuff like that. They may also give you a entity who owns the property now, if it's gone to a tax sale or if it's considered abandoned, things like that. So if you see stuff like that, take a picture with your phone, you know, so that you have that information for when you go back to your computer. So what did I do? I came back, I jumped on Metro online. I pulled up the different counties around this house I had. It was three different counties on these three houses in different areas. So I found the county that all three were in typed in the address that popped up the borrower's name on the appraisal district. So I immediately, I'm scrolling down the appraisal districts for this house. Now this is going to be a little. This, this will work in every county because every county in the country lets you search by property address. Okay. So I'm looking to see the borrower's name and I'm looking to see if it gives me any sales histories, like if the ownership of the property has changed hands in the last year or two years. And what will that reflect? Well, if you see going in the last like two years or less, and maybe it goes from a owner who's owned it to an LLC or a bank. If it's a bank name or a lender's name, maybe they've taken the property back in, indeed, loom, maybe they foreclosed. If it goes to an llc, it might be a tax sale. These are all important things to look at. But if it still lists the borrower's name as what you think it is, that's a great thing. So grab the information. I usually will print, screen, save the screen real fast in my due diligence file for the asset, it gives me a name. And then what I do next is I look at the mailing address on the appraisal district because it'll tell you the property address. And sometimes if that property is deeded over or they have heirs or they have family members taking over the property, like if you have elderly people, a lot of times they may say fbo, they list one name of the owner of the property for the benefit of and another name may be the original property or the borrower on the property. So make a note of both those things and then look at the address. What's the mailing address? If the mail address is the same as the property address, that's you're going to run into a bit of a dead end. I'll tell you what to do later on. But if it gives you another mailing address or different address for the mailing stuff to come to. Notice this, that's a good thing. Then what do I do? I immediately will jump on Google and I will just literally type in the borrower's first name, last name and city, state and see what pops up as a general search. And a lot of times you may find a phone number. You may find some of these skip tracing websites like white pages or spokeo.com that's. Those are two websites I would also go to type in the homeowner's name and their new mailing address. I also type in the homeowner's name and the existing address, the property address to see what pops up. Many times you'll get different phone numbers that pop up. Sometimes you'll find relatives that are nearby. And that's a good thing. Well, if I look at white pages, white pages will usually give me roughly an estimated age range if they're 40 to 50, you know, 50s and 60s, 60s plus 70 plus. That's important because the older the bar get, the more likelihood that maybe they've passed away. Especially the house has been sitting vacant or in a decrepit position or condition. You know, it's deteriorating. So if I look, if I can't find a phone number, if it gives me a phone number, preferably a cell phone number, works better than a lot of the landline. But those numbers are old and outdated, then what do I do? I look for that homeowner or the co borrowers, the co owners names. But I type in obituary and I will put like the city it's in. So like maybe it's James House Aransas Pass obituary. Okay. And lo and behold, guess what popped up. An obituary for the guy. He passed away in 2019. But what am I looking for is I'm looking for them to list off the surviving heirs, spouse as husband or wife or children. Because oftentimes they'll list the immediate children and their spouses. Like maybe it listed one of them as Vicki, last name and then husband Smith in parenthesis. I knew it was a husband, but it was the daughter. I came across and listed all the children and what city they lived in. So one of them popped up in the same city. So I went and Google searched that name. I found her on LinkedIn, I found her on Facebook, I looked at those profiles on social media, I sent her a message on LinkedIn which I didn't think I have very good results because she hadn't posted a lot to LinkedIn. But I found out who she worked for, providing that she still worked for the same company, which is a major hospital in South Texas. And I found her profile on, like I said, Facebook. And I sent her a private message. I said, hey, I Becky, my name is Scott Carson. I believe you're the daughter of such and such person in Aransas past who still has a house on such as such and such address. I would like to talk to you to see if you guys are playing on maybe selling that property. And then I tell myself my mom was down the street, I'm interested in buying it as is. Would love to talk to somebody. Well, this Lady Vicki at 5 o' clock messaged me back, says, oh yes, that's my. That was my father. But I'm estranged. I'm not the person handling their estate. My mother's still alive, but she's in a nursing home. You would want to speak to my brother Jerry. And I'm like, oh great. Do you have his contact number? She's like, no, I'm estranged from him. But here his Facebook profile in his Facebook. I was like, oh, that'll work. He lives down in Mexico now. I'm like, okay, great. So what did I do? I went over to Facebook and I sent him a private message this morning. Hadn't heard anything back from him yet, but that can take a little bit of time. I'll search for a phone number for him later on. Now, what I also did, that was on one property, so that's kind of going down the route. Another one gave a property or for the benefit of this lady. And for benefit of the lady was your was the co owner of the house. Her husband passed away and this lady's in a nursing home. Well, it gave me a mailing address. Well, like I said, I searched for that mailing address and up popped the phone number for this lady Polly, who was listed as the owner. I'm like, oh, that's great. So I found her number. I made a phone call. I assumed it was a cell phone. I sent a text message, sure enough back yesterday I got a text message back from her. It was the same message. Hey, I came across, I think you may be the owner of this property. It's just down the street from my mom. I'm buying the property as is. It needs some work. This lady comes back as well. We're not interested in selling it at this time. I'm like, nobody's living in it. And it's just getting worse. What are you waiting for? I also will jump on the tax appraisal districts or the tax assessor's office to find how much back taxes owed. And I responded back to, listen, there's nine grand back taxes for at least the last three or four years. You know, I don't want you to lose it. A tax sale. How can I help? Can we. You sure there's not a way that I can come in? I'm. Like I said, I'm willing to buy it as is and create a win win here if there's a possibility. No response back yet, but that's okay. I got her cell phone number. I can always leave her a phone call. I'm not going to sit here and bash, bash, bash, bash her. If she said no already, I'll give her a week and I'll just follow up with her on a text message. I also found her Facebook profile center, a message on Facebook just to touch base. Sometimes Facebook is nice or LinkedIn is nice because they can click on your profile and see what you're doing, who you are, versus just a blind text message. They may not know exactly who it is, but I always say, hey, I'm Scott Carson. You know, if this is in an area that I'm from, I'm like, hey, I grew up in Ingleside. I grew up in there. Like I said, my mom was down the street. And that came in really handy in sharing who I was with. The third property, which I found out the lady's name, she lived nearby. She was the co only sole owner of the property. I couldn't find a phone number I thought worked. I found what I thought was a cell phone number. So I sent a text message. No meaning response back. So what I do is when I, when they give you a mailing address for a property, a physical address, I will google map it. And luckily I did. I google mapped it and up popped this property address. And inside it said like boat repairs. It was a bigger lot in a business. And there was a phone number on the sign. Well now the picture was a couple years old. Like, oh, is the phone number gonna even work? But a business, they're probably not going to change their phone number too much, right? So sure enough, I called the phone number. A guy answered the phone. I said, hi, my name is Scott Carson. I'm looking for such and such person who's supposedly is the owner of this property on such and such street. He's like, yep, that's my wife. I'm like, oh great. Well, he goes, well, that house was previously owned by my, my Wife and her first husband. He passed away back in 2018. She moved with me. 2019, fell behind because of COVID We. I mean, he literally. I didn't say a word. He literally just gave me the whole story, says, yeah, we fell behind. Then Covid kicked in, and the lender is USA they started the foreclosure process, but they won't give us a payoff. They change the locks. We go back and change the locks and need some work. It needs to. Part of the house needs to be torn down because it's his back addition. I was just sitting there listening to the guy. I was like, oh, wow, okay, great. I said, is this your. And I'd send a text message to cell phone. I said, I don't mean to rub. I came across this number. Is this your wife's number? He's like, yes, it is. I said, well, I sent her a text message. She may not respond back. You know, I may not respond back to a strange text message, but can you have her give me a phone call? You know, my number. This is in the same thing. My mom was down the street. I'm interested in potentially buying the property and seeing where it is. Well, sure enough, like, less than five minutes later, the lady responded to my text message, and she's like, oh, my husband told me you called. Yes, I am that person. And so we're going back and forth via text message, back and forth. And she's like, yeah, I owe, like, 170 on it. That's from last year. Here's my loan number. I had a realtor that's trying to help me out, but USA wouldn't work with me. And, you know, she sends me a screenshot of her, like, her last mortgage statement, which is over, like, a year, year and a half old. And I'm like, well, okay, I understand. Now. One thing you got to know is there's a property about the same square footage right across the street or diagonal to it that's listed on the MLS for 385. It's. It's basically an estate sale. Both borrowers passed away in the last month. Two elderly people went. The house is in pristine condition. My mom actually has been inside of it. There's over, like, 30 photos online. So I have a pretty good comp of what that property would be like at the top of the market. Right? Well, this house is not nearly that. Okay. And the lady I was talking to the owner, she's like, yeah, it needs a full rehab. It is outdated that last the back part of the house needs to be torn down or redone completely. And I had seen, as I'd walked around the house on Sunday, I'm like, okay, great. You know, there must be a property management company. I'm like, yeah, I saw that. Got their phone number, called them. They wouldn't give me any information, which is very normal for a property management company. But I at least have it because I'm going to use this as fodder when I talk to the bank or in this case, usaa. All right, so I see that she only owes, like, a year of back taxes, I guess. I said, you know, I'm asked to be texted, are the taxes all paid up? She's like, I think so. We haven't paid them, but I think the bank has. It's like, have they given. Do you have any reason why they haven't foreclosed on you yet so far? She's like, no, we don't know. Just want to get out from underneath of this. I'm like, huh? She wants to get out of it. I said, do you have the money to rehab? It's like, no, not. Not to bring it current or rehab it. We don't have that at that point. Like, I understand. Well, let me see what I can do for you. Because I'm thinking, okay, she probably signed the property over. If I were able to buy the note, deed it over to me, and I can let her walk on 170, 190, or whatever the debt is. If. If USA won't play ball with me, I can at least tell her, like, listen, let's get you out from underneath this. And how am I going to tell her to get out from beneath this? I'm going to literally tell her. If USA won't play ball with me, I'm like, just go deed the property back. You don't have to wait on USA to do this. You can literally. We can create a deed in Lou. You sign it, notarize it, and then scan a copy and go file it at the county. Indeed, the property back to avoid a foreclosure. It's a friendly foreclosure. It saves USA money. And now USA owns a property, but USA hasn't done that. I mean, it's in Texas. It's the fastest foreclosure state in the country. I don't know why they haven't. I haven't done this. But anyway, just giving you some mindset. So, like I said, I have. I've got this lady's number. She's been very responsive. What Did I do? I immediately went online to LinkedIn and I started searching for USAA pull the company up and I look at job titles and I find about 10 people names in their contact well their LinkedIn profiles and I I could basically call USA and try to track somebody down there tomorrow via their automated teller line. But I got their names and I went and either I sent a connection request or sent them an inmail and said hey I'm interested in part of the title that I put in the link list and say interested in buying the note on what are the loan number is and the address and the borrower's name said hey I'm interested in buying the note on this property. It's in rough shape. I believe the payoff is roughly around this amount. The borrower is this name. It's been in default for over four years with you guys. I'd love to talk about buying the note because it needs the property is a lot of work and so I sent like I said it's in about 10 I actually did send 10 messages to USA special asset managers or secondary marketing people. I'll give them a day and then I'll follow up and just see if I can't get somebody on the phone tomorrow to respond back to my request and get the ball rolling now what will I do in the meantime? I immediately reached out to my realtor friend in the area center. The address told her hey just give me some quick comps on what 1400 square foot house is going to be worth. So I have some numbers if I need to get photos of the property to prove my point I'll go back to the bar. I don't think she's opposed to me going in and changing the locks again. She said to do it but sending a locksmith and changing the locks and then getting interior photos to help my case when negotiating on this note. Now if the house is worth it in pristine condition that's a different story. It might make sense to figure it see how far behind is what's the rear. Just could I take it over Subject to probably you know that's probably not the case. It's more probably a note purchase. Take it over and then get a deed lieu from the borrower in that case because they're not going to be able to make up the rare just or make up the repairs obviously and just say hey let me just forgive you this debt. You can walk and not owe anything on it and your credit we'll be back tomorrow because that was one thing that popped up. They're still reporting this late to their credit. So it's immediately hurting this lady's credit. And she's between a rock and a hard place, between not being able to get paid. And then, of course, USA is just dragging this thing out. So that's a process. Now. One of the things I did, like I said, I jumped on white pages. I typed in the person's name. Whitepages.com is free, but it gives you more information. Actually register for an account with white pages. So white pages actually gave me information on family around the area. Found out that this lady graduated from Aransas Pass high school in 98. When I was talking to her husband, her husband's like, oh, yeah, she went to Ingleside and was. I guess I went to high school. She might have been a freshman when I was a senior, because I graduated in 95, and she was in Ingleside at the time and went to high school there as a freshman before transferring to the high school. So it was kind of funny back and forth a little bit. The other lady I talked to in the house, she's like, oh, when did you go to Ingleside? And I said, she's, oh, we graduated way before you. I was like, yeah. But I also was able to say, like, you know, hey, my dad owned the local hardware store. And that rang a bell. I saw some mutual friends with other people on their Facebook profiles with people that are local, which, this is great. This. This works if you're from an area and you're working in ugly properties in area. But that's the thing is just trying to get the ball rolling. I had my realtor pooling comps in all three of these properties to get a bit of an idea of what they true after repair value. I don't like to usually target a lot of property, but this is an area that I'm very comfortable with that properties are going up and they haven't dipped. Like, I had a good conversation. My realtor, she's like, yes, Scott, it slowed down from maybe a month to 90 days, just. But stuff is still moving. There's still people moving in the area because it's the coast and there's plenty of distressed property in this neck of the woods. You know, just a lot of older people, smaller homes. I gave. I asked her about if a lot of rehabs or people are moving in. She's gonna send me a rental update on it. So I have an idea of kind of rent rates. I gave her specific areas heading near the high school near elementary places that I could take a look at. And so it was a really great conversation. I happened to graduate with this realtor in high school, so we caught up a little bit. So she's glad to pull that information for me at no cost because if I end up needing an agent on it, she's gonna be the one that I use and it's going to be a win win for it. So that's kind of thing. Like I said, find the name. If I, if I didn't have contact with all three of these, then the next step would be to go on to the recorder's office and typing in the borrower's name and the address to find out the deed, any deeds on file or any mortgages on file. I know that one's a reverse mortgage on the one where the lady. The husband's deceased, but the wife is in the nursing home. No, there's a reverse mortgage on. They've been letting their cousin kind of stay there for a couple years, but the cousin is in Alaska and not living in the house. That's why I reached out because the house was vacant and you tell nobody been in the driveway for at least a year. So as. And that's what you can do. I mean you can send a letter. I'd like to be a little bit more direct with a phone call, an email, text message, social media, because I want to speed these things up while it's hot in my mind and get the ball rolling and then I can just follow up with them as need be. And like I said, I'll keep them in the loop. If I'm negotiating something or look at something, I'll negotiate with them. You know, some of these people, you know, especially if people have an older house, people have a lot of sentimental value, emotional equity, right. And we want to hold on to some things. Oh, I'll wait. Like, look, the house is worth this, okay, if it was fully updated, here's what it's worth. You owe this much right now. It's, it's not worth that. Look, let me buy this from you at what you owe or let me take this over or let me give you a little something for your time. But you know, if you don't play ball with me, you're going to end up losing it. Tax sale or just going to depreciate worse in value. And that's not a win win situation. I guarantee there's not insurance on these three properties. They're not able to claim an insurance. You know, some of these have probably been vacant since heart, since Harvey rolled through Aransas past. I know one of them probably has because the roof looked like it. But I'm going to be very conservative on the numbers of the properties that need work because obviously it's gotten more expensive for roofing materials. I think my mom paid 170 just for one bundle of shingles to cover a pump house. It's ridiculous. So I have to be very, very concerned in my numbers. Now what's my long term plan on these? Maybe I, I do buy them and since they're all in a geographic area it would make sense to have as a rental. Like the lady I know there, she does a part, you know, property management. I want it to be a very active landlord. I could have somebody that's very, very passive. Maybe I flip a couple, maybe I keep them, maybe we move into one as a, keep it as an Airbnb and we just hang out there when we go down to see my mom. There's a whole variety of things but you know, as the world turns, as time goes on, I'll get more information to share what it is. But that's the thing, guys. Check the property address, find the borrowers, do a quick skip trace. Didn't cost me anything except a little bit of time and you know, Google white pages, spokeo.com social media looking for obituary from the bars you think they've passed that will often give it. In the past I've reached out to obituary too and they, I couldn't find any information on the errors and so I reached out to the, you know, the funeral home and they wouldn't release any information. I said okay, well can you at least pass my information on to them and if they don't reach out to me, I won't bother them. And I did that in the past trying to negotiate a deed in lieu on a property. Oh well, we still end up going to foreclosure on it. The heirs didn't reach out, but that's okay. But this way I'm in contact with, with owners, family members of all three of these properties. I've got, like I said, another about six, six to a dozen that we're looking at that'll be working through. But this is the thing, if you see some stuff, it's worth taking time. If I don't find any information, I could always send a letter, hopefully gets forwarded. You know, that's the thing to look too. If they, if they got mail accumulating, you know, there's not really a forwarding address. And that way, you know, there's a lot of mail message, you know, there newspapers or notices. Sometimes look at the notices. I'm not saying open the mailbox and violate any federal laws or anything like that, but look at what's posted, look what you see. Talk to the next door neighbors. I had one of the neighbors wave at me and tell me like, oh, he passed away and she's in a nursing home. I said, well, would you have any contact information? They were like, no. I was like, okay, well I just, Mom's down the street. That's the important thing. You don't get shot at. Shot at twice. Not going to be properties, but hopefully I can turn one of these in a note sale. Maybe I take one over. Subject to. Maybe I can. If anything I can help these families out of a bad situation because these properties are not getting any better to look at the longer they stay there. And that's the goal, guys, right, Is to turn lemons into lemonade and turn problem properties in a profitable solution. So if you need some help, guys, feel free to reach out to me. TalkwithScottCarson.com you'd be surprised at times how many times people call me on some deals like this if you don't know who the. If you're doing a research on an asset and you think it's a note sale, at least do the research of the county records yourself and let me know who the lender is. Let me know if you know the borrower's name. If you know this information, that's great. The more information you can get before you call me or reach out to me, the faster I can help you out or I can tell you yes or no. If it's bank of America, Chase City, Wells Fargo, I'm sorry, not gonna be able to buy a note from any of those bigwigs. They're just way too big and too cumbersome to find the right contact. But smaller banks, regional banks, give them a lot better luck and we'll go from there. And especially if the bank. I have a relationship, you know, or I've had a relationship in the past is worth reaching out to. But anyway, that's a little bit of the 411 on researching ugly vacant properties. And I hope it was helpful. Like I said, the websites, we use Netra online to get to the county records, the tax assessors, you know, the county recorders, spokeo.com whitepages.com and then of course using Google to find an obituary or to find any family members and of course jumping on social media to find that they have any LinkedIn Facebook profiles. The folks that are 35 or greater will usually have a Facebook or LinkedIn profile. If it's a younger group, they're probably not going to have it because Facebook's not as popular with the youth and it's harder to find this stuff. But at least you can often sometimes, like I said, look for family members on Whitepages.com they may list the neighbors and or give you, you know, potential family members or co or people that live with them or have lived with them past or possible other addresses to search for. So hopefully that helps you guys. You can always pay one of those websites to run a quick report. I find it valuable. I can often find enough information for contact information and other stuff without having to pay the 499 or the 999 that a lot of those like white pages or spokeo pop ups will show. All right, so hopefully that helps you guys go out, take some action and we'll see you at the top. Bye, Sam.