The Art of the Skip Trace.
When I run a direct mail campaign soliciting potential motivated sellers, I typically get close to 10% of my mail returned as not deliverable. People move and leave no forwarding address or perhaps their change of address forward has expired. Whatever the reason, I get a lot of mail returned. Many investors consider these dead leads and throw them away. I consider them little gold nuggets and go after them with a passion . Here’s why, the harder it is to contact a potential motivated seller, the less competition there will be for their business. Most investors look for the low hanging fruit and are not willing to make the extra effort to find hard to find property owners. Once you do locate these potential sellers, they may be very interested in hearing from you since no one else has been able to contact them. But how do you find them when no one else can? It’s called skip tracing. Simply put, skip tracing is the process of locating missing people or people who cannot be located. You can attempt it yourself or utilize a professional service to locate these individuals. Social networks are an excellent place to start. Skip tracing is an art and much too involved to go into detail here. The point is that you must be willing to do what others are not in order to get what others cannot.