Question 1

What is the difference between skip tracing and contact-data match append?

Accepted Answer

A match append is one automated step. A provider matches your owner or property record against its own data and attaches the phone numbers and emails it finds. Skip tracing is the wider effort to locate and reach someone who is hard to find. It can begin with an append and continue into address research, returned mail and manual searching when the appended contacts fail. The name on a product won't tell you which of the two you're buying. Vendors sell overlapping products under both labels, and PropertyRadar's guide to skip tracing calls its own built-in phone and email lookup a match-append. Compare products by what goes in, what comes back and what you're charged.

Question 2

How can I test a skip-tracing provider's accuracy before buying a large list?

Accepted Answer

Send the same file of owner records to each provider in the same week. Call the numbers that come back under one written protocol, and count how many owners you reached. Then compare providers on two results: the share of owners reached, and what each reached owner cost. Count an owner once however many numbers came back, so a provider that returns four numbers per record gets no credit for volume.

Question 3

Why does skip tracing return multiple, wrong, or disconnected phone numbers for one property owner?

Accepted Answer

A skip trace typically matches the owner's name and address against contact data and returns the phone numbers on file for the match. Several numbers come back because several are on file. A wrong number has a few possible explanations: the match landed on a different person, the number belongs to another contact on the record, or the line has since passed to a new subscriber. A disconnected number means the line is out of service now, whoever held it before. One call seldom tells you which of these happened, so read the pattern across all the numbers on a record.

Question 4

What should you collect before skip tracing a property owner?

Accepted Answer

Collect five things for each property before you pay for a skip trace or contact-data append: the state, county and assessor's parcel number (APN), the site address with its city or ZIP code, the owner name exactly as the county records it, the owner's mailing address, and the ownership type. The parcel number and site address identify the property. The name and mailing address are what you check a returned contact against. The ownership type tells you which rows name an entity, where a lead on who acts for an LLC or trust is worth adding when you can find one.

Skip Tracing & Owner Contact

What is the difference between skip tracing and contact-data match append?

How can I test a skip-tracing provider's accuracy before buying a large list?

Why does skip tracing return multiple, wrong, or disconnected phone numbers for one property owner?

What should you collect before skip tracing a property owner?