Skip tracing services online are a great way to generate leads, but there are some people who are still unconvinced. Here are some reasons why a skip tracer is a profitable investment for real estate agents. But first…
Is Skip Tracing Legal?
In general, skip tracing is legal in the United States if a homeowner’s data was collected using legal means. Skip tracers online will usually try to access both private and public databases, and the good ones will usually do this by going through legal channels.
Many public databases are accessible via the internet, but some might require a request from a court. Meanwhile, private databases will require the skip tracer to try and talk the data provider into handing them over the data, provided it doesn’t breach any existing contracts.
If at any point in the skip tracing process an illegal move is made, you could potentially be staring down the barrel of a lawsuit. This is why a trustworthy online skip tracer is needed to ensure that every part of the process is legally above board.
Once you’ve found an online skip tracer that you could trust to generate legal leads, here are some of the best reasons why hiring a skip tracer is a great move for real estate investors.
It’s the Best Value-For-Money Investment You Could Make
In general, abandoned properties sell for less than active properties depending on the amount of wear-and-tear and whether the property has any outstanding liens and outstanding accounts. However, because of the pandemic, many properties in urban areas are being deemed ‘abandoned’ despite not being abandoned for very long. In general, a property can be considered “abandoned” if it’s been left vacant for 90 days or more, especially if mail sent to the property gets returned to sender.
With many companies shifting to a remote work scheme and people moving back to their home states, a lot of residential and commercial properties are being deemed abandoned and selling for a lower price point than normal. However, with the end of the pandemic in sight, many people are starting to move back into cities, meaning that these once-abandoned buildings are primed for higher resale values than normal.
This also means that skip tracing is fast becoming a valuable tool to find these properties and get you in touch with their owners. With the right marketing skills and skip tracing, you can convince these owners that their properties still have worth.
Skip The Leg Work And The Guesswork
Ask any veteran realtor who cut their teeth in the real estate game pre-internet and they’ll tell you: generating leads is hard. So hard, in fact, that real estate companies would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to data collection agencies to help them generate leads. If a real estate company couldn’t afford it, or if you were a solo agent trying to go at it alone, you had to rely on door-to-door inquiries, driving around neighborhoods for ‘For Sale’ signs, giving out fliers up and down Main street.
Generating leads is an arduous, tedious, and often unrewarding task. A lot of the times, the amount of money and effort you would put into generating a lead the ‘old-fashioned’ way wasn’t very commensurate to the kind of lead you would generate.
Thankfully, with skip tracing, you eliminate a lot of the leg work and guesswork in lead generation. This is because skip tracing allows you to collate only relevant data (i.e. owners of abandoned properties who are interested to turn a profit). This is done by using computers and the internet, which means you drastically decrease the physical effort involved in data collection while increasing the chances of generating a high-quality, potentially profitable, lead.
Your Competition Isn’t Using It…Yet
Here’s the thing about skip tracing: there’s still a lot of real estate agents and companies out there that aren’t on board. They could have their reasons: maybe they have a system in place that is working for them, they have a network of quid quo pro with their community, or simply, they just don’t understand how it works.
But that’s actually good news for you, because it means you get to be an early adopter. Interest and success with skip tracing has been growing steadily over the past few years, which means you can drastically increase your chances of being able to turn a profit faster than your competition. Post-pandemic, America is fast becoming a buyer’s market, and there’s a lot of leads out there that are just waiting for a call from a realtor like yourself.
Skip Trace Your Way To Success With Best Skip Tracer!
Best Skip Tracer is one of the leading providers of skip tracing services online. We work directly with multiple data providers to get the most relevant data for your real estate needs. We offer different levels of service that scale depending on how many leads you generate. Learn more about how Best Skip Tracer can do for you by going to our About Us and Pricing pages!