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Use Absentee Homeowner Lists to Build and Market Your Real Estate Investment Business

How to make an Absentee Homeowner Lists

Absentee Owner Lists for Real Estate Investors

Absentee Homeowners are a potential source of good deals for real estate investors, especially owners who no longer want to manage the property.

Direct Marketing is the best way for a real estate investor to contact potentially motivated sellers about buying their property. An Absentee Homeowners Mailing List is one of the most fruitful target audiences. Furthermore, they can be effective for BRRR, Wholesaling, Rental and Fix ‘n Flip and realtor listing strategies.

Real estate investors can keep their pipelines full by using absentee owner lists. These lists are also a great source of leads for agents and property managers. 

Direct mail, email and telemarketing can be very effective. Of course, the list is very important so you are contacting the right people who are likely to be motivated sellers.

What are the best lists to find motivated sellers?

• Absentee Homeowners with EquityOwners with Low Economic Stability Indicators
• Seniors with 15+ Year Ownership
• Pre-foreclosure

ABSENTEE HOMEOWNERS Mailing List- This is our topic of focus. They are the #1 list for REI. However, they also make great sources of leads for agents and property managers. Once you get a mailing list, you will have several options to market to them. 

Why are Absentee Owner Leads so good for Real Estate Investors?

Absentee homeowners are more likely to want to sell their property. So many find that being a landlord can be grueling and just aren’t interested any more. Obviously, the easy out is to sell. They might be thinking about selling; however, may not have taken any action. 

There are plenty of potential benefits of investing in real estate, such as the potential for monthly rental income and tax benefits, but the truth is that not everyone is cut out to be a real estate investor.

Consequently, reaching out to absentee homeowners with the right marketing message is effective and much more affordable compared to the blanket direct mailing with generic messaging, or even cold calling every homeowner.

What Is an Absentee Owner?

Absentee owners or Absentee Homeowners are people who own a property but don’t live in it. They have a separate primary mailing address where the tax bill is sent. Absentee owner properties are also known as non-owner-occupied propertiesproperties.

There are many reasons as to people become absentee owners. The property could be a vacant house, a rental, vacation home, or an inherited property.

Additional examples of absentee home owners in real estate would include:

• Absentee landlords: For example the remote real estate investors who invest in markets where property prices are relatively more affordable and the potential return are far greater than the local market mean.
• Out of Town Homeowners: Homeowners who once lived in a location and then for some reason relocate to another location but find it hard to let go of the property and decide to keep it and and use it as an investment property by renting it and not selling it right away.
• Absentee by Inheritence or Accidental Investors: People who become owners by inheriting a property that’s either vacant or could be a rental and they decide to take a swing at being a real estate investors themselves, sometimes. We often call them “accidental-investors.”
• Real estate investment trusts (REITs) with publicly-traded shares on the stock exchanges.
• Crowdfunding companies that pool together money from groups of individual investors to purchase, develop, lease, and manage large projects, such as a build-to-rent subdivision.

 

Ways To Determine The Property Type ?

To determine which property types are which, you often must use common sense and location. Unfortunately, public records do not have a specific set of criteria available to clarify the property type.

It’s safe to assume that properties are long-term rentals if they aren’t near vacation or tourist attractions or other areas where people might be visiting – like a college or university.

• You can most likely determine if the property that is located in a a vacation destination or tourist spot, and the owner doesn’t own any other properties in the area, it’s probably a vacation home
• Short term rentals can usually be identified if the property is in a vacation area and the owner has several non-owner-occupied properties.

Like every rule there will always be exceptions to all of the above, but even just by focusing on absentee homeowners, you will have already improved the targeting of your marketing tremendously.

Absentee Owners are Motivated Sellers

An absentee homeowner can be a great potential client to many. When you talk about a real estate investors, they can offer to buy the home of an absentee owner. 

A real estate agent can certainly offer to list the home of an absentee owner. Meanwhile, if there is a property manager, they can offer to manage the home of an absentee owner.

Following are a few of the reasons why Absentee Owners are great targets for both Real Estate Investors, Realtors and Property Management companies. 

• A Real Estate Investor can offer to sell or buy their home directly. 
• Real Estate Agents and brokers should approach them to list the property. 
• Property Management Companies can offer to take care of rental and maintenance services. This can be particularly impactful with out-of-state owners.

There are multiple opportunities to leverage when you reach out to absentee owners and generate more business. Read below are a few examples of why an absentee owner might be motivated to sell:

1. Problem tenants and vacancy can lead to landlord fatigue. 
2. Current rental agreements may not be providing the ROI that they were expecting from a current property
3. New laws such as rent control or tenant rights can cause frustration. As cost goes up, they can’t raise the rent to compensate current business cost and income requirements.
4. Less emotionally attached than owner occupied —the property is an investment, and they may now see better opportunities and want to cash out their investment dollars.
5. Vacation homes can get expensive. Owners may be less interested in the property after a number of years. This can be especially true when the kids have grown and gone.
6. Inherited property isn’t always the most welcome asset. If no wants to move into the home, heirs often want to liquidate to split the proceeds among multiple people.

Tired Landlords

Some novice real estate investors aquire a rental property without properly vetting and doing indepth market analysis and studying the financial documenta and some key metrics like cap rate, cash on cash return,IRR and the CAP. They may get inspired when they might have watched a late-night infomercial or home investing show on Youtube or TV , wake up the next morning and decide to become a real estate mogul like Tony Robbins.

Because of the fact they didn’t do their proper due diligence, some absentee real estate homeowners end up with a rental real estate property that they haven’t been able to find tenants for, even though the property has great potential. Tired property owners can be the best type of absentee homeowner.

Many a times, people are just tired of being landlords and managing their own rental property. Dealing with tenants are not always easy especially when they weren’t screened properly, chasing tenants for monthly rent, taking care of repairs takes a tremendous amount of money, money and add to their stress. 

Consequently, some absentee owners just get fed up and may be willing to sell to the first investor who approaches them and makes a decent offer on the home.

Weary Heirs Are Motivated Sellers

Accidental Home owners or Accidental Owners who Inherited real estate with high taxes or maintenence can also be at times good source of good deals for experienced real estate investors, because as heirs they they have no emotional bond to the property. 

Heirs who become overnight “accidental real estate investors” may like the idea of inheriting a investment property especially when it’s a rental property, but they typically don’t know the first thing about real estate investing. Subsequently, they may view the inherited property more of a liability rather than an asset. 

Inherited property is often received free and clear with no mortgage liability, or with a large amount of equity. Because of this reason, the heir almost always views such real estate received from their loved one as a treasure’ “found money” and may be willing to cash out if the right offer comes along & why not. So if you get a lead of such owners give them the right offer and they may be willing to sell. 

An Inherited Property Mailing List can be useful for investors and realtors. This list includes Interfamily-transfers and other transfers significantly below market value. 

When you tap in the market of absentee owners, you will notice that not every absentee owner will be willing to sell or require your service. However, when we compare absentee homeowner properties to owner-occupied properties, it’s easy to see why so many opportunities abound. You need to reach out to them with the mindset that Absentee homeowners aren’t selling their own homes, but rather an investment that is ready to be divested. Sell this idea to them about divesting the investment and then you have a funnel.

How and Where To Find Absentee Owners

Now that must understand the different types of absentee owners / homeowners and what would fit your business model, but the question remains…how do you find them?  

These are some of the ways that you can go about it. Some of these are extremely time consuming. 

Obviously, you will need to evaluate what your time is worth. You might want to try to build your own small list. However, when you account the value of your time, it might actually become cheaper to obtain an Absentee Homeowners Mailing List from a qualified mailing list broker.

Furthermore, when you work with a broker, you can easily specify characteristics such as home value, equity and owner age to easily get your customized list of Absentee Homeowner leads. 

The County Tax Assessor’s Office

Most reliable source and to find this resource in your area or your county, simply Google the name of your county + “tax records,”+ “tax assessor,” “check tax records,” or “search tax records.”

You would spend hours and hours combing through data. You can look up property tax records online; however, you are typically only allowed to view one property at a time, which often does not show the details of the property, such as, the owner’s name or mailing address.

Another issue, if you need a list of hundreds or thousands of records, is that some of the counties charge a per record fee to pull the information. If you are only pulling few of the records, it may be worthwhile financially to do on your own. If you are a professional and need numerous records, you may pay a lot of money and obtain information on properties that do not meet the criteria you need. 

Browse Long-term Rental Listings

You can sometimes find absentee owners, while not typically considered an absentee owner list, by browsing rental listings on Zillow, apartment.com or any local paper or any popular local website.

Always be on the look out for the listings that appear to be posted by an individual landlords as opposed to a property management companies. This works for the contact of the owners but rarely works to build a list of potential sellers, as these listings usually don’t include the address or owner contact information.

Browse Airbnb and VRBO 

You can find the information of owners of short-term rentals on short term rental websites like VRBO and Airbnb  . However, with short-term rentals, unfortunately often-times you will not get the address for the property, nor the owner’s address. Another way to find these owners would be to drive a general area or possibly use Google or maps to match the address to the picture.

It is probably best to use this approach when these owners do not have a steady income stream, such as during the off-season.

Driving for Dollars

You can hire a Bird Dog to go driving around communities looking for properties. Alternatively, if you are not working and don’t have money to invest in marketing, you can get in your car to drive around.

There are some things you will want to look for when driving around an area searching for non-owner-occupied properties. It truly depends on the type of property you are interested in, there are certain things you’ll want to look out for:

• vacant properties where the yards haven’t been kept up
• for rent signs
• run-down property
• signs of older residents such as ramps to the door

There are several steps to get in touch with a property that you have identified. Occasionally it could be as simple as knocking on a door or leaving a door tag if the property is owner occupied. 

However, most times it gets more complex. First, you need to record the address and a description of the property along with a note why you are interested. Second, you need to find the owner and their contact information. This can be very difficult if the county property records aren’t complete.

You can save time, rather than driving around and taking notes, and spend some money buying absentee owner lists.

Cold Calling

While cold calling can be an aggravating task, it gives investors the potential to get in touch with a prospect. The prospect might not be familiar with you or your business, but the goal is to find that prospect who is interested in selling their property to you.

There can be various circumstances that an owner might be open to selling their property but haven’t had the time to research or know where to start. A landlord may be aggravated with the concept of renting and working with various tenants. Doing a little research regarding the property you are interested in is always a good idea before contacting the owner. Consider looking into cold calling best practices to turn a cold call into a warm conversation.

Buy a List of Absentee HomeOwners/Absentee Homeowners Mailing List

A list broker like ListAbility or real estate data provider is one of the easiest ways to reach absentee owners through their custom Absentee Homeowner Lists. You can purchase a pre-built list of Absentee Homeowner Lists. The lists will vary in quality due to the quantity of times the vendors update the lists. The effort in curating such list itself pays for itself.

Working off of an old list can be challenging, and often basic absentee owner lists get sold over and over again to tens, and sometime even hundreds of other businesses like real estate investors or property management companies. This means you may be competing for the same stale leads with potentially hundreds of other businesses. If you’re a serious business owner who would need fresh, undiscovered leads to fill your pipeline, this may not be an ideal situation.

It’s best to find a vendor where you can custom build multiple absentee owner lists like ListAbility. You can create your lists custom to what you need with various types of targeting criteria like home value, age of the owner, amount of equity in a home, length of ownership, and other criteria you feel is essential in locating your ideal customer.

It is also wise to target owners and segment your lists, by those absentee owners whose mailing address is in another city, county, or state. These clients are more likely to be motivated to sell and need your help.

You’ll get deeper understanding of the owner’s needs and/or challenges. That will allow you to better tailor your marketing messages to each list and this will put you ahead of the competition who are all reaching out with the same generic messaging.

Discovering and building multiple segmented absentee owners reports (without paying for every list) is just one of the many reasons professionals use ListAbility.

What are common segments used to build an Absentee Homeowner Mailing List?

ListAbility offers many segments for motivated seller leads. You will have many options within just the Absentee Owners.

• Property Location: specify where you want to invest. Choose counties, cities, zips or radius around an address.
• Home Value: Consider the average home price ranges in your area. Most investors want to be within the median; however, some prefer the very low end bargains or the most expensive properties at the high end of the scale. This, of course, this is based on what an investor might want to do with the property.
• Property type: Perhaps your investment strategy leans toward single family homes. You might also be interested in multi-family homes, mobile homes or condominiums.

Equity: Most real estate investors look for absentee owners with equity in the property. This is because the owner won’t have as large of a loan in comparison to the home value. Subsequently, they may be willing to take a lower offer. 

•  Equity is calculated using Loan to Value (LTV). This compares the amount of the most recent total loans to the current home market value. LTV of 0-59% (at least 41% equity) is generally recommended. 

Are Absentee Homeowners good leads for wholesale investors?

Definitely, yes, wholesale investors are able to identify prospects for properties to help their wholesaling business.

Are Absentee Homeowners good leads for fix and flip investors?

Absolutely, absentee properties are good for an investor looking to fix and flip. In fact, when the owner isn’t living in the house, quite often they fall behind on maintenance and updates. This provides the opportunity to “fix” with your own personal touches.

Are Absentee Homeowners good leads for BRRR investors?

Absentee owners are great leads for BRRR investors. Many are in neighborhoods that are attractive to renters.

Are Absentee Homeowners good leads for Short Term Rental investors?

Indeed, many absentee owner properties are in the perfect location for short term rentals.

Are Absentee Homeowners good leads for bird dogs?

Yes, bird dogs can definitely hunt down property owners who want to sell their properties and then pass that lead along.

Is an Absentee Owner List useful for Virtual Assistants?

Yes, a Virtual Assistant can use a list of absentee owners to make follow up contact. This can be especially useful when you skip trace to add phones and email addresses.

What is the best source for an Absentee Homeowner Mailing List?

ListAbility.com utilizes the nation’s primary data compilers for motivated seller lists including Absentee Owner Lists. These accurate leads include Absentee Homeowner Lists, Owners with Low Economic Stability Indicators, Seniors with 15+ Year Ownership and Foreclosure leads.

ListAbility provides accurate motivated seller lists

All our lists, owner occupied as well as non-owner-occupied leads undergo rigorous quality control standards.

ListAbility doesn’t require subscriptions.

Our Pay-as-you-go business model is preferred by investors who don’t expect that they will be ordering new lists every month. Volume discounts are available for high-volume real estate investors who order lists on a regular basis.

No long-term commitments or financial obligations.

ListAbility offers you choices

Furthermore, ListAbility provides options for how you work with us. You can choose to use ListAbilityOnline.com to run your own reports and place orders. Alternatively, you can complete a form with the criteria you want, or you can call one of our expert representatives can offer suggestions and do the work for you.

Run your own reports on ListAbilityOnline.com

1.  Video tutorials can help you pull your own lists. Run as many reports as you want to look at various options. You don’t pay for anything until you order a list for download.

Call, email or fill out a form.

1.  Let ListAbility know what you are looking for. We can offer suggestions and then send over a report that will show how many are available and provide a price quotation. Next, when everything is right, we’ll send you an invoice then email the list to you.

Can you get phone numbers and email addresses for Absentee Homeowner Lists?

Yes, some mailing lists will come with the option of getting phones and emails. However, since that tends to limit the number of people you can contact, it is considered best practices to get the Absentee Owners Mailing List and then add phones and email where available.

What is Skip Tracing for Real Estate Investors?

While the term “skip tracing” in the traditional sense came from the profession of “tracing down people who skipped out on bills”, it has taken on 2 definitions for REI.

Track down the contact information for the owners of specific properties:

If you have a list of properties that you are interested in, perhaps from Driving for Dollars, your next step is to figure out how to contact people. To start, you probably have a list with just the property addresses. They may have tenants or be abandoned and vacant so you can’t knock on the door.

Your first step can be to head down to the office of the county assessor and the registry of deeds. Of course, this will usually result in finding a mailing address. However, believe it or not, many people move without providing a new mailing address for their tax bills. Next you can hit the internet. There are lots of  free or low-cost providers out there to help you search. Of course, many of them require a name to start.

If you don’t have luck with your own research, you can hire a company to get contact info for you. A skip trace professional will typically start by looking through a number of public resources, such as credit reports, DMV records, public property records, loan applications, background checks, job applications, court records and utility bills. The cost will vary according to the provider.

FindTheSeller.com is one example of a company doing individual property skip tracing for investors.

Appending phones and email to a list of properties

This is commonly known as “bulk skip tracing”. You can easily append a list you have created or one you obtained from a mailing list broker. The prerequisite for the bulk skip tracing is that you already have the basic contact information on the property owner.

The first step is to upload the mailing list you want to append. Be sure to have the name, address, city, state and zip codes all in their own columns. Next, the skip tracing will port the file to a national database with phones and emails gathered from multiple sources. Following this, they will append the information back on to your list. Lastly, your original list will be returned to you with the available phones and emails added to it.

Certainly, the appended list will enable you to conduct multiple campaigns to get the attention of your potential seller.

Bulk Skip Tracing for Absentee Homeowner Lists

Bulk skip tracing is used when a real estate investor has a mailing list of potential sellers that they want to append additional contact information. For instance, they have a list of property owners with both the property address and mailing address but want to add phone numbers and email addresses.

 How does Bulk Skip Tracing Work?

The comprehensive phone and email databases are built utilizing a myriad of online sources. This is continually updated and cleaned. These files often include multiple phones and emails. For example, they may include those of a spouse or other close relative so you have a better chance of contacting interested parties.

The first step is – Upload your file. Next, the names and addresses will be compared to the phone and email database. Following identifying matches, they are added to your list. Lastly, your list with all your original data is returned to you with the additional phones and emails included.

ListAbility provides Bulk Skip Tracing for real estate investors and others looking to beef up their contact databases.

Motivated Seller List Alternatives to Absentee Homeowner Lists

The Absentee lists have been the go-to list for real estate investors for quite some time. They are still very successful in help to find properties to purchase; however, in some areas, they are contacted by a lot of investors. It might be hard for you to compete with the other offers.

There are also some areas where the county or even the entire state will not provide the information on real estate transactions and ownership. These include Long Island NY counties, South Carolina, Kansas and many other scattered counties around the United States.

Whether you are in one of these areas or are dealing with a competitive real estate landscape, there are other effective motivated seller lists. For instance, one such list is the Owners with Low Economic Stability Indicators.

What is the Absentee Owners with Low Economic Stability Indicator List?

The Absentee Owners with Low Economic Stability list helps to identify homeowners who are struggling financially. These are people who in all likelihood wouldn’t qualify for a mortgage today. Obviously, this indicates that their finances have changed since they bought their house.

Economic Stability Indicator (ESI)

A complex model to select people likely to qualify for an offer based on their financial stability. Economic Stability Indicator (ESI): Experienced Real Estate Investors in the HOT markets are finding that the more popular lists are getting saturated. The Owners with Low Economic Stability Indicator (ESI) List is a good alternative. Since this is a new list to the market, chances are your letter or post card might be the only one in their mailbox.

ESI was originally developed for the credit industry, so for instance, a car dealership would only mail to people likely to be accepted for a loan. We can turn that around to find people who are likely to be struggling financially and might want to sell their home. 

 A two-digit Economic Stability Indicator rank (01-30) is assigned to individual households. A score of “01” indicates the households that are most likely to be economically stable, while a value of “30” indicates those least likely to be economically stable. The ranks are not directly related to credit scores. There are very few owners with a score under 20, as most of those were never able to qualify to purchase one.

How to get the Low ESI List

ListAbility has the ESI data for all of the United States. It has increasingly become one of the more effective lists for Motivated Sellers.

Complete the form on the web page Owners with Low Economic Stability Indicators.

We recommend the following, but you can certainly make changes based on your market:

Geographic Area – choose cities, zips, counties or states. Alternatively, you can specify a radius around a zip code or address.

Owner Occupied and Absentee

Owner age 40-89

High Equity – LTV 0-59% (at least 41% equity plus all loan payments made). Also include property where the county didn’t provide the information needed to calculate equity

Home Value – specify the home market value you want to stay within. For example, $50,000 – $450,000

5+ Year Residence/Ownership

Property type: Single Family Homes are recommended Of course, you can choose to also include multi-family, condos or mobile homes.

Postcard Mail Campaigns

After you have your list, we recommend that you take a look at postcard options. ListAbility has postcard templates for many industries including real estate. Naturally the templates allow you to customize with your information.

Check out the Postcard Templates for Real Estate Investors.

You can also get pricing based on the quantity and size. ListAbility’s Postcard Pricing includes printing and postage. Just upload your list and you are ready to go.

ABOUT LISTABILITY

ListAbility provides quality Absentee Homeowner Lists

ListAbility has aligned with the nation’s most comprehensive and accurate data compilers. In brief, they have been collecting, analyzing and compiling data from numerous sources for 40 or more years. Indeed, our clients have benefited from the ability to optimize their marketing budget by targeting their best prospects. Unquestionably, the accuracy is top notch with monthly updates. Most of our mailing lists include the National Change of Address (NCOA)

 

Furthermore, we have joined forces with some newer compilers. While they might not have all the granularity and choices as our primary vendors, they can include phone and email contact information and the mailing address for your Absentee Homeowner Lists.

 

Ready to buy an Absentee Homeowner Lists?

Call or email one of our List Experts for free advice: 866-446-2055 or info@listability.com or you can contact us from our Contact Page.