2021 Trends: How To Find Off-Market Properties

Fortunately, the process for finding exceptional investment property opportunities has taken a dramatic turn for the better. With demand comes innovation and now anyone looking for income-producing properties has access to the same “big data” as the big Wall Street firms. And even more importantly, this data been simplified and made usable to the real world investor.

It’s one thing to have data. It’s quite another to be able to make sense of it, leverage it in order to gain a competitive advantage – and take action to acquire your next big deal on an investment property.

PiN analyzes billions of data points, pulled from a variety of data sources, on every property across the US. The data is then synthesized, analyzed, graded, and organized to “pinpoint” off-market houses that can be bought for a fraction of retail price. Real estate wholesalers, landlords, hedge funds and fix & flip investors can find properties to buy, rent or quick flip that are NOT available to the general public.

Where does the Off-Market Property Data Come From?

There are literally hundreds of data providers and aggregators that capture data on everything imaginable from property data to information on any of us. We are bombarded in the news of security breaches, and privacy issues involving large retailers, banks, and enterprises like Facebook and Google. In fact, around 75% of the most popular websites use tracking tools, equating to more than 3,000 data points on each one of us. Make no mistake – there is more data than anyone can truly consume.

Real World Real Estate Investment Property Data

The challenge in the world of real estate investing is harnessing all of this data, and focusing only on the data relevant to a specific purpose. This is the foundational element of PiN. PiN is purpose-built by real estate investors – for real estate investors. This seemingly simple starting point, translates into a laser-focused tool that allows PiN to translate billions of data points into a reliable source of off-market property information.

With a very clear focus on the data real estate investors need most, PiN encapsulates information on properties with owners that have mitigating circumstances that can motivate them to sell. Some of the more obvious data comes from the USPS and County Recorder’s offices. Many other sources required modification or repurposing to meet the needs of investors

• Pending Foreclosure
• Vacant Properties
• Absentee Ownership
• Probate and Estate Properties
• Shadow and Zombie Properties
• Courthouse Auctions
• FSBO
• Expired Listings

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Real Estate Data By ZIP CODE

Many real estate investors only work specific markets rather than investing nationwide. ‘PiN Local’ provides data from only the zip codes you are most interested in.  For more info, contact our Customer Success Team at 888-204-7501 Ext 177

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What You’ll Discover Inside PiN

What makes PiN so innovative in today’s real estate investing climate is the wealth of information and even better… the information is constantly updated. This gives investors unprecedented access to quality off-market property data that can be used to regularly locate properties to generate income.

All of this allows real estate investors to quickly and easily find, filter, sort and save properties that meet their investment criteria in any market nationwide. That combined with the wealth of information on each property gives PiN users a huge advantage that can accelerate property acquisitions.

Big Data for Real Estate Investors: Property Information Inside PiN

Depending on the data source, the location and the property, PiN users find key information such as:

• Property Owner’s Information including last known address, phone, email
• Property Info including location, value, debt, equity, purchase date and price

Seller Contact Information

We recognize that getting any available contact information for these motivated sellers is quite valuable. For that reason, we work to provide as much information as we can find. Beyond the property address, whenever possible we include mailing address, email, phone, and even social identities. Keep in mind, there are specific life circumstances that often make contact details extremely difficult to accurately identify. As you can imagine, motivating circumstances like pre-foreclosure, probate or more often puts the contact details for the owner is in flux to say the least.

Ross Hamilton, Attom Data Solutions Housing News Report

Motivated Seller Data

In addition, all properties are identified as falling into any of the following statuses and filters that can indicate seller motivation.

Pre-foreclosure Data

Once a homeowner has missed enough mortgage payments for the lender to initiate the foreclosure process, the property record is added to PiN listed as Pre-foreclosure. We collect this data through analyzing public records filed at every courthouse. We look for Lis Pendens or Notice of Default. These are the documents that lenders must file to start the foreclosure process. Note that each county has different technology and reporting requirements, so timeliness can vary greatly depending on the county, holidays and the county clerk who is adding the data. Pre-foreclosure properties undergo many changes in status as the move through the process from default to full foreclosure. Each day, pre-foreclosure files are reviewed for updates to the file. Unless the homeowner and lender agree to a workout program, the data moves the property from Pre-foreclosure to Auction, whenever an auction date is set for the property to be sold on the courthouse steps. As the Notice of Foreclosure Sale or Notice of Trustee Sale documents are generated, the PiN program updates the foreclosure status from Pre-foreclosure to Courthouse Auction.

This lets you know the homeowner’s motivation to solve their problem is increasing and you need to plan on going to the court house to bid. Because these auction dates may be adjusted or delayed, often without a new document created, Connected Investors will continue to display these properties as Courthouse Auction for an additional 60 days past the auction date. Once the courthouse auction date has passed, we constantly check the record to see if the ownership status has changed. There are 3 possible scenarios. First, if the property is sold at the courthouse auction, a new owner with a sale document is created, and the record is removed from PiN. Secondly, if the property does not sell at auction, the bank takes possession of the property and is listed as shadow inventory.

Shadow Inventory Data

Shadow Inventory is a bank-owned property not yet available for sale to the general public. Each day we check to see if the property has been listed on the MLS. The property will remain in shadow status until the property is sold or listed. If the property is listed for sale, the status will change from shadow inventory to Bank Owned and will stay in this status until it is sold. It’s worth noting that Shadow Inventory and bank-owned properties are almost always vacant.