Skip Tracing

Skip tracing is the process of finding a property owner's current contact information — phone numbers, emails, or mailing addresses — from public and commercial data sources.

Skip tracing is finding a property owner's current contact information — phone numbers, emails, mailing addresses — when it is not sitting in public view. The name comes from tracking down people who have "skipped" town; in real estate it usually just means connecting an owner's name from county records to a working phone number, using data providers that aggregate public records and other databases.

In a wholesaling pipeline, skip tracing sits between list building and outreach. A wholesaler pulls a list of likely-motivated owners — absentee landlords, pre-foreclosures, probate filings, long-time owners of vacant houses — runs it through a skip-tracing service, and then calls, texts, or mails the results. Data quality varies by provider, and most traces return several numbers per owner, only some of which are live.

What beginners get wrong: they treat skip tracing as the strategy instead of a step. Cheap data plus zero follow-up produces nothing — most deals come from repeated touches over weeks, not the first call. They also ignore compliance: cold calling and texting are regulated, do-not-call rules apply, and the penalties are real, so learn the rules for your outreach channels before you dial (this is not legal advice). Trace good lists, track every contact attempt, and follow up on a schedule. The list is not the deal; the conversations are.