When it comes to real estate, the phrase “numbers game” is usually applied to the search for properties. However, numbers aren’t particularly valuable to an investor without the right information attached to them.
Before contacting a specific owner, an investor will want to know the address, property type, possible vacancies, tax status, ownership duration, location value, years owned, and more. At the same time, this information may be found in different records or databases that an investor will need to research one by one.
This is where real estate data becomes a valuable tool.
Instead of trying to chase down individual property details, investors can consolidate property data and ownership information with the aim of narrowing their search, finding leads, prioritizing prospects, and streamlining the research process.
In this guide, you’ll learn more about the value of real estate data—what it is, what information it typically includes how it helps real estate investors, and how to build a data-driven property-acquisition plan.
In short, real estate data is information related to:
A property address is usually just the beginning of what an investor will want to know.
Depending on the database and the available real estate data, an investor can look at:
When organized, this type of information can become a valuable resource for:
Based on the type of data, information may vary depending on the source.
Key categories tend to include:
Basic property data typically includes:
All of this assists an investor with choosing the most suitable property for their needs.
Some property types may be much easier to acquire based on an investor’s strategy or financial goals. Understanding the property use can also be critical for determining the best way to engage an owner.
Ownership data includes:
This can be extremely valuable in terms of lead generation, especially when building a list of targeted property leads.
When reviewing property listings, it’s essential to take a close look at the location details and the local market.
Based on the specific area, a property may become more or less desirable for an investor, depending on individual priorities and goals.
A lead or property record typically includes:
For investors interested in pursuing distressed property leads, tax data can be a valuable resource. Based on the specific database, an investor can typically review:
Similarly, vacancy data can be extremely helpful when searching for motivated sellers.
By reviewing vacancy reports and details, an investor can better understand the likelihood of a property being vacant.
This type of information may also help with:
For many investors, it’s also helpful to review property transaction information, including:
This can greatly impact an investor’s ability to research a given property.
Having the ability to access real estate data provides a seemingly never-ending list of potential benefits. Below are just a few of the many ways in which property data can contribute to the success of an investor.
Rather than working in broad strokes, investors can use property data to pinpoint an exact:
This, in turn, can help an investor better understand their market.
As mentioned above, one of the biggest advantages of organizing property data is the ability to build specific criteria for lead generation.
An example of this could be something like:
County + Vacant Properties + Residential Properties
Rather than contacting owners at random, your criteria can assist you with targeting only the types of properties that you’re interested in purchasing.
By providing property data in an organized manner, investors can avoid researching thousands of properties or even pages of data.
Instead, organized data assists in quickly identifying only the properties and leads that might be worth additional research.
Similar to the point above, investors can more easily identify properties of interest using real estate data.
By eliminating those that show little promise, an investor can dedicate more time and effort to those that have higher chances of success.
Rather than dealing with a chaotic mess of spreadsheets, addresses, and property records, an organized database allows an investor to better structure their leads.
You can prioritize based on specific criteria, eliminating records that show little promise while dedicating more time and energy to those that might be more suitable.
In many cases, real estate data can be utilized both before and during the property-acquiring process.
It may be used for:
Below are just a few examples of how an investor can use real estate data for each of these purposes.
An investor can use property data to research a specific area and better understand the type of property that they might be interested in acquiring.
Once a property is identified, an investor should go through the process of researching it in detail.
By using property data, you’ll be able to find information regarding the property address, type of ownership, tax status, location details, or additional relevant data.
When it comes to prospecting, the right property data can greatly assist with generating leads and building potential opportunities.
This can be done by specifying the type of properties that you’re interested in acquiring.
Perhaps the most compelling advantage of property data is the ability to conduct off-market prospecting.
Rather than searching through pages of information, you can use specific criteria to narrow down the search and focus on the most promising opportunities.
Note that off-market prospecting shouldn’t be seen as a method for identifying guaranteed deals, but rather opportunities worth additional research.
When it comes to acquiring distressed properties, you’ll want to focus on researching:
By utilizing multiple records, you can create a list of leads that would benefit from additional research.
Perhaps the single biggest reason why an investor would want to utilize property data is the opportunity it creates for identifying potential off-market property opportunities and narrowing down the search.
When it comes to property data, the most relevant information can always be found in the individual property records. In many cases, property records can either provide information about the property directly or offer a set of additional resources to be explored.
A typical off-market prospecting campaign typically looks like this:
You may want to narrow down the search to a specific:
Decide on the type of properties that you’re interested in purchasing or researching:
Depending on your strategy, you’ll want to choose one or more property indicators of interest:
The more relevant leads you have, the more opportunities there are for successful prospecting.
At this stage, you’ll want to utilize property screening and your own personal criteria to define the most relevant leads.
Before contacting the owner, it’s essential to conduct additional research and due diligence on the property you identified.
Vacant properties are one of the most sought-after opportunities for many real estate investors.
A vacant property owner typically indicates that the property is vacant and not generating any income for the moment. However, this could be the result of many factors, including:
Vacancy should definitely be reviewed in tandem with other property indicators, such as:
For example, a vacant property with an owner-occupied indicator and a long duration of ownership can point toward a motivated seller.
Vacancy should also be evaluated alongside:
before deciding to pursue a vacant property lead.
Additionally, if you’re looking to research vacant properties, consider going through our Vacant Property Leads Explained guide.
When it comes to distressed property investing, tax-delinquent data can be one of the most valuable tools at an investor’s disposal.
When it comes to tax-delinquent property data, you’ll want to use the available:
to narrow the search results down and determine the potentially motivated sellers.
A typical distressed property tax research campaign can look like this:
You may want to narrow the search down to:
Decide on the area that you want to research using either:
Using your defined criteria, you can now begin to research the tax-delinquent properties within your area of interest.
For every property record, you will want to check:
For every potential lead, make sure that the owner details match your criteria.
Review the property’s:
Based on the property address, examine the local market and how it fits your investment strategy.
Make sure that the property can meet your investment goals, and conduct additional due diligence if required.
It’s important to keep in mind that distressed property data isn’t necessarily an indication of an investor’s intended use or their strategy.
DistressedProData is a property lead database with an emphasis on distressed property leads, including tax-delinquent opportunities. The company explicitly notes that their lead records are filtered for deep delinquency, and the data can be downloaded on a regular (recurring) basis.
An individual record with a single data point might give you a lead to research. However, combining multiple data points can greatly assist with focusing on opportunities that are worth additional research.
Consider two hypothetical property records below.
Both of these properties might seem appealing at first glance. However, based on the information provided, it would make more sense to focus on the second property because it has multiple indicators that might suggest a motivated seller.
As a rule of thumb, investors should seek to accumulate indicators across multiple categories. This is sometimes referred to as lead stacking.
In short, the more relevant data points you have, the better your chances of finding the right property.
There are several common factors that should play an integral role in your decision-making process when choosing property data.
Those factors typically include:
First and foremost, accuracy should always be one of your top priorities.
After all, data that doesn’t reflect the real world can mislead you and waste your time and effort.
When choosing a property data provider, make sure that you only work with companies that have an established verification process.
A good provider will have methods for not only organizing the data but also verifying that it reflects the current reality.
Next, you’ll want to work with a provider that focuses on only the information that you need.
Some providers offer too many data points, which can create confusion and unnecessary clutter when you need to narrow the search.
Instead, choose a provider that understands the type of indicators relevant to your strategy and research process.
When searching for property leads, timeliness is often essential to the success of an investor.
You’ll want to work only with providers that update information on a regular and consistent basis.
An excellent provider will always offer filters that let you specify your search, which can be crucial for successfully generating leads.
Most providers tend to offer a wealth of information that can often feel overwhelming.
However, what many fail to understand is the fact that good data should help you answer questions like the following:
At the end of the day, a quality property data provider should greatly assist you with understanding the market, identifying relevant data points, focusing on leads that deserve additional time and energy, and helping you move forward in the property-acquisition process.
A data-driven lead generation campaign typically follows a simple framework:
Below is a brief explanation of each step.
Choose which type of properties you want to find using property data.
This may include:
Narrow the search to a relevant area.
It’s better to start small and focus on one:
Based on your strategy, define property indicators of interest.
What additional filters will you need to apply?
Use your strategy and the defined data points to generate a lead list for further research.
Once you have a lead list, prioritize each lead based on their relevance to your strategy and potential viability.
At this point, it’s extremely important to go through the data in detail.
For any lead that you feel might benefit from additional research, you can dedicate more time and effort to verifying its validity.
Focus on the lead database that you’ve been building and compiling data for.
When building your lead list, it’s easy to over-filter, which decreases your overall pool of potentially viable prospects.
Similarly, many new investors struggle greatly with trying to generate too large of a lead list based on too few filters.
While the idea is to build the broadest possible prospect database based on the fewest criteria, those criteria still need to be relevant to your strategy and goals.
Data can be an invaluable research tool, but it shouldn’t be seen as an assurance of success.
You should always assume that the owner has no interest in selling, a property will require extensive repairs, market conditions will affect your deal, and other factors worth considering separately.
This mistake works in tandem with Mistake #3 above, and it emphasizes the dangers of assuming that data guarantees an opportunity.
Before investing significant time and resources into research, it’s essential to conduct additional due diligence and verify the information.
When determining the potential value of an investment, it’s easy to overlook the overall property ROI and the investment you will have to make to acquire a property.
Keep in mind that additional expenses should also be taken into account when weighing the potential ROI of a property, including:
When acquiring large data sets without much specificity, it’s possible to waste both time and money.
It’s always a good idea to define specific data points and follow a well-defined strategy when prospecting with data.
DistressedProData is a real estate data provider focused primarily on distressed property records.
On the company’s About page, they describe their data as including a combination of property, tax, data-cleansing, analytics, and human resources to deliver more “focused leads.”
Essentially, the company utilizes focused record curation, and it targets records with potential to serve as property leads.
For the purposes of an investor, this means that the data from DistressedProData tends to be relevant to their property lead research strategy.
Specifically, DistressedProData can be used by investors to research:
The company also explicitly focuses on verified tax-delinquent property records that get updated on a monthly basis.
The company’s Pricing page lists its main plans for targeting distressed property leads at a county level.
A combination of both data sources and human expertise can be exceedingly valuable to an investor as there’s no time wasted on going through random property data records.
As mentioned, DistressedProData is essentially a focused database targeting distressed property opportunities, specifically targeting tax-delinquent opportunities.
As such, the company has several unique advantages that investors should understand.
When an investor is trying to research properties using data, it’s essential to be aware that a specific market can have entirely different characteristics than the rest of the country.
This is why targeting lead data opportunities on a county level can prove much more useful to an investor.
DistressedProData offers a wide range of options when it comes to targeting opportunities at the county level.
Investors can choose between:
options per the company’s current Pricing page.
There are numerous additional benefits associated with accessing data via the county-based subscription model.
As mentioned,DistressedProData offers several data formats, including:
This can be extremely useful, especially when it comes to organizing leads and working with third-party tools or spreadsheets.
Let’s imagine that an investor wants to research residential property records within a specific county using an online property record database and determine the best way to generate leads based on that data set.
Market: One specific county of interest
Basic Property Indicators: Residential Properties
Primary Filter: Tax-Delinquent Properties
Additional Filters:
Based on the record details, the investor will have to go through the data and determine which records could potentially translate into viable leads.
The researcher will then have the option to sort those leads based on additional property data, compare the leads, and contact the most relevant leads.
The whole process would involve:
Market Definition → Data Access → Filter Definition → Lead List Generation → Lead Research → Due Diligence → Outreach → Verification
Everything comes down to building the lead list based on your needs.
Using the data-driven approach, you can then sort, analyze, review, and verify the leads.
Real estate data typically refers to information relevant to properties and their ownership, including:
Real estate investors typically use property data to:
Yes, real estate data can greatly assist with off-market prospecting.
Investors can use various property indicators to determine which properties may be worth additional research even though they’ve been previously listed for sale.
However, an investor must understand that property data rarely guarantees motivated seller opportunities.
In simple terms, property data is information associated with a specific property, including:
In addition, property record databases often include information about property size, purchase prices, and other relevant data.
A tax delinquency record can certainly be one sign of a distressed property.
However, most investors will want to take a broader look at the property and its characteristics rather than basing their investment decision solely on tax delinquency records.
Vacant property data can greatly assist an investor with identifying properties worth additional research.
Vacant property data can also be used in combination with:
To learn more about how vacant property data can assist with property research, refer to our Vacant Property Leads Explained guide.
Unfortunately, yes.
Data is generally most useful when it is relevant, timely, and includes important filters that align with the investor’s strategy.
According to their About page, DistressedProData combines property, tax, data-cleansing, analytics, and human resources to deliver “focused leads.”
In other words, DistressedProData uses a combination of property record research resources to target distressed property records with opportunities for motivated sellers.
To review DistressedProData ‘s current pricing and plan options, visit the Pricing page.
The company structures its plans based on the county level and provides downloadable data.
Real estate data is a valuable resource that doesn’t just serve as a collection of property owner addresses.
When you know how to utilize it, it has the potential to assist with:
Property-type data, owner-type data, tax indicators, vacancy data, and relevant location data can all help narrow down the search to those opportunities that are worth pursuing.
However, it’s vital to remember that data alone doesn’t guarantee success—an actual motivated seller still needs to be identified, a property’s value must be reviewed, and you need to weigh the local market conditions ahead of purchase.
From an investor’s perspective, a data-driven approach typically follows the outlined process below:
For U.S.-based investors, a data-driven real estate research process can help identify potential property leads while allowing them to focus on a particular property database or county.
If you’re targeting distressed property opportunities, consider reviewing the benefits that DistressedProData can bring to your property lead generation efforts.
You can also review DistressedProData ‘s Plan Options and/or register an account with the company to begin leveraging motivated seller real estate data.