If you have mailed a "motivated seller" list and heard "you're the 30th investor to write to me this month", you have met the main problem with national lead lists.
01How most lists are built
Large data vendors buy county records in bulk, often on a monthly or quarterly schedule, combine them into one national database and resell it to anyone who pays. Every investor in a market pulls the same filters from the same database at about the same time.
02Three problems
- Delay: a new inheritance deed or tax delinquency can take weeks or months to reach the vendor. The first investors to act have already called.
- Crowding: there is no limit on how many people buy the same list, so the best owners get the most mail.
- Missing signals: court and city records (evictions, code cases, probate) often never make it into national databases because every county and city publishes them differently.
03What fresh data changes
- You reach owners in the first days after a change, not the first months.
- You can stack signals that national lists do not have, such as a code violation on an inherited house.
- With a cap on investors per county, your letter is one of a few, not one of fifty.
04What to ask any data provider
- Where exactly does the data come from? Ask for the offices by name.
- How often is each county refreshed?
- How many other investors in my county get the same list?
- Can I see why an owner is on my list?
LeadCounty answers all four on every page: the sources are listed per county, every county is refreshed weekly, each county is capped at 10 investors, and every owner shows the reasons behind their score.
