What skip tracing is
Skip tracing takes a name and a last-known address and returns current phone numbers, emails and associated people. In real estate, the input must be the legal owner from the assessor record — not the occupant, not the mailing label, not the LLC. Trace the LLC and you get a registered-agent office number. Trace the managing member and you get a cell phone.
The pipeline that works
- Address → county assessor parcel record.
- Legal owner name (plus mailing address, which is often where they actually live).
- Entity resolution — if the owner is an LLC or trust, resolve to a human via the Secretary of State registry.
- Skip trace the human against consumer data.
- Score every contact — line type (mobile beats landline), recency, and how many independent sources agree.
- Scrub against DNC and litigator lists before dialing.
What a good result looks like
- Hit rate: 70–90% of records return at least one phone.
- Connect rate: 8–15% of dials reach a live person on a clean list.
- Contacts per record: 2–4 phones is normal; the top-scored mobile is right roughly 60–75% of the time.
Anyone promising a 95%+ accurate single number is selling you a guess. Rank the numbers and dial in order.
Cold-calling compliance in plain English
- Scrub the federal and state Do Not Call registries. Existing business relationships are the main exception.
- Get prior express written consent before using an autodialer or prerecorded message to a cell phone.
- Call between 8am and 9pm in the *recipient's* time zone.
- Honor opt-outs immediately and keep a permanent internal DNC list.
- Some states require call recording consent from both parties.
This is not legal advice. TCPA damages are per-call — get your process reviewed once, then run it consistently.
Batch vs single
Single-property skip tracing belongs in your workflow the moment a lead scores well. Batch skip tracing (hundreds or thousands of records at once) belongs at the front of a direct-mail or dialer campaign. Offr AI does both: instant single traces with confidence-scored contacts, and a batch queue for 100+ record uploads.