What does skip tracing mean in real estate?

Skip tracing means finding the current contact details for a property owner: their phone numbers, email addresses, mailing address, and the other properties they own. Investors use it to reach the owner of a house that is not listed, where there is no agent to call.

Can I skip trace a whole list at once?

Yes. Open a list, tick the owners you want or select them all, and click Skip trace selected. The results land back in their own rows, and the list exports to CSV with them. It works the same on a list you uploaded as a CSV, XLS or XLSX file.

What is skip tracing in real estate?

Skip tracing is how you get a phone number for the person who owns a house that is not for sale. You start with an address. You end with the owner's phone numbers, email addresses and mailing address, plus the other properties they hold.

Public records will give you an address and a name. They will not give you a way to reach anyone. Skip tracing closes that gap, and it is the step between having a list of houses and having a conversation.

Why investors skip trace

The deals nobody is bidding on belong to owners nobody is calling: the vacant house two streets over, the absentee owner three states away, the person who inherited a property they never wanted. Nothing about them is on the market, and there is no agent to call.

Everything you do before this point is choosing who to call. Skip tracing is getting the number.

What a skip trace returns

The phone numbers on record for that owner, each with a do-not-call flag and a quality score.
Any email addresses on record.
The owner's mailing address, which is often not the house.
The other properties the same owner holds.

When a skip trace finds nothing, the row is marked no match with the date it was tried, and that one is not charged against your allowance.

Where the list comes from

Most of the time you are working from a list. Search a market by city, county, ZIP or APN, switch on the motivated seller indicators that match how you buy, Vacant, High Equity, Absentee Owner, Pre-Foreclosure, and save what the search found to a list. Or upload a list you built somewhere else as a CSV, XLS or XLSX file with an address and a ZIP on every row. Either way you end up on the same screen.

How to skip trace a list

Open the list, tick the owners you want or select them all, and click Skip trace selected. The phone numbers, emails, mailing addresses and linked properties land back in their own rows, and the list is ready to export the moment it finishes.

A lead list named Frederick MD absentee owners with several rows ticked and highlighted, a green Skip trace selected button counting them in the header, the owner names blurred, and the phone and email columns still empty until a skip trace runs — Skip tracing a saved list inside The Invest Nest.

What skip tracing costs

On The Invest Nest, the $65 plan includes 500 skip traces every month, refilled on your billing date. If a month runs long, extra skip traces you buy are 10 cents each, as add-ons of 100 for $10, 500 for $50, or 2,500 for $250, and they never expire. The 7 day trial includes 25, which is enough to work a small list end to end before you decide anything.See pricing.

Is skip tracing legal?

Yes, when it is done with public records and licensed data and you follow the rules on calling and texting. Investors, wholesalers and agents have used it for as long as there have been off-market deals. What matters is what you do with the number, and every result carries a do-not-call flag so you can see which numbers are marked before you dial.

After you have the number

Once you have the number, the work is keeping track of what happens after you call. Set each lead's status in its own row as you work down the list, leave a note after every call, star the ones worth chasing, and move the ones that go somewhere onto your deal board. Export the list to CSV whenever you want it in another tool, with the contact details you pulled.

That is the loop: find the houses, save them, skip trace the owners, call, and keep what answers. Lead lists is where most of it happens.