How to locate people using all freely available Public Records
If you are an established Asset Recovery Company, Private Investigator or Lawyer, we’re sure you already have your methods of skip tracing and databases you use. This guide if for someone just starting out, who may not have all the tools you do. There is a lot of information publicly available and especially in Florida, where the state has the most liberal and open public record laws on the books. Combined with the flurry of social media, it’s pretty easy to find people and/or their relatives.
Typically, you will have a name of the previous owner and the address of the property that was sold at the tax deed auction. Before you even begin researching, you can mail an envelope to the person’s old address with “Return Service Requested” printed 1/2 an inch above the delivery address. If they filed a forwarding address with the Post Office, the PO will send you their new address.
While waiting on that, you can use the following resources to find a person:
CALL 411
Sometimes it can be as simple as calling 411 and asking for the number of “John Williams on Acorn Street in Orlando Florida”.
This works with Landlines, not cell phones. Yes, the landline is headed to the dinosaur days, but some people DO still have one.
Hopefully, their name is not very common which of course helps. You can type the following into Google to see if any newer address or other information ends up in the results:
Search using exact match
Put a word or phrase inside quotes. For example, “john williams”.
Combine Searches
Obviously, a search on “John Williams” would produce a lot of results so combine that with another known fact, such as the property that was auctioned. “John Williams” “155 Morten” or if the property was owned by multiple people, search on both names to see if any result comes up where they were both mentioned somewhere else:
“john Williams” “jean Williams”
ADVANCED BACKGROUND CHECKS
http://www.AdvancedBackgroundChecks.com
You can search by Name, Address and Phone. This gives you a lot of addresses, phone numbers, emails and relatives for the person.
SPY DIALER
You can put in a phone number and it will give you a name and sometimes let you listen to the voicemail. Updated to include searches on Names, Addresses and Emails. We tested a few email searches and it worked pretty well. Typed in an email, got the correct name.
If you have a phone number, type it into the Facebook Search box. If the person used their number on their profile, it will pull up their page.
You can also search their name and then choose a City/State where the correct one could be located.
Also, use Google to search Facebook, like this:
“John Williams” “Orlando” “Facebook”
Using the quotes forces google to return results with ALL of the search terms
CRAIGSLIST
If you have a phone number, type it into the Craigslist Search box. If the person used their number in an ad on Craigslist, it will pull up their ad which may give an email or another way to contact them as well.
Be sure to use the Craigslist for THEIR city/state. If you type in Craigslist.com, the page for YOUR location will come up (if you have been to that website before).
Just use the links at the top to navigate back to the home page of craigslist and then go to the city/state you need. Unfortunately, a lot of people put their phone number in a way that you cannot guess, such as 904@@555@@0440. But it’s worth a try.
PUBLIC RECORD SEARCHES
http://www.blackbookonline.info
http://www.brbpub.com/free-public-records
OFFICIAL RECORDS WEBSITE
Always search the Official Records Website in both the county where the auctioned property was located and, in the county where the property owners mailing address is (if it is different than the auctioned property)
Perform the following search:
County State “Official Records” (putting in the actual County and State of course)
PROPERTY APPRAISERS WEBSITE
It is very possible the previous owner of the property owns other property. Always search the Property Appraisers Website in both the county where the auctioned property was located and, in the county where the property owners mailing address is (if it is different than the auctioned property)
Perform the following search:
County State “Property Appraiser” (putting in the actual County and State of course)
FINDING BUSINESS OWNERS
Sometimes a property is in the name of a business, not a person, so you need to find the person who owns the business.
Sunbiz
If that business was registered in Florida, you are in luck with this website. If not, simply google the business name, city and state and you should be able to find the owner. http://www.sunbiz.org
Two other websites that are great for locating Business Owners: Manta: https://www.manta.com/
BBB: https://www.bbb.org/
ONE PAID WEBSITE
The one paid website we recommend is Melissa.com. You can purchase “credits” to use on searches.
Here is a search we did using one of our surplus records:
