What is Skip Trace Technology?
Skip trace technology refers to software and data services that resolve property owners to their current contact information — phone numbers, email addresses, and mailing addresses. The term "skip tracing" originally referred to finding people who had "skipped" (left) their known locations, often in debt collection. In real estate, skip tracing is used to find contact information for property owners, LLC members, and potential cash buyers identified from public records.
Skip trace technology has become essential for real estate investors because the most profitable deals often involve contacting property owners directly — absentee landlords, owners of vacant properties, pre-foreclosure homeowners, and probate heirs. These owners aren't listing their properties on the MLS; reaching them requires knowing who they are and having a way to contact them.
How skip trace technology works
Skip trace services aggregate data from multiple sources: public records (property deeds, court filings, voter registrations, business filings), utility records, phone carrier data, social media profiles, credit header data, postal change-of-address records, and proprietary databases compiled from various consumer data sources. When you submit a property address or owner name, the service cross-references these sources to return the most current contact information available.
Modern skip trace APIs process requests in bulk — you can submit hundreds or thousands of records at once and receive results in minutes. This enables investors to skip trace entire lead lists efficiently rather than researching contacts one at a time.
Accuracy and hit rates
Skip trace accuracy varies by provider and data freshness. Top-tier services report 70-85% hit rates (returning at least one valid phone number or email for the owner). However, "hit rate" doesn't mean every result is correct — returned numbers may be disconnected, belong to a different person, or be the wrong type (landline vs. mobile). Effective skip tracing often requires verifying results through actual contact attempts or secondary verification services.
LLC-owned properties are harder to skip trace because the public record shows the LLC name, not the individual owner. Resolving LLC members requires additional data sources (state business filings, registered agent records) and may require specialized "business skip trace" services that match entity names to individual contacts.
Cost considerations
Skip trace pricing ranges from $0.02-$0.15 per record depending on the provider, volume, and data depth. At scale (thousands of records per month), the cost per record drops significantly. Many investor platforms like Deal Run include skip tracing as part of their subscription, with a monthly allocation of traces included in the plan.