List organization - required data

Hi Retipster community! Novice investor here prepping my first mail campaign. I've acquired a delinquent tax list from a county in Florida that I'd like to solicit. My concern is that the data that's been provided does not have assessed value or property size. I'd like to target properties that I can purchase for less than $1,000 so I can get multiple properties within my budget ($5,000). My question is how would I best filter this data to narrow down to the cheaper properties? Would total tax due be a trustworthy alternative? I'm trying to find out how far off the mark this list would be. Can I make this work or would you recommend abandoning this list for a different county with more complete data. Below are the data fields I have within my list.

tax_year|assessed_year|account_type|account_number|escrow_company_code|owner_name|owner_address1|owner_address2|owner_city|owner_state|owner_zip|situs_address1|situs_address2|situs_city|situs_state|situs_zip|total_tax|total_paid|total_balance_due|november_amount|total_delinquent_amount|is_installment|homestead_bill|litigation|bankruptcy|legal_desc

Any insight is greatly appreciated!

Hello Tyler, have you tried going back to the county to request this data point?

I would imagine it's possible for the county to generate their list in a way that would reflect the data you're looking for. The problem is, depending on the person you requested the list from, they may not have the aptitude or the desire to go back and give you exactly what you want (this is one of the common difficulties of working with a county list). You could try... but it might be fighting an uphill battle.

I think you'll probably find that even if you don't filter the list by any size or value parameters, chances are, you'll still get responses from those types of properties (it's usually the lower-end, cheaper stuff that ends up on a delinquent tax list anyway). You'll probably get responses from people you don't want to work with as well... but if the concern is simply that you won't get responses from the cheaper property owners, I've found these are usually the first and most common individuals who call back from this kind of list.

@Dan-McDermott Hi Dan - originally I requested a list with all the data fields I needed, but the way this county works they did not provide a custom list. Rather I was given an access code to an FTP link where I could download the source data. I would imagine these missing fields do exist somewhere it’s just going to be a matter of if I can get the appropriate person to go through the legwork of pulling it for me. I’m going to reach back out to my contact at the treasurer’s office and see if they’ll play ball.

@retipsterseth Thanks Seth! See my response to Dan. Not sure if I’ll have any luck getting a custom list based off how the original data was provided, but I think it’s worth going back. I think if it ends up being a dead end I’ll take your word for it and just send the mail anyway. I’m mostly just eager to get the ball rolling.

Or you could mail them all and wholesale solid leads for a small fee, $5,000, and double or triple your budget in no time with no additional expenditures on your side! Keep the list, mail em all, buy the small ones, wholesale the rest!

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@tylrjsph Hi Tyler!

Congrats on getting started, and welcome to the community!

As for your comment about acquiring multiple pieces of land, I would say don't put limitations on yourself. Keep in mind a big part of this business model is low risk, high reward, so if you come across a lead for a property you can buy for $2500 instead of $1000, but can sell it for double or triple cost, you make more money. It takes the same amount of work to get a deal done, the difference between deals are the dollars signs on them.


With that said, I have experienced similar problems in my lists, and have utilized Virtual Assisstants to get around it. I'm guessing if it's an incomplete list, it means less competition, which personally always gets my gears going. I'm assuming there is a county website where you can look up an individual property by parcel number. This will then have all the fields and descriptions about the parcel, often GIS mapping, and many more details.

Write out a detailed instruction document with the link to this website, and pay a VA to add the fields of both acres, and improved land value. That's what I usually do to make sure I am working with vacant land and I know how much. They will only cost an extra $20-$30 on Fiverr, but I promise they are well worth their money. If they save you from sending mail to 40-60 people on the list, they are basically free! Any more than that, and you are making money by using them instead of just mailing out to the list you have received.

There are probably more strategies to get around this, but this is my personal one. Best of luck Tyler!