Skip-Trace / Deep-Dive

Find the owner, or the people closest to the owner, when the main data source falls short. This is Franke's "vacant process": a fixed ladder of moves for owner-dark and vacant leads, run in order until a live phone number or a live person turns up. The core value behind every step is the same: always do one more thing.

• A lead comes back owner-dark from normal outreach (no answer across multiple calls/texts/knocks) and normal enrichment has no better number to try.
• A property looks vacant on a door knock or a drive-by.
• The owner may be deceased, or the lead is showing signs of a probate situation.
• Any lead that clears the money-shot filter below should get the full ladder before it's parked: $100k+ equity, and either deceased/probate or vacant.

• Confirm normal outreach was actually exhausted first (calls, texts, a door knock attempt) — this ladder is for leads that beat the standard process, not a shortcut around it.
• Have the property address, the owner's name as it appears on record, and any partial data already on file (old phone numbers, a mailing address, next of kin if known).
• Know the money-shot filter so you can decide how far down the ladder to go: $100k+ equity plus deceased/probate or vacant means run the full ladder with no shortcuts; everything else gets worked through the lead's active timeline (through the auction date) and then drops to slow drip rather than an indefinite manual chase.
• Have the skip-trace source scorecard open (see Sheet below) so every attempt gets logged as you go, not reconstructed later.

• Every owner-dark or vacant lead that clears the money-shot filter shows a logged attempt at each applicable ladder step, not just one or two before giving up.
• The obituary/funeral-home move was attempted on every lead where the owner may be deceased, before moving to probate or skip-trace.
• At least two independent sources were cross-referenced before a lead is marked "no contact found."
• Any live contact found through the ladder was hand-off logged into the gatekeeper loop, not left sitting in the deep-dive queue.
• The source scorecard sheet has a row for the lead showing which source(s) were tried and the outcome.

• Obituary search comes up empty. Don't assume the owner is alive and reachable elsewhere — move straight to probate court records, since a filing can exist even without a public obituary.
• Funeral home won't engage or says they can't pass anything along. Thank them and move on to probate/county records rather than pushing; this is a low-pressure ask by design and isn't worth burning the relationship over.
• Free skip-trace sources disagree with each other or both come back empty. Don't stall here — escalate to a paid tool rather than treating two free misses as proof the lead is unreachable.
• Facebook profile is locked down or the owner appears inactive. Pivot to the friends list scan by last name; relatives are often the faster path in anyway.
• Neighbors are cagey or unhelpful. Keep the opener soft and never mention foreclosure directly; a vague or slow answer is still worth a follow-up knock later rather than a hard no.
• Ladder exhausted, no money-shot filter match. Don't keep manually chasing — apply the park rule, drop it to slow drip, and move to the next lead. Persistence is the edge, but it has to be spent on the leads worth it.