Skip tracing
How to skip trace a property for free, and where the free method stops
Updated September 2026. The free method first, the paid shortcut second.
To skip trace a property for free, get the owner’s name and mailing address from the county assessor, look up any company owner in the state business registry, then search the name on a free people-search site. It costs nothing and takes a few minutes an owner. Past a few dozen owners a week, a tool charging about 10¢ a match costs less than your time.
- You need
- The property address or its parcel number
- You get
- Owner name, mailing address, likely phone numbers
- Cost
- $0
- Time
- A few minutes an owner, more for a company owner
Step by step, for nothing
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Find the owner in the county record
Search the county assessor’s or property appraiser’s website by the property address or its parcel number, also called the APN. The record gives the owner’s name as it appears on the deed and the mailing address the tax bill goes to. Many counties put this online for free. Where yours does not, the county recorder’s office has the same deed on paper.
What you come away with Owner name and mailing address. If the mailing address is not the property, the owner lives elsewhere, which is what investors call an absentee owner.
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If a company owns it, find the people behind it
An owner ending in LLC, Inc. or Trust is not a person you can call. Search the name on your state’s business registry, usually run by the Secretary of State. The filing lists a registered agent and often the managers or officers, with an address for each.
What you come away with A person’s name to trace, and a second address to try.
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Search the name on a free people-search site
Enter the owner’s name with the city from the mailing address on a free people-search site such as TruePeopleSearch or FastPeopleSearch. Match the right person on age, relatives and past addresses before you trust a number, because common names return many people. Read the site’s terms before a calling list rests on it: FastPeopleSearch bars autodialing or texting the numbers it shows, and TruePeopleSearch’s last readable terms reserve it for personal, noncommercial use.
What you come away with Phone numbers and emails to try, tied to the right person.
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Check what you found
Search the name and city in a search engine and on social profiles to confirm you have the owner and not a namesake. If the owner has died, an obituary names the relatives who may now be handling the property, which is where a probate lead starts.
What you come away with Confidence that the numbers belong to the owner.
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Before you call or text, check the rules
Check each number against the National Do Not Call Registry. Businesses get access through the Federal Trade Commission’s telemarketer site, and the first five area codes are free. Federal rules also restrict autodialed or prerecorded calls and texts to cell phones without the owner’s consent, and some states go further. If in doubt, dial by hand and ask a lawyer about your state.
What you come away with A list you can work without breaking the calling rules.
Where the free method stops
The method works, and it costs nothing. What it costs is time, owner by owner. If each owner takes you 10 minutes, 50 owners is a little over 8 hours, and a 500 owner list is more than 80 hours of looking up names.
It also stops at the edge of a spreadsheet. Free people-search sites show one person at a time, with no way to run a list through them, and the numbers are only as fresh as the site’s sources. A number you found free is no more likely to be current than one you paid for.
The paid shortcut, priced
Skip tracing tools run the same lookup across a whole list at once. What a trace costs depends on the plan more than the tool. Prices from each pricing page, September 2026.
| Tool | A trace costs | How it is billed | Pricing |
|---|---|---|---|
 Propwire |
10¢ per successful match | Free to search. No subscription, and a trace that finds nothing costs nothing | Try Propwire free |
 PropStream |
12¢ a contact | On the $99 plan. Its $30 Connect add-on covers up to 25,000 traces a month | See PropStream pricing |
 BatchLeads |
Included | With each lead, 10,000 leads a month on the $119 plan | See BatchLeads pricing |
 DealMachine |
Included | One data credit a trace, 10,000 credits in each $99 seat | See DealMachine pricing |
 PropertyRadar |
250 included, then 8¢ | On the $119 plan | See PropertyRadar pricing |
At 10¢ a successful match, tracing 100 owners costs $10 at most. So the real question is what your time is worth, and how many owners you trace in a month.
None of these tools publishes an independently tested accuracy figure, and stale numbers are a common complaint in their reviews. A paid trace is faster, not guaranteed to be right.
Paid links. If you subscribe through one we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It never changes our ranking order.
Skip tracing for free: questions people ask
Is skip tracing legal?
Finding an owner’s contact details from public records and people-search sites is legal. What is regulated is how you contact them: check numbers against the National Do Not Call Registry, and do not send autodialed or prerecorded calls or texts to cell phones without consent. Some states add their own rules.
Is there a free skip tracing tool?
Free people-search sites cover one owner at a time. For a list, Propwire charges nothing to search and download and 10¢ per successful match to trace, with no subscription, so a trace that finds nothing costs nothing.
How do I skip trace an LLC?
Look the company up on the state business registry, usually at the Secretary of State. The filing lists a registered agent and often the managers or officers. Then trace those people the same way you would trace an owner.
How accurate is free skip tracing?
As accurate as the site’s sources, which is to say unevenly. Confirm the person on age, relatives and past addresses before you trust a number, and expect some numbers to be disconnected. Paid tools have the same problem at scale.
How much does skip tracing cost per record?
From nothing, done by hand, to about 10¢ to 12¢ a record on pay-as-you-go tools. Some plans include it: BatchLeads with each lead on its $119 plan, DealMachine in each $99 seat’s data credits.
What do I need to start?
The property address or its parcel number. Everything else in the free method comes from the county record.
Which way of skip tracing should I use?
For one owner, the free route on this page: the county record for the name, a people-search site for the phone numbers and emails, and a check that you have the right person. For a list, a pay-per-trace service or a data tool with tracing in the plan returns the contact information for every owner at once, from 10¢ a record.
What does a free people search show?
Usually several phone numbers, emails, past addresses and relatives for a name. It does not tell you which number the owner still answers, which is why step 4 checks the match before you call.
How we put this together
| Line | Source | What we read |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Public records | County assessor, recorder and state business registry websites, for what each record contains |
| 02 | Rules | The Federal Trade Commission’s National Do Not Call Registry pages for businesses |
| 03 | Pricing | The pricing pages of every tool in the table, read September 2026 |
What we did not do. We have not timed the free method across a real list, so the hours above are arithmetic at 10 minutes an owner, not a measurement. Calling rules differ by state, and nothing here is legal advice.