Skip tracing is the process of locating a person's current contact information—phone numbers, email addresses and mailing address—by combining public records, licensed identity data and proprietary signals. The name comes from the collections industry ("the debtor skipped town"), but in 2026 the biggest users are real estate investors who need to reach property owners who never listed their homes for sale.
How skip tracing works
- Input
You supply what you know: a name plus a property or last-known address. For LLC-owned property, the entity name and state.
- Identity resolution
The provider matches your input against hundreds of millions of identity records to pick the right person—separating the John Smith at 1420 Maple Ridge from the thousands of other John Smiths.
- Contact enrichment
Phones, emails and addresses linked to that identity are pulled from credit-header data, telecom and utility records, public filings and marketing databases.
- Scoring & compliance
Each contact point is scored for recency and confidence, typed (mobile/landline/VoIP) and checked against Do-Not-Call and known-litigator lists.
- Output
Results return in seconds via API or within minutes to hours for bulk CSV uploads, formatted for your CRM or dialer.
Where the data comes from
- Public records: county deeds and assessor rolls, court filings, liens, bankruptcies, voter rolls (where legal), business registrations.
- Credit-header data: the non-financial identifying portion of credit files (name, addresses, phones, DOB), licensed under GLBA permissible-purpose rules.
- Telecom & utility data: phone carrier records, number-porting data, utility connects—strong signals for current residence.
- Proprietary & marketing data: opt-in marketing files, e-commerce and subscription data, social signals.
- Property data: ownership, mortgage, equity and listing history—the layer HomeSage.ai and PropStream add so you know who to call, not just how.
Who uses skip tracing
Real estate investors
Reach absentee, pre-foreclosure, probate, tax-delinquent and tired-landlord owners before the property hits the MLS. Guide →
Collections & legal
Locate debtors, judgment defendants, witnesses and heirs; serve process; recover assets. Guide →
Lenders & PropTech
Enrich borrower and lead records programmatically through an API. API ranking →
Accuracy and match rates
Vendors quote "match rates" of 70–95%, but a match only means a phone number came back—not that it rings the owner. The metric that matters is right-party contact (RPC) rate: the share of records where the top number reaches the intended person. Across the industry expect 20–40% of any traced list to contain bad or stale data; premium tiers with confidence scoring and recency checks sit at the better end. Always test 500–1,000 of your own records before choosing a provider.
Is skip tracing legal?
Yes, when performed with data obtained for a permissible purpose. In the United States the relevant frameworks are the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (credit-header data), the Driver's Privacy Protection Act (DMV data), the Fair Credit Reporting Act (if results are used for credit, employment or housing decisions) and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (for collectors). In Canada, PIPEDA and provincial privacy laws govern. What is tightly regulated is outreach: the TCPA, the National Do Not Call Registry and state mini-TCPAs in the US; CASL and the National DNCL in Canada. See our compliance guide.
What skip tracing costs
Self-serve pricing runs $0.02–$0.20 per record, platform bundles $99–$699 per month, credit-based APIs from about $160–$200 per month, and enterprise APIs from about $2,000 per month. Investigative-grade tools for licensed users cost $0.50–$2.00 per search. Full breakdown in our pricing guide.
Choosing a skip tracing service
We rank the five best skip tracing services every quarter. In short: HomeSage.ai for API users who want property data and contacts together, BatchData for enterprise volume, REISkip for pay-per-match simplicity, PropStream for an all-in-one platform and Skip Genie for difficult LLC and relative lookups.
See skip tracing in action
HomeSage.ai returns confidence-scored owner contacts with property data in under a second.
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Frequently asked questions
Where does the term 'skip tracing' come from?
From 'skipping town'. Collectors and bail agents needed to trace people who had skipped; the name stuck even though modern skip tracing is mostly about reaching property owners and prospects who have not gone anywhere.
What information does a skip trace return?
Typically current and previous phone numbers (with mobile/landline flags), email addresses, current mailing address, address history, relatives and associates, date of birth range, and sometimes employer, bankruptcy, lien and judgment indicators. Real estate-focused services add ownership and property details.
Who uses skip tracing?
Real estate investors and wholesalers, lenders and loan servicers, debt collectors, attorneys and process servers, private investigators, insurers, bail bond agents, and PropTech and fintech companies that enrich leads programmatically.
Is skip tracing the same as a background check?
No. A background check evaluates a person's history (criminal, employment, credit) and is often regulated by the FCRA when used for employment, housing or credit decisions. Skip tracing locates contact information and is not a consumer report when used for marketing or locating purposes.