Are vacant property lists worth mailing?
By Josh MillerUpdated 4 min readUsually yes: owners of vacant houses sold off-market more often than a random house in 460 of the 468 counties we measured, about 3.8 of every 100 within 12 months against about 1.6. It's a middle-of-the-pack list, though, well behind foreclosure filings and expired listings, so mail it after those.
Across 468 counties, 826,257 houses sat on a vacant list in our count. Within 12 months, 31,671 of their owners sold off-market. That works out to about 3.8 of every 100, against about 1.6 of every 100 houses picked at random in the same counties.
So the short version is that vacant lists work. The longer version is about how much, where, and what to do about the obvious problem: nobody lives there to read your letter.
Vacant beat a random house almost everywhere
In 460 of the 468 counties we could measure, vacant owners sold off-market more often than a random house over 12 months. That is about as consistent as any list we've counted that doesn't start with a filing. For comparison, free and clear owners did worse than a random house in 1,492 of 2,170 counties.
Consistent isn't the same as strong, though. Vacant sits in the middle of the table, between the lists that start with a filing and the ones you can pull with one click.
| County | Of every 100, sold | Any house, at random |
|---|---|---|
| Wayne County, MI (Detroit) 50,436 vacant, 2,092 sold | 4.1 | 1.7 |
| Cook County, IL (Chicago) 20,130 vacant, 724 sold | 3.6 | 1.1 |
| Harris County, TX (Houston) 13,868 vacant, 470 sold | 3.4 | 1.4 |
| Maricopa County, AZ (Phoenix) 13,708 vacant, 347 sold | 2.5 | 1.4 |
| Clark County, NV (Las Vegas) 7,823 vacant, 391 sold | 5.0 | 1.8 |
| Dallas County, TX 7,425 vacant, 271 sold | 3.6 | 1.9 |
| Bexar County, TX (San Antonio) 7,303 vacant, 194 sold | 2.7 | 1.7 |
| Los Angeles County, CA 5,974 vacant, 89 sold | 1.5 | 0.4 |
| San Diego County, CA 3,218 vacant, 30 sold | 0.9 | 0.4 |
Source: GoForClose count of off-market, arm's-length deeds in county records, 12 months. Vacant as flagged in the licensed property data for each county.
Two things jump out. First, size. Wayne County has more vacant houses on record than the next three big counties in the table put together, so a Detroit investor can run a whole program on this list, and a San Diego investor can't.
Second, the gap. In Clark County, NV about 5 of every 100 vacant houses sold off-market within 12 months. In San Diego County, under 1 did. Both beat a random house in their own county. Only one of them is a list you'd build a budget around.
The states where vacant ran strongest
Rolled up by state, vacant beat a random house in every measured county in Illinois (13 of 13), New York (31 of 31), Ohio (26 of 26), Pennsylvania (22 of 22), Michigan (17 of 17) and Texas (43 of 43). Missouri and Maryland ran at about 5.2 of every 100 within 12 months.
California was the soft spot. Across 21 counties, about 2.2 of every 100 vacant houses sold off-market within 12 months, and 3 of those counties came in under a random house. Florida ran at about 2.5 of every 100.
The obvious problem: nobody's home
Most vacant flags in list tools start with the mail: an address where mail has gone uncollected for a long stretch, usually 90 days or more. Which means the one place you know your letter won't be read is the house itself.
So never mail the property address on a vacant list. Mail the owner's address on the tax roll, which is where the tax bill goes. When the tax roll shows the property as the mailing address too, that owner is the one to skip trace, and often the one with the most going on: a death in the family, a move to care, a rental that went bad.
Vacant also stacks well. A vacant house that also has a lien, back taxes or a code violation has two things wrong with it, and one of them is dated. Here's how stacking works, and why the dated record is the one that tells you when.
Where vacant fits in your order
Lists that start with a filing still lead. Foreclosure filings sold off-market at about 13 of every 100 within 12 months of the filing across the 99 counties we measured, and expired listings at about 12 of every 100 across 492. Vacant comes after those, alongside back taxes, and well ahead of free and clear, high equity and owners over 65. The full table is here.
Vacant is also a slow list. It doesn't start with an event, so there's no clock to beat; owners sell when the estate settles, the repairs win, or the taxes come due. That makes it a good list to mail on a steady schedule rather than in one big drop.
Your county may not look like the table. Check how vacant ran where you mail, and how it compares with every other list on record there.
Questions investors ask
Do vacant property owners sell more often?
In almost every county we measured. Across 468 counties, about 3.8 of every 100 vacant houses sold off-market within 12 months, against about 1.6 of every 100 houses picked at random in the same counties. Only 8 counties went the other way.
Where does a vacant property list come from?
Most vacant flags in list tools come from postal data: an address where mail has gone uncollected for a long stretch, usually 90 days or more. Code enforcement records and driving the neighborhood are the other two sources.
Is a vacant list better than a free and clear list?
In most counties, yes. Free and clear owners sold off-market at about 1.5 of every 100 over 12 months across 2,170 counties, a little under a random house. Vacant owners sold at about 3.8 of every 100.
Where do I send mail for a vacant house?
Not to the house. Nobody is collecting mail there, which is often how it got flagged. Mail the owner's mailing address on the tax roll, and skip trace when that address is the property itself.
Which vacant list should I mail first?
One stacked with a dated event: a vacant house that also has a lien, back taxes or a code violation. Then check your own county, because how much vacant beats a random house changes a lot from place to place.