Where can I get free motivated seller leads?

Every week, your county writes down the names of owners who are about to have a hard year. A lender files to foreclose. Someone dies and an estate opens. A tax bill goes unpaid for the second year. A contractor files a lien. The city writes up a house for the third time.

All of it is public record, and you can search almost all of it for free. Here are the six places to look, what each one is called, and which of them actually sold.

1. Foreclosure filings: the recorder or the court clerk

Where to look depends on how your state forecloses.

In states that mostly foreclose outside court, like California, Texas, Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina, look at the county recorder and the county clerk. California lenders record a notice of default with the recorder first. Every one of these states puts a notice of trustee sale on record before the auction. In Texas, that sale notice has to be posted at the courthouse, filed with the county clerk and mailed at least 21 days before the sale, which happens on the first Tuesday of the month. The Harris County Clerk, for one, posts them on its website.

In states that foreclose through the courts, like Florida, Illinois, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the lender files a lawsuit, and a notice of lis pendens goes on record to warn buyers. Search the court clerk's case index for new foreclosure cases.

One thing to know about timing: federal mortgage rules keep a servicer from making that first filing until the loan is more than 120 days behind. So by the time a filing shows up, the owner has been missing payments for four months or more. That's late for them. It's early for you, because the house usually isn't gone for months: ATTOM put the average time to complete a foreclosure at 563 days for homes foreclosed in the second quarter of 2026, though Texas averaged 155.

This is the strongest free list there is. Across the 99 counties we could measure, about 13 of every 100 owners with a foreclosure filing sold off-market within 12 months of the filing. A house picked at random in the same counties: about 1.2 of every 100.

2. Probate cases: the probate court's case index

When someone dies owning a house, the estate usually opens a case in probate court, and the case index is public. In Harris County, TX, probate cases are in the County Clerk's court search. Cook County, IL lists them on the Clerk of the Circuit Court's case search, as docket summaries. Los Angeles Superior Court lets you look up a case by number, with a fee for name searches and documents. Maricopa County, AZ has a public probate docket online.

Most states also make the estate publish a notice to creditors in a local newspaper, which is another free place the names show up.

Probate moves slowly, and the timeline is set by law. In California, creditors get at least four months after letters are issued to file claims, and formal probate typically takes 9 to 18 months. In Texas, an independent executor can usually sell the house without a court order, which can make a sale come much sooner.

We can't give you a sell rate for probate. The licensed records we count carry it too thinly to measure county by county, which is the same reason most list services can't offer you a true probate list. The court docket is the real source.

3. Back taxes: the tax collector or treasurer

Many county tax collectors and treasurers publish the delinquent tax roll, or the list of properties headed to a tax sale. Some post it free online; some charge a small fee for the file.

It's a solid list nearly everywhere. Across 479 counties, about 3.1 of every 100 owners two to four years behind on their taxes sold off-market within 12 months, against about 1.5 of every 100 houses at random. Whether older or newer debt sells better depends on your county.

4. Liens: the county recorder's index

Contractor liens, HOA liens and city liens against a house are recorded with the county recorder or clerk, and most recorders have a free online index you can search by document type and date.

Liens filed against the property were one of the most consistent lists we've counted: about 4.2 of every 100 sold off-market within 12 months of the filing across 249 counties, and no county we measured went below a random house. Judgments against the owner personally were far weaker. Here's the difference.

5. Code violations: the city's open data site

Big cities publish code enforcement records as open data. Chicago's building violations dataset runs from 2006 and was updated the day we checked. Detroit publishes blight violations, updated daily. Philadelphia posts its Licenses and Inspections code violations by year. Houston has one too, but it hadn't been updated since June 2023 when we checked.

A house that keeps getting written up has an owner who has stopped keeping up, and that pairs well with a lien or back taxes on the same address.

6. Divorce filings: the court clerk

Divorce cases are filed with the county court clerk and the case index is generally public, with sensitive details sealed. A divorce often means the house has to be sold or refinanced, and the filing shows up at the clerk well before any listing. Waiting periods set the pace: 60 days in Texas, six months in California.

We could only measure divorce in 11 counties, where about 4.8 of every 100 divorcing owners sold off-market within 12 months of the filing. Too few counties to call it a rule.

What free doesn't cover

Expired listings are one of the two strongest lists we count, and they aren't county records. They live in the MLS, so you need an agent or a data service to see them.

Vacant houses aren't free either. The Postal Service shares its vacancy counts with HUD, and HUD limits that data to government agencies and nonprofits. You can still find vacant houses for free the old way, by driving for dollars.

Free records aren't free leads

The records cost nothing. The work around them is where the money goes.

Each office posts on its own schedule, in its own format, and a few still want you at the counter. A filing has a clock on it, so pulling once a month means mailing late. Every name still needs a mailing address and a phone number, and every house needs checking against the deed records so you don't mail someone who sold last week. That's the Saturday you spend pulling and scrubbing, every week, before the first stamp.

And the order matters more than the source. Foreclosure filings and liens sold off-market at about 4 to 13 of every 100 within a year in the counties we measured. The free and clear list your data tool hands you sold at about 1.5. The full count is here.

Before you start pulling, check which of these lists your county's records can measure, how each one sold, and when. It's free, and it uses the same county records.