If you already use a people-search product
Most firms that arrive here already pay for something. A people-search product answers where a person is and which identifiers attach to them, and it is built for that. A report assembled from a county register answers a different question: what is recorded against a piece of property in the order it was recorded, and how much of the value is left under the claims sitting ahead of yours. This page is about the distance between those two questions, and about the fact that there is nothing here to apply for.
One session, published twice. The written version below follows the recording as it plays. Click any line to jump the film to it.
0:43The names, first
Take the names first, because they're confusing on purpose.
Accurint is a LexisNexis product rather than a separate company, which is why the two names keep turning up in the same sentence. TLOxp is a TransUnion product. And TLO was the name of the company TransUnion acquired, rather than a description of the search.
Both sit in a category usually called data aggregation, or people search. Many feeds about people, resolved into one identity that you query by name.
Skip tracing is the older word for the work, and it's decades older than any of these products. A skip is a debtor who moved. Tracing is finding them. The term has been ordinary in collections and litigation support since long before it had software attached. And restrictions attach to the sources a search draws on, and to the purpose you put the result to. Never to the label on the activity.
1:48What each kind is built to answer
So what is each kind built to answer.
An aggregator is built around a person. Where is this person now, and where were they before? Which phone numbers, email addresses, relatives and employers attach to this identity? Which of the four Robert Kims in the file is mine? Is there property somewhere carrying this name?
A report drawn from the register is built around a parcel, and the questions are narrower. What instruments are recorded against this lot? In what order were they recorded, since recording order sets priority? Which of them has a later document retiring it? And after the live ones, what's left?
Both sets are legitimate. But only the second set decides whether filing is worth the filing fee.
2:39What the difference costs you
Now let me show you what the difference costs you, on real numbers.
Take the parcel in the sample report. Two mortgages are recorded against it. One in 2004, for $780,000. One in 2011, for 920,000.
So a list of what's recorded against that owner shows 1.7 million of mortgage debt. And on those numbers a $310,000 judgment, against a property worth 1.84 million, looks marginal. You might not file.
But the register also holds a satisfaction, recorded in 2011, and it retires the 2004 mortgage. So live mortgage debt is 920,000. Add a docketed New York State tax warrant of $34,102. Subtract both from the market value on the roll, and the floor under the senior claims is $885,898.
Your $310,000 judgment is covered nearly three times over. Same debtor, same parcel, opposite decision.
And nothing about locating that debtor produces that figure. It comes from matching one recorded document to another, and knowing which one wins.
3:59Can anyone get access?
Then people ask me whether anyone can get access.
Products assembled from restricted feeds gate the door. An applicant is credentialed, and a permissible use is selected, before a search will run. And that gate is the correct design for what's behind it.
It's also why a solo practitioner with four judgments a year either can't clear the credentialing, or works out that it costs more than four searches are worth.
We run no credentialing and take no permissible-use attestation. There's no application. Getting the files is the easy half. Matching a satisfaction to the mortgage it retired, across two indexes that were never built to link them, is the half you're paying for. What a report may be used for arrives as a restriction you accept, rather than a status you're screened for.
4:54What we do not do
Now the part that matters most, which is what we don't do.
Bank accounts aren't in any register, so we don't find them. We don't locate people. We hold no phone numbers and no email addresses.
And coverage is the harder limit. Mortgages and satisfactions are four New York City boroughs. Claims against a name are Broward County in Florida, and Broward is queried rather than searchable today. If your debtor is in Ohio, none of this helps you.
The complete list of what a report can't answer is short enough to read before you decide anything, and it includes the four-borough boundary and the historic satisfactions that don't always link.
So my honest position is that a firm doing enforcement work probably wants both. Find the person with the tool built to find people. Then ask the register what stands against what they own, and what's left underneath it.
5:52Related
If you want to test that second half, send me three debtors from closed matters, and grade the reports against what you already know.
You'll know inside an hour whether the second half is worth having to you, and that's the only honest way I know to settle it.