Stacking lists: houses on more than one list
Any single distress list is noisy. A tax bill can be late because the owner was traveling. An eviction can be one bad tenant at a well-run rental. A code case can be a tall lawn. Each one hints that the owner might sell, but none of them proves it, which is why mailing a whole county list one list at a time burns money.
Stacking turns those hints into something you can act on. When the same house shows up on two or three lists at once, the reasons add up. An inherited house with three years of unpaid tax tells you the heirs aren't taking care of it. A rental with repeat eviction filings and an open code case tells you the landlord is losing on both the tenant and the building. A vacant house with a foreclosure filing tells you the owner has probably already moved on. These are the owners for whom a fast, as-is sale solves several problems at once.
How stacking works in DealSherpa
Stacking only works if every list is matched to the same house the same way. DealSherpa ties each record to its parcel number from the county's property records, not to a loosely matched street name. Probate, tax, foreclosure, eviction and code records for one parcel all land on one house record, each with its own date. You can then filter to houses on any two lists, or any three, add the absentee owner flag or an owner type, and see the stack count on every row.
Each house also gets a priority grade. It weighs how many lists the house is on, how serious each one is (a scheduled sale counts for more than a first notice), and how recent the records are. It's a starting order for your mail and your calls, not a promise. The records behind it are on the same screen, so you can always check why a house ranks where it does.
Some stacks worth trying first
- Probate plus unpaid tax: an estate that isn't paying the house's bills.
- Tax delinquent plus absentee owner, held a long time: an owner far away who has stopped paying for a house they may own free and clear.
- Eviction plus code violation: a tired landlord whose building and tenant are both costing money.
- Pre-foreclosure plus vacancy: a house the owner may have already left behind.
- Any three lists: usually a short list, and the one to call first.
What every house record carries
Whatever list brought a house in, the record looks the same, so you can compare one lead with another:
- Street address, city and ZIP code
- The owner of record, whether a person or a company or trust holds the title, and the owner's mailing address
- An absentee flag when the owner's mail goes somewhere other than the house
- The county's value, year built, years owned, and the last sale date and price
- Every list the house is on, each with its date, plus the details that list carries: tax due and years owed, the foreclosure case and plaintiff, the sale date and opening bid, or the probate case
- The priority grade
Distressed properties and motivated sellers
The two terms get used as if they meant the same thing, but they don't. A distressed property is a fact on the record: the tax is unpaid, the case is filed, the city has cited the house. A motivated seller is a person who has decided a sale makes sense. The list gives you the first. The second comes from reaching the owner at the right moment, with the right offer, and following up. The more signals stack on one house, the more likely the record and the person point the same way. Still, every owner deserves a respectful first contact that doesn't assume they're desperate.
Off market properties, not listings
None of these houses are for sale on the open market, and that's the point. Off market properties come with no listing agent, no bidding war and no list price. The deal comes from reaching the owner first with a clear, fair offer. A distressed property list tells you which owners to reach. The DealFuse CRM included with the plan keeps the follow-up going, because most owners don't say yes to the first letter.