I keep a notebook of vacant houses from my job sites. No idea what to actually do with it

Sort before you drive. Your list has two populations in it and they behave differently. "Tarp, two winters" is a deferred maintenance signal, meaning nobody has money or nobody cares. "Plywood on back window" could be a break-in from last month. Rank by how expensive the visible problem is to fix and drive the top 20 first. You'll get to the useful ones in two hours instead of eight.

Mostly confused by this whole area still, but the assessor mailing address question I can answer because I hit it last month. The name is usually whatever was on the last recorded deed and the mailing address is wherever the tax bill goes, which is often a bank or a relative or an old address. It's a starting point and not a confirmation of anything.

Trades angle: a tarp that's been up two winters means the roof failed and nobody got a quote. That owner has already decided not to spend money on the building. That's a better signal than peeling paint.

Watch out for the ones that look abandoned and aren't. I own a small portfolio and one of mine sat empty for seven months while I did a full turn, boarded, grass long, the whole picture. Three letters showed up. I wasn't selling and I don't need a finder. Vacant means vacant, it doesn't mean available.

Your notebook is more valuable than a list anybody buys, because it has dates in it. Duration is the thing lists can't tell you. Keep the dates religiously going forward.

I've been at this service business for five years, and the single change that mattered was moving off paper. Get the notebook into a spreadsheet this week, one row per address, columns for date seen, condition note, and last checked. Paper itself is fine. The trouble is you can't sort paper, and sextant's point about sorting is the whole answer to your Saturday question.

Fifteen is a small enough number that I'd just do both. Drive the 15 and look them up. The other 45 can wait.

On records: the deed and the mortgage are usually at the county recorder and the ownership and tax data at the assessor, and how much of that is free and online is entirely a county by county thing. Some counties give you everything, some give you a name and a parcel number, and roughly a dozen states don't make sale prices public at all so you may never see what something sold for. Start with your own county's site and find out which kind you live in before you pay anyone for data.

Working through licensing coursework right now and the thing that surprised me is how narrow the definitions get. Passing an address along is one thing. Talking terms with an owner for a fee is where states start caring, and the line differs by state, so ask an attorney there rather than a forum. Doesn't touch your notebook question though, looking up public records is just looking up public records.

Numbers on your Saturday. 60 addresses at maybe 6 minutes each including driving is 6 hours. Pulling owner records on 15 at 10 minutes each if your county site is decent is 2.5 hours. You have time for both in one day and you're framing it as a choice when it isn't. What would actually stop you is if your recorder requires an in person visit, which some do.

How are you going to know if one of them sells? That seems like the thing that turns your notebook into evidence you're any good at this.

quill, some counties email new recordings by parcel if you subscribe, and most don't. Otherwise it's checking manually, which is another reason to keep the list short enough to check.

girder, one more thing to write in the spreadsheet: whether the property tax is delinquent, if your county shows it. An owner who stopped paying taxes and stopped fixing the roof is a different person from an owner who did one of those two.

Is there a version of this that's a service rather than a lead? Like being the person who maintains the list for four investors on retainer. I keep circling the service side and this looks like it.

beacon, that's basically what data companies sell, and the reason someone would pay girder instead is the duration notes and the fact he's physically there weekly. Hard to price, but it's a real difference.

Retainer's a trap early on. You'd be promising volume before you know what your volume is. Do it per lead until you know your numbers, then talk retainer.

I'd have re-driven the list four times by now and never looked up a single owner, so take the version of me who does that as a warning. Drive it once, then spend the rest of the day on the records.