One lead type everywhere, or every lead type in six blocks?

The small area wins, and my five years of running a service business point to a reason that has nothing to do with real estate. Repeat exposure to the same people generates inbound. If you're the guy the whole block knows is interested in houses, somebody's daughter calls you when her mother goes into care. You cannot get inbound out of a filing list, you can only push. Two real opportunities a year is a bad answer if you need income this quarter and a good answer if you're playing longer than that, @parcel.

Depends what the record source is. Probate and code violations get pulled by everybody. Tax delinquency on vacant land is barely touched where I look, partly because most house buyers don't want it and partly because the parcels are annoying to identify. So option one isn't uniformly crowded, it's crowded in the categories that produce easy houses. Given that you already know parcels and zoning, I'd guess your version of option one is less contested than the generic version.

A definition first, since two of them are doing a lot of work in this thread. A lead source is where you learn a property might be available. A record source is a public filing you can search, like a probate case index at the county courthouse or a tax delinquency list from the treasurer. What's in each and how you get at it varies by state and often by county, and some counties charge for the list while others post it online for free.

@parcel, the practical thing that decides this for a beginner is usually the investor, not the scout. Before you choose, ask the buyer your neighbor knows two questions. What does he already buy lists for, and how many leads a month does he actually want. If he already subscribes to a probate data product, sending him probate leads means competing with software he pays for. If he says he wants three good ones a month rather than thirty, the small area version can feed him.

One thing worth being careful about in both options. The scouting role means passing along information and getting a finder's fee from the investor. If you start negotiating price or terms for the seller, some states treat that as activity that needs a real estate license, and the trigger differs by state, so check yours with an attorney before your arrangement gets more involved than handing over an address and a phone number.

Five hours a week fits the small area better. Forty addresses is already a start on it.

Something basic here still isn't landing for me. In option two, what are you actually looking at when you walk around? I understand "who died" only in the sense that I don't know how you'd know that.

@vellum, you know because you talk to people. On the management side I find out about a death or a move to assisted living from a neighbor roughly a month before anything shows up in a filing, every time.

Which is also my answer to @parcel. The gap between when a situation exists and when it appears in a record is where the whole advantage lives. Records are the same information arriving late to everyone at once. The catch is that talking to sixty strangers a week is a real skill and some people will never do it, in which case option one is the honest choice.

@lantern's split is what I'd vote for, though I'd add that the answer changes if your investor pays anything up front. If he doesn't, and almost none of them do, then your only compensation event is his closing, and closings come from leads he can actually act on. Depth beats volume when you're paid on outcome. Volume would only win if you got paid per lead delivered.

Two opportunities a year at a couple thousand each isn't income, it's a hobby that occasionally pays. I say that as someone who wants income without a second job, and this is a second job either way. If I had to pick I'd pick the county wide filter, because at least the failure is fast and cheap and you find out in eight weeks whether anyone wants what you're sending.

Before either, get the fee arrangement in an email. Amount, what event triggers payment, how long the investor has to respond before the lead is yours again. I've read enough handshake arrangements to be sure the argument always happens at the same moment, which is when the investor closes on something he says he already had. Nothing about choosing a lead source fixes that, @parcel.

Trades angle on option two. I'm in six or eight houses a week and I see the inside, which no walk-around and no filing gives you. If you can get two contractors in your blocks to text you when they bid a job the owner can't afford, that's a third channel and it costs you coffee. Wouldn't have thought of it as a lead source until somebody here pointed out that a declined estimate is a motivated seller with a number attached.

I picked the small area for something adjacent, which was learning what my first purchase should cost, and eight months in I know that market better than any agent I've talked to. It hasn't produced a single lead for anyone. That's the whole picture and I'd still do it again, so read my vote with that attached.