Calling out-of-state owners of 10 to 40 acre parcels, contact rate is under 2 percent
Six weeks into calling owners of unimproved rural parcels, mostly 10 to 40 acres, mostly held by people who live somewhere else. This is my own list, pulled from county records in three counties, 2,900 owners after dedupe.
Skip trace hit rate was 71 percent, which I was told was normal for land. Of the 2,060 records with a number, I've dialed through 1,600 twice. 31 live conversations. That's 1.9 percent contact on dials, and the numbers I'm getting are heavily landline. Of the 31, four said they'd think about selling and two named a number, both roughly triple what comparable parcels have traded for locally in the last year, where prices are public at all.
What I've learned that surprised me: heirs. Maybe a third of the numbers that connected reached someone whose parent or grandparent held the parcel, and the ownership is unresolved. Those calls last twenty minutes and go nowhere near a contract for at least a year.
What I'm weighing. A service quoted me $1,850 a month to run these dials with two part time callers, which at my current rates is about $460 per live conversation. Versus mailing the whole 2,900 at $0.58, which is $1,680 once and reaches the 29 percent with no phone number too. Land owners might be a mail population more than a phone population, but I've only got six weeks of my own data and it could be my script.
Open question is whether 1.9 percent is a land problem or a me problem.