There are two opposite stories going around about finding rough houses. Someone in my area told me to just drive neighborhoods and write down houses that look rough, and someone else said that's a waste of time because the data platforms already flag property condition. Are those the same list or different lists? And what counts as a condition signal in the data if nobody has been inside the house?
Answer
Different lists, and the difference is what each one can actually see.
Driving for dollars means physically driving an area and recording addresses that look neglected, so tarped roofs, boarded windows, knee-high grass, mail piling up, a car that hasn't moved. You then look up the owner of each address and reach out. It's slow, it's cheap, and the addresses you get are ones nobody else pulled, because they exist only in your notebook.
A data list is built from records. When a platform offers a property-condition indicator, it's inferring from records rather than seeing the house. Common inputs are code violation filings, permit history showing nothing done in twenty years, utility shutoffs where that data is available, vacancy flags from mail deliverability, and tax delinquency. Those are real signals. They're also signals every subscriber to that platform can filter for on the same afternoon.
So the honest comparison is that data gets you volume on leads other investors also have, and driving gets you a small number of leads that are yours alone. Most people who stick with this end up doing both, using driving to build a small list they work carefully and data to keep the pipeline from going empty.
One practical thing: the owner of a rough-looking house is often not the person living in it, and often not local. Look up the mailing address on the tax record before you assume a door knock is the right approach, because half the time your contact is an heir or a landlord three states away.