Hey guys, it's Seth here from retipster.com
Hope you're doing well.
So earlier this week,
I noticed this announcement in DataTree
when I logged in
and I've heard a handful of other people talking about it
in various online forums
is that DataTree has added a few new advanced search filters to their list filtering tool.
One of them is flood zone. The other is tax delinquency.
And I know that one is of particular interest to a lot of people.
And also the other one is for HOA.
So you can filter whether or not you want your recipients to own properties
that are in an HOA or not in an HOA.
So as soon as I saw this, obviously I was a little excited,
but also a little skeptical, just because I know
it's kind of hard for any list service to keep all these filtering options
straight and current and updated
without adding even more complex ones in here that are even harder to track in some cases.
So, can we really depend on this and are all areas really covered?
Like when can or can't I rely on this information once I put it into the filtering tool.
So I actually went back and forth with my contact at DataTree a few times this week,
just to get more clarification on this.
I actually got some really helpful answers.
And so I wanted to share those with you, just that we can all hopefully be on the same page
or at least as much as we can be about what we can expect from these filtering options.
So go ahead and close this and I'll get into the advanced search tool.
And we'll start exploring this a little bit more.
So let's start by selecting just a random state here just to test this out.
I'm going to select Texas.
Which county should I pick here?
Here we go. Dallas, that's a well-known county.
And when we scroll down, so the first one here is the HOA filter.
So before we do anything, I'm just going to click on "Get Count"
so we can see the total number of parcels in this county without applying any other filters to it.
So there we go. That's our number.
Now I'm going to go here and click "Yes"
so that means I only want properties on this list if they are part of a homeowners association.
So we'll click "Get Count" again, and we can see that that number changes substantially,
or we could do the opposite and say, I only want the properties that are not in an HOA.
There we go. We have the opposite number to fill in the gap there.
And one thing to note about HOA is that,
it is possible for some HOA to kind of fly under the radar.
Say if there's like two houses that share a driveway or something like that,
that could technically be an HOA.
And I don't know of any mandated way that HOA is,
have to report themselves to the local jurisdiction.
So I think most of them will and most significant ones will,
but it is possible that some HOA can fly into the radar.
So that's just one thing to be aware of.
But what I was told was that DataTree actually has some really good coverage
for both the HOA filter and the flood zone filter nationwide.
And I still don't know exactly what that means
if that means like half of the country or 90% of the country.
And I'm actually still waiting on that.
I'm not sure if we're actually going to get any solid, clear answers on it
but from what I'm told, it's one of the more reliable filters that they have out there.
So I think if you do want to avoid properties that are in an HOA, it's worth trying this out.
And likewise, if you actually want to target properties that are in an HOA,
and sometimes that can be some of the lowest hanging fruit and the easiest deals to get
granted they usually come with some baggage
and that's why a lot of people like to avoid these anyway.
But if you want to do sort of zig where other people are zagging,
you could go out of your way to target properties in an HOA
and use this filter for that exact same purpose.
I do think it's something to be aware of and probably worth trying out
and the counties that you're accustomed to working in.
If this is something that's important to you,
whether you do or don't want to send mails to those types of properties.
So that's the first one to be aware of.
The next one is the flood zone filter, which is right up here
and the interesting thing about this filter is that you're not just saying
whether you want properties to be in or outside of a flood zone.
You can actually select which type of flood zone.
And there's actually several different types, as you can see here, and they'll mean different things.
And they basically associate with risk, like how bad of a flood zone is,
is this something that you can expect a flood-like every year,
or is it only happened like once every 500 years where it's almost no risk,
but still there's always that outside chance.
If you want to get an overview of what all these different types of flood zones mean,
I'm going to go ahead and link to this page that I found, just doing a random Google search.
You might find that interesting.
But anyway, what this is doing here is
if I select one of these things, it's only going to include the properties that are in this flood zone.
So this isn't really a way to exclude the properties that are in that flood zone.
This is a way to just target only those ones.
So say if you're somebody who does not want to
send mail to people who do own properties that are in this particular flood zone,
that's not really effective for this.
This is only if you do want to send mail to those people.
And we also have the option of selecting all of these.
So if we want to have just literally anything
that's in a flood zone, we can do that.
And you'll also notice this one right here.
This is no flood zone designation.
So that is basically synonymous with if we just didn't select anything at all.
So if we go ahead and remove these altogether and click "Get Count" again,
we can see the total number in there.
If I select no flood zone designation
and click "Get Count" again, we have the exact same number.
So I almost don't even know why they have that in there,
because it basically just says, don't use this filter in which case just don't use the filter.
But anyway, if you do want to select one or all of the flood zones,
basically what this is saying is that you do want to send mail to the properties that are in a flood zone.
I don't know of a way that I'm seeing yet anyway,
that you can simply exclude the flood zone properties from your list.
Maybe there's some way to do it that I'm just not understanding yet,
but that's how that works.
And apparently this also has very good coverage nationwide.
Again, I don't know what that means exactly.
But I think one way to know if it doesn't have coverage,
is if it gives you no results or if it doesn't change the results at all,
that would probably be an indication that it's not working in this county.
Again, my wish is that DataTree would just say very clearly
"This filter doesn't work here. So don't use it."
Whether that means they grayed out or make it red or something, just to indicate that
it's not trustworthy in that state because they don't have the data.
That would be awesome.
Unfortunately, that functionality does not exist as of now.
And now let's go down to this ew text delinquency filter
I know this is probably the one that most people have been awaiting for
and I think there's a little bit of a misconception of what this can and can't do.
So I'm going to explain to you what they explained to me,
just so that you understand the parameters
of this in what you should, and shouldn't expect this to do for you.
First of all, I was told that this filter,
they have coverage over about half of the United States.
So there's at least a 50-50 chance, whatever county you're doing this in,
it doesn't have coverage at all.
And again, that kind of depends on where you're at.
I think most places in California,
they have like pretty much the best data anywhere.
So like California is probably fine.
And when it does have coverage
So when I go ahead and click on this, and if I say yes,
so essentially I'm trying to say, I only want the properties on here that are delinquent
on their taxes.
When I click "Get Count", I can see that there is a number on there,
but what this doesn't mean is that these properties are currently delinquent on their property taxes.
This is not the same thing as going and getting a delinquent tax list directly from the county.
That would be a dream. I wish that was possible, but that's not what's being offered here.
What this is saying is that at some point,
most likely in the past year, when they last refresh this particular item,
these were the properties that were delinquent, but that's the thing.
This data could be a week old. It could be a month old.
It could be six months old. It could be a year old.
And I think in most of the counties where this is available at all,
it typically is refreshed at least once every 12 months.
So you can be relatively certain that it's not much older than that.
But again, this is not saying that these are the properties that are currently delinquent.
This is saying that at some point in the past year, most likely these properties have this issue.
And I think there is some potential value here still, because this is telling you
that at some point in the past several months, possibly up to the past year,
these properties had tax issues.
They might not as of today,
but something was going on in the past year.
Maybe that issue has been resolved, maybe not.
So there could be some value in reaching out to these people.
And also apparently some counties,
particularly in California, I think Los Angeles was the one that was pointed out to me.
They apparently refresh this four times a year in LA.
So depending on the county, it could be relatively recent.
But as a general rule, I wouldn't expect this to mean that
just because a number shows up here, these are the currently delinquent properties.
I think if you really want that information and if you want it to be current
you'd to get it directly from the county.
However, there's another couple of caveats to be aware of here.
So let's say we do select this.
And it says, yes. And we have a number here.
Once we actually download this list
in that list in a couple of those columns will actually tell you
what the delinquent amount was and what date it was delinquent.
So once you actually get the list, you can see the information at that point
and also keep in mind it is possible once you do narrow down on a single property
to get what they call a tax source report.
And that's where DataTree will go out and request
the current or delinquent tax information on a single property at that point in time.
And that is accurate and they can do that in most places.
And it also costs money on a per parcel basis.
I believe the cost can range from $3 to $25 per parcel,
but most of the time it can be done within a $3 to $6 range.
So given the price of that, it's not really scalable in a way that we can pull lists,
but still, if you ever wondering about one property in particular
that is available and I'll just show you what I mean by that.
So let's just go ahead and find a random property out there.
Ah, let's see here.
Pick this. Type in "Smith".
See what we can find here.
So right here where it says tax source report,
apparently this is not available everywhere,
but in a lot of planes, it is.
Let's try another state here.
Let's try Arizona.
Let's try this county.
Let's try Smith again and see who comes up.
Okay. So there we go.
It is available here.
In Arkansas that doesn't really surprise me
there's a lot of stuff that's not available in Arkansas.
But if you go to one of these states where the data is typically pretty good,
if you ever want to get that delinquent tax information on one specific property,
that's where you can do it
And one of the things, I wanted to show you.
So how do we know when this information is not available?
How do we know when it's not in the system or we can't trust it?
Well, I actually tried this out in the county
where I live in Kent County, Michigan and find that to be the case.
And I want to show you how I found that to be the case.
If we go down here, find that delinquent filtering option here.
First of all, I'm going to click "Get Count" without filtering anything else
beyond the state and the county.
And I can see the number of properties here.
Now, when I go ahead and click on "Yes" and try to "Get Count" again.
Now it's given me no results. When I click "No", it's also given me no results.
So I think as a general rule,
if you ever trying to use this data and you select a "Yes" or "No",
and it's just giving you nothing, that's usually a pretty reliable indicator that
that information is not available here.
So don't even try to use it.
And obviously if you get a list with nothing, you're probably not going to use that anyway.
So that's one way you can know if a county you're looking at is not covered,
but even if it is, I just wanted you to understand what it actually means when you click Yes or No.
It doesn't mean that's the current status as of now, or this week, or this month.
It just means at some point in history and we don't really know when
these properties were delinquent
and let's just quick go and see what happens
when we do download one of these lists and the data is there
and where we can find that in the list.
Go ahead and do Dallas again.
And let's filter this to be a pretty small list
because I don't really need a huge list.
I just want to be able to see what that delinquent tax data looks like when we get it.
So we'll go ahead and pick just some pretty obscure uses here
just to make this a really small list.
And that number is a little bit too small.
It's not going to work. Let's pick something else.
Probably there are not a lot of properties like this.
Okay. So that's a pretty small list and we'll go ahead and click on "Yes" for this.
There we go. Perfect.
So we'll go ahead and export this thing and we're going to get
the property characteristics report.
It makes me curious if it shows here.
So that's where we can see the delinquent tax year
and the delinquent tax value.
And actually, let's see if we can see the flood zone.
Okay. So this is actually going to include the flood zone information.
Even if we didn't select that,
it's going to tell us if it's in a flood zone
and what that flood zone code is and date and all that stuff.
And let's try this for HOA as well.
Looks like the HOA filtering option is separate
and we would have to include if we wanted to go there.
So that's just interesting to know.
Anyway, let's go ahead and order this thing up.
See what it looks like.
It looks like this is telling us the delinquent tax year.
So this was the year probably I would presume the first year at which it went delinquent
probably assume it's delinquent and all the following years after this
and what the delinquent value is, the delinquent amount.
And I'm not sure if that saying that's the delinquent amount just in this one year
or that's the total cumulative delinquent amount from this year up until the present,
but still, that information is there.
And it does indicate, what year they're talking about.
I would presume in most cases if it's been delinquent since 2016,
I mean really anything more than a year,
it's probably still delinquent unless somebody swooped in to pay it all off,
which is not very likely.
But anyway, once you do download the list, that much information is there at least.
So it might not be in the initial filtering options, but you can see it once you actually get it.
Hopefully that's helpful just to understand and clarify what these filters mean,
what they can be expected to do,
and just kind of how to interpret this information.
So if you're not a DataTree user, and you want to be,
we do have an affiliate link with DataTree
It's retipster.com/datatree.
And if you do go through that link and sign up to that,
you can get a discount on the service that you can't normally get
If you just go through the regular channels.
We also get a really small commission for anybody who signs up through that link.
And if you've already got date service, that's working well for you, then we shall the best.
I will say most data services out there do not offer this kind of delinquent tax filter.
And even when they do, it's very unclear about what that means
and if it does or doesn't work.
DataTree, it's not the only one that does this,
but, it's one of only a couple I know that even have this option on the table.
It's kind of cool, not perfect obviously, as we talked about, but it's something.
And even if you don't use it, there can be the occasion where it might be useful to have that.
So thanks for watching.
I hope you found that interesting and helpful,
and hopefully I'll talk to you again soon.