Finding Cash Buyers at County Courthouse

Finding buyers, cash buyers, is a common starting point for investors. This is more common for those looking to wholesale real estate.

Many new investors choose wholesaling to begin their real estate investing career because it does not take money, often requires little time and does not have a large amount of risk.

When beginning the wholesaling process many investors suggest finding cash buyers who will purchase real estate from you.

There are many methods to find these buyers. I am not going to take this article to cover the different ways to find them. This article is about finding them at the courthouse records.

There are over 3300 counties in the United States. Each county will be different on how they display their information or how their information is searched.

However, the general ideas still apply.

When a property is sold a Deed is transferred. There are several types of Deeds but don't concern yourself too much with the types just know there is a deed transfer when property is sold.

If a property is sold and a bank has given a loan for the buyer to purchase the property a note will accompany a Trust Deed or Mortgage.

A note is a document that describes the interest rate, payment, frequency of payments and when the loan will be paid off.

The Trust Deed or Mortgage is the document / instrument that would allow the bank to foreclose on the property IF payments are not received according to the note requirements.

So, how to find cash buyers at the courthouse:

You can search the court records (often found at the county recorders office or county clerks office) for all the property that recently had a deed transfer. Once you find the property you can search the records for what is often called an abstract. This shows the history of recorded documents on a property.

If a property has a deed transfer but there was not mortgage or note recorded in conjunction with the deed this was a cash transaction.

One exception to this would be that if a person has purchased a property then changed the deed to themselves, such as in the case of a husband and wife, this may not be a cash transaction.

Search for the deed, check for a mortgage then check to see if the owner deeded the property from themselves to themselves. If you have a new owners with no mortgage recorded this would be a cash buyer.