As I said, this is not the norm, though it’s fairly common. If you have to go through all this to process a list for mailing, you know you’ll be the only one in the county doing it!

200,000 delinquent records from one county, Rick? How about over 1,700,000? That’s exactly what I got on one of my lists, which included receivable entries for bounced check fees!

Rick … you must obviously be using charm to get your lists … else, I’m just asking for the wrong thing!

However, as this is probably a common scenario throughout the US, here is what I did with one county’s data …

[As background, their data showed the delinquent amounts broken out by each account number, by each delinquency year, by each taxing entity (school district, hospital, county, etc.). It was a very long list … over 1,700,000 records!]

After an email exchange with an IT person, I was able to clarify exactly what I was seeing and from that, delete out the junk, eliminate unnecessary [data] columns … and correct some errors.

After creating a new subtotal (aka sub-summary) file/table on just the CAD account number and delinquency year, I now had just one record for each discrete taxpayer and year. Therefore, the individual breakouts/amounts by taxing entity had now been aggregated. So, this new table was much smaller and much faster to process!

From this, using the master tax roll table (which I had already downloaded free from the Central Appraisal District [CAD] website), I was able to cross-reference on account number to obtain actual property information, along with owner names and addresses!

Now … I can make my mailing selections!

Phew!

What did I learn from the above exercise? …

1.Some counties are still pulling their delinquent taxpayer data from older mainframe or minicomputers. Therefore, the data is often in a raw, “flat”, unfriendly format (… but not always … some counties do format it into an Excel worksheet, which is much easier to deal with).

[Caveat: Excel 2007 and later versions can accommodate over 1,000,000 records (“rows”), but earlier Excel versions are limited to approx. 65,000 records. This means that you may not be able to hold everything in one worksheet].

2. The counties I got my lists from did not provide IT help with converting data, but they would answer specific questions ( … e.g. “what is this field used for?”)

3. You will find a lot of junk data in records!

4. Some counties have their master tax roll available free of charge on the CAD site, but the tax office charges for the very same data … or vice versa! (I am finding that in North Texas, it runs about $40, if supplied on CD-ROM).

Therefore, always check both the CAD site and the tax office site for any county you are working, before you shell out any money! (They use the same account number to reference a property, so you will not have an issue matching data obtained from two different offices).

5. The master tax roll … that’s the master list of every discrete property/address within a county … is huge, with lots of data fields and many records. You can often download it (in zipped format) from their website, but you’d need a very fast Internet connection!)

Also, the master roll may actually be split into several different tables … owner name/mailing address … property address … etc., for processing efficiency. Every county is different.

6. The master tax roll will include a field that indicates the type of property … house, apt unit/multi-family, mobile home, commercial premises, vacant land, etc. You can really shorten the file down, using this code. (Each county will have a separate list of each code and its meaning).

7. If you cannot get/pay for help from the county, you are going to need knowledge of MS Access or another program OR hire help (as Rick mentioned above), in order to cross-reference the tables and to generate your final mailing selections.

8. The name and address information supplied is often not in a very pretty format for creating letters or mailing labels. Expect to do some editing when you have whittled down your selections. As an example, the name might be held as “DAWSON RICK” or even split over two lines (… e.g. for joint husband and wife ownership).

9. Keep your final mailing selection table and expand it … either in Excel or export to a Contact Manager program. Add new fields for what you want to track … date last mailed, follow-up date, etc. and this will enable you to keep tabs on everyone … where they are at, your notes, etc.

Hope this helps!

Again, I don’t usually have to do this. But a couple other solutions you could use:

1. If you’re getting a consistent, though hard-to-use file format, get an Excel Macro written for you on elance.com or odesk.com. Describe to the programmer what you want to end up with after a file is processed, and they will program an automated routine that will do it all for you with the touch of a button. This is mostly useful if you’re repeatedly having to process the same format of complicated file.

2. For property lookups, you could try a service like mozenda.com or once again have someone on elance or odesk write a script that will take the parcel number and look up the owner info, etc. that you want.

None of these solutions are perfect, or free, but do you think anyone else out there is going through the trouble? I highly doubt it. So it’s actually a good thing when you think about it.

Unlike your experience (including the files I’ve gotten from Texas), I have always received full property information with my file.

Usually I could identify that a column that had some kind of “paid” indicator in it, sort by that column and delete those records, and very quickly I was down to a manageable size of only delinquent records from the recent past.

That would be super if you could post your technique to handle the complicated files, for anyone who runs across that.

I contacted several counties in Texas and they told me they had the delinquent lists available, so I purchased several, at prices ranging from about $5 to $40.

What I got was every delinquency from about “day 1” (e.g. 1974!), in raw format. They were very large data files in “flat format” … no formatting or field separation … with a record format/spec sheet for each file.

Also, it’s broken down … for each delinquency, there is a separate record for EACH taxing entity (school district, hospital, county, etc.), for EACH year of delinquency!

Finally, there is no owner name/mailing address or property information, whatsoever. That, I would have to look up on each county’s website, using the account number.

Is this what you typically get when asking for the delinquent taxpayer “list”?

I’m just starting to get my delinquent lists in, but feel I may be asking for the wrong thing … I’m getting TOO MUCH data, in a very unhelpful format!

I contacted several counties in Texas and they told me they had the delinquent files available, so I purchased several, at prices ranging from about $5 to $40.

What I got was every delinquency from about “day 1” (e.g. 1974!), in raw format. They were literally very large data files in “flat format” (i.e. NO formatting or field separation), with a record format/spec sheet for each file. There was no name, address or property information. To get that, you also have to get the master tax roll table, then cross-reference to it via the account number!!!

(Also, the Texas counties say, upfront, that they do not provide any IT help with processing their data. You are literally on your own).

As a long-term IT guy (I started programming on mainframes back in 1972) and someone who does data formatting and data conversion for a living, the format makes perfect sense to ME, but I can see where this would be a monumental task for someone that does not have my skill-sets.

I will be writing up a separate posting on data formats, how to process, etc., but I’m just wondering if what I am receiving is the “typical” delinquent tax list (aka “TRW file”) that others are getting from their counties.

It’s not too good to be true, it’s simply a strategy that works when it’s applied. I make no claims that you can push a button and money starts coming out, it’s a way to get in front of owners whose property is often free and clear, yet they’re in a foreclosure situation.

People are implementing this in most states, and I know of nowhere that it won’t work. Everything you need to succeed is found in my ebook. You may want to upgrade to get several hours of our conference calls and legal forms. We don’t offer mentoring and coaching because everything is laid out step-by-step in the material and we’re available for email questions.