Is skip tracing legal?
Is skip tracing legal? In the US, generally yes. What matters is how you get the data and what you do with it once you have it.
The short answer
Skip tracing means finding contact details for a person. Real estate investors, debt collectors, lawyers and process servers all do it. In the US, it is generally legal, because most of what it uses is public: property records, court records and business filings.
The law cares less about the lookup and more about three things: how you got the data, what you use it for, and how you contact people.
How you get the data
Searching public records is fine. Lying to get information is not. Pretending to be someone else to get a person's details, especially from a bank, is called pretexting, and federal law bans it for financial information.
Stick to public records and tools that get their data legally, and you are on solid ground.
What you use it for
Skip trace data sold for marketing is meant for reaching people. It is not meant for decisions about someone's credit, a job, insurance or renting them a home. Those uses fall under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), which has its own rules and needs a proper consumer report.
For a wholesaler, the takeaway is simple: use skip trace data to contact owners, not to screen tenants or judge anyone's credit.
How you contact people
This is where most of the risk is. Before you call or text:
- Scrub the National Do Not Call Registry. The DNC scrubbing guide explains how.
- Keep your own do-not-call list. When someone asks you to stop, stop, and write it down.
- Respect calling hours. Federal rules limit telemarketing calls to daytime and early evening in the person's time zone.
- Be careful with texts and dialers. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) has strict rules for automated calls and texts to cell phones, and many need consent first.
State rules
Some states add their own rules on top: their own do-not-call lists, shorter calling hours, or registration for telemarketers. Check the rules in each state where you call owners, not just the state you live in.
Not legal advice. This page is a plain-English overview. Laws change and vary by state. Talk to a lawyer before you start a calling or texting campaign.
How Tracepoint fits
Tracepoint looks up phone numbers for property owners and puts them in a CRM. A new account gets 5,000 lookups free, one time, no card. You upload your own FTC do-not-call file, and Tracepoint checks your numbers against it. A number it could not check is shown as unchecked, never as clear.
The rules for how you use the numbers are on the acceptable use page. Next, read how to find a property owner's phone number or how much skip tracing costs.