USPS Vacant Address Data Feed

USPS Vacant Address Data

How to Publicly Access The USPS Vacant Address Data:

Many real estate companies, investors, wholesalers, and other businesses are searching for access to the USPS Vacant Address Data, which is supposed to be unavailable to the general public. In the last few years, however, vacant address data has become available through many data list providers throughout the country, personally started buying this data years ago after tracking down a data source that had the information available through bulk data division.

The availability of this information makes one question where it's coming from?

According to the HUD website In 2005, HUD entered into an agreement with the United States Postal Service (USPS) to receive quarterly aggregate data on addresses identified by the USPS as having been "vacant" or "No-Stat" in the previous quarter. Under the agreement with the USPS, HUD can only make the data accessible only to governmental entities and non-profit organizations registered as users.

Furthermore, the website states the USPS does not provide HUD with a list of addresses or properties. Instead, HUD is supplied with a tabulation of all addresses of different types and the number of addresses of each type that are vacant. HUD then tabulates these counts according to the Census Tract that they fall in and distributes the data by tract as the final product.

My conclusion is the vacant address data being offered by the data list providers has to be coming from the USPS because who else could collect that data on a national level?

Vacant House Data Feed

If you are searching for access to vacant address data, my recommendation is the vacant house data feed. Even if you could access the information through the USPS, the vacant house data feed matches the property address up with ownership information, mortgage data, equity, property values, and much more.

This makes the vacant house data feed a must-have tool for any real estate company, investor, wholesaler, property manager, or any related business. You can get more information on the vacant house data feed by clicking here.

How To Get A Vacant House List

When people hear the Post Office compiles a list of vacant properties, their first thought is they'll just go down to the post office and ask for a copy. I guarantee you that your request will be met with either a blank stare or a big fat no. I truly believe that local postal workers don't even have access to the master list of vacant addresses.

Asking Postal Carriers For The List

Often I see people online suggesting asking local mail carriers to give you a list of vacant addresses on their route. Although not a bad idea, in theory, most mail carriers only have a couple of hundred homes or less on their route. So even if they were willing to just hand it over, you'd have to get dozens of carriers to do it before you'd have enough vacant addresses to make it worth your while.

Finding Vacant homes in your Area

Vacant houses are my specialty, and I've spent many hours researching this, so here are your two options. You can either do the work yourself by getting in the car and driving for dollars (you can read more about that here) or secondly find yourself a good data provider and get access to the information (there is no other efficient way to do it.

Vacant Address Data quality

No matter what data provider you decide to go with, the information will not be 100% accurate, and here's why. The data file the USPS sent to HUD happens quarterly, and it's only safe to assume the data providers are receiving the same list. It's very possible that houses for sale & rent could very well be occupied by the time the data filters down to you.

Also, many vacation homes and people using PO boxes that have had mail delivery to their houses stopped will be on the USPS vacant address list.

In my experience, about 40% of the houses on the vacant list are not, in fact, vacant. Does this make a list bad? Not At all... Because the other 60% are great leads! The vast majority of wholesale deals I've done involved vacant houses. (over 90%) Which is why I focus my efforts almost exclusively on vacant homes.

Vacant Address Data Providers

You'll see people on Facebook offering vacant property lists, and many of these people have signed up for a service and are just reselling lists. My suggestion would be to stay away from these offers for a few reasons. #1 they're not supposed to be reselling the information, and it won't be long until they lose their access to the data. #2 who knows how old the list is and how many people they sold it to and #3 You should get in the habit of doing business with credible people.

For $99 dollars per month, you can have access to vacant house data nationwide, so don't take shortcuts or try to get a bargain... you'll end up disappointed.