
In real estate wholesaling, the deal is in the data. You can have the best offer, the sharpest negotiation skills, and the hungriest buyers list — but if you can’t reach the property owner, none of it matters. That’s where skip tracing comes in.
Skip tracing is the process of finding contact information for individuals — specifically property owners who may not be easy to reach. For wholesalers, this means getting verified phone numbers, email addresses, and sometimes mailing addresses for absentee owners, pre-foreclosures, probate leads, and more.
In this guide, we break down what to look for in a skip tracing service, compare the top options for 2025, and explain how to use skip traced data to supercharge your cold calling campaigns.
Most high-equity, off-market sellers are not going to list their property or respond to a postcard. Many are dealing with distressed circumstances — financial hardship, estate issues, deferred maintenance — and they haven’t thought to reach out to a buyer. You need to find them first.
When combined with a professional cold calling operation, accurate skip tracing can dramatically lower your cost per lead. Dead phone numbers waste caller time and burn through your dialing budget. A 90%+ hit rate means more conversations and more deals.
One of the most popular options among wholesalers. Offers bulk uploads, tiered pricing, and solid accuracy. Their ‘gold’ tier returns multiple phone numbers per record ranked by likelihood of connection. Integrates with most real estate CRMs.
PropStream is primarily a property data platform, but its built-in skip tracing is solid for users already using the platform for list building. Convenient if you want list building and tracing in one tool.
REsimpli is a full CRM for real estate investors with built-in skip tracing. If you’re running your business on REsimpli, the integrated tracing is very convenient — results go directly into your deal pipeline.
Enterprise-grade skip tracing used by law firms, debt collectors, and serious investors. Extremely high accuracy but also higher cost and a more complex setup.
For investors who want to outsource the entire lead generation process — list building, skip tracing, and cold calling — vCallers offers done-for-you skip tracing as part of a complete outreach package. You get verified contact data that feeds directly into a trained cold calling team, with no handoff friction.
| 💡 Pro Tip: Never use just one phone number per record. The best skip tracing services return 3–5 numbers per contact. Your callers should work through each one before marking a lead as unreachable. |
Remove duplicates, properties with active MLS listings, and properties you’ve already contacted. You’re paying per record — don’t waste credits on dead leads.
Mobile numbers have significantly higher contact rates than landlines. When your skip tracing returns both, have your callers dial mobile first.
Before dialing, scrub all numbers against the National Do Not Call Registry. TCPA violations can cost $500–$1,500 per call. This is non-negotiable.
Use a power dialer like CallTools, Mojo Dialer, or REsimpli’s built-in dialer to efficiently work through your list. A trained VA can handle 80–120 dials per day on a power dialer.
Wholesalers often debate the best lead generation channel. Here’s a quick comparison:
| Channel | Cost | Speed | Scale |
| Skip Trace + Cold Call | Low–Medium | Fast | High |
| Direct Mail | Medium–High | Slow (2–4 weeks) | Medium |
| Driving for Dollars | Low (time-heavy) | Medium | Low |
The most successful wholesalers stack these channels. But for speed and scale, skip trace + cold calling is the clear winner.
Skip tracing is the engine of your outreach machine. Invest in quality data — it directly impacts how many motivated sellers your callers reach. And if you want to skip the tool selection headache entirely, vCallers handles the full pipeline: from skip tracing your list to having trained real estate cold callers working it every day.