Software for buying rental property, not managing it
Buying a rental starts with one question: who owns that house, and do they still want it? Finding motivated sellers on your target streets starts there. SCOUTRE answers it on any of 160 million U.S. properties, nationwide — the owner's name, the owner's mailing address held separately from the property address, whether they live there, and whether they are absentee, out of state or twenty years in. Coverage varies by county.
Read this line before anything else. This is acquisition software, not property management. If you came looking for a way to run the rentals you already own, stop here — that is a different category of tool.
The absentee owners on the blocks you want to own in
Buy-and-hold investors work small, known areas — four blocks, one school district, a strip either side of a road. SCOUTRE tells you which houses on those streets are owned by someone who does not live in them, and how to reach them at their real mailing address rather than at the tenant's front door.
Each saved house becomes a record carrying the owner, the equity and mortgage estimates, rental information and the ownership signals. Equity and mortgage figures are estimates derived from recorded loan history and assessed values. They are not statements of account balance.
Deal analysis then runs the rental exit, one of six exit strategies, using your own rent and cost figures. The wider toolkit sits in the real estate investing software overview.
Is SCOUTRE property management software?
No. Property management software holds tenants, leases, rent ledgers, work orders, owner statements and a portfolio. An acquisition record holds none of those. It holds properties, owners, signals, contact paths, a pipeline of acquisition stages and the mail you send. Nothing in it touches a tenancy.
That boundary is why a property manager should not subscribe expecting a management system, and why a landlord who is actively buying should. If you manage doors and also buy, the buying half is what SCOUTRE serves.
What problems does this solve?
Three problems repeat across buy-and-hold investors, and all sit before the purchase. SCOUTRE answers them on the property record: who actually owns the house, where that owner really receives mail, and whether the numbers hold as a rental once you have your own rent figure in front of you.
I know the four blocks I want and cannot tell who lives there
Occupancy is on the record. Save a house and it flags absentee owner and out-of-state owner, alongside long-term owner, free and clear, high equity, no homestead exemption and vacant. An owner of twenty-two years with no mortgage, three states away, is a different conversation from a family who moved in last spring.
My letter went to the tenant instead of the owner
That happens when mail is addressed to the tax record's property address. The record holds the owner's mailing address as a separate field, and postcards and handwritten letters go to that address, carrying the photo of the house you took. Address verification and a printed proof are shown before you pay.
Every deal reaches me after three other people have seen it
Deals arrive late when they arrive through an agent. Working owners directly starts the conversation before the listing exists: trace the owner, tap to call or text from your own number, then set a follow-up with date, time and notes that syncs to Google and Apple Calendar.
Can you find absentee owners for free?
Yes, one house at a time. County assessors and property appraisers publish the owner of record and the owner's mailing address, and comparing the two tells you whether the owner lives there. Philadelphia publishes at property.phila.gov; Cook County publishes at cookcountyassessor.com. Both are free, and both are the source the paid data rests on.
The free route stops at the name and the mailing address. No phone number, no email, no equity estimate, no mail. If your target street is eight houses, the county site is enough.
16 signals on every house on the target street
A motivated seller among small-rental owners is usually a tired one: an absentee landlord three states away, an inherited house in probate, a tax lien, twenty-two years of ownership with no mortgage left. SCOUTRE marks those one property at a time. Add each house by address with Nationwide Property Search, or from the kerb with Property in Front, and the 16 signals say which owner has a reason to sell. Availability varies by property, county and source.
Working a target street, one address at a time
The honest workflow is street by street rather than territory by territory, and every address is saved separately. You drive or type the addresses on the blocks you want to own in, save them one at a time, then filter the leads you have saved.
Add the houses
Type each address in Nationwide Property Search, or stand in front of the house and let GPS identify it.
Read ownership
Owner name, mailing address, occupancy and length of ownership land on the record.
Filter what you saved
Sort your saved leads by equity, ownership and the 16 signals to find the absentee, long-held houses.
Run the rental numbers
Choose rental from the six exits in deal analysis and enter your own rent and cost figures.
Trace and reach out
Run a trace, then tap to call, text or email from your own apps and your own number.
Mail the owner
Send a postcard or handwritten letter to the owner's mailing address, once or over six touches.
Each house sits in an 11-stage pipeline: New, Queued, Called, Texted, Contacted, Analyzing, Offer Sent, Negotiating, Under Contract, Closed, Dead. Called and Texted are stages you set by hand.
What comes back on a property?
One record holds the house, the owner and the money in a single view, drawn from licensed county and public-record data. Coverage varies by county. Some counties publish more, and more often, than others.
- Owner name, owner mailing address, and whether the owner lives there
- Estimated value, estimated equity, estimated equity percentage, estimated mortgage balance
- Lender, lien position, loan type, original amount, loan term, maturity date and loan history
- Sale history, last sale price and date, down payment at last sale, deeds, taxes and assessments
- Beds, baths, square footage, lot size, year built, zoning, land use, MLS status, rental information, Street View and nearby comparable sales
Sixteen signals sit alongside those fields: preforeclosure, probate or inherited, tax lien, other liens, absentee owner, out-of-state owner, vacant, high equity, free and clear, auction, bank owned, long-term owner, recent transfer, no homestead exemption, low down payment at last sale, and MLS activity. Signal availability varies by property, county and source.
What SCOUTRE does not do
SCOUTRE has no market-wide property search. You cannot ask it for every preforeclosure in a city; the 30+ filters work on the leads you have already saved. Rental investors feel that limit harder than most audiences, because the targeting is geographic by nature.
- No tenants, leases, rent or maintenance. There is no management side at all.
- No rent roll, cap rate or net operating income. Rental information is on the record; the investment math you bring.
- No import, no export, no teams. There is no CSV import and no export today, and each account is a single user — no teams, no seats, no shared pipelines.
- Nothing is logged for you. The tap hands off to your own app and stops there. SCOUTRE does not log calls, emails or texts onto the lead.
What does SCOUTRE cost for a landlord?
One plan, $79 a month, after a 3-day free trial, cancel anytime. Leads, captures, skip traces, re-traces, photos, voice notes and follow-ups are unlimited. Physical mail is the only pay-per-use item on the plan: postcards from $0.50 and handwritten letters from $0.83, print and postage included, charged on approval.
If you buy one house a year, that is real money for a tool you use in bursts. There is no annual lock-in, so cancelling between purchases is a normal way to use it. Detail sits on SCOUTRE pricing.
Frequently asked questions
Does SCOUTRE collect rent or manage tenants?
No. Nothing in the product touches a tenancy: no tenant record, no lease, no work order, no rent collection. If you want software to run the rentals you already own, it is the wrong tool.
How do you tell a motivated seller from an owner who is simply absentee?
Absentee ownership on its own says only that the owner lives elsewhere. Motivation shows when signals stack: absentee with a tax lien, probate with long-term ownership, vacancy with free and clear. SCOUTRE flags all 16 signals on a property you have saved, so the stack is visible before you write. Signals describe circumstance, not intent, and availability varies by property, county and source.
How do I reach an owner who does not live in the property?
A skip trace returns phone numbers and email addresses for that owner, and mail goes to the owner's own address rather than to the tenant in the house. Hit rates vary by property and county.
Does the record show rent, cap rate or NOI?
A SCOUTRE record carries rental information alongside beds, baths, square footage, lot size and year built, and deal analysis includes rental as one of six exit strategies. There is no rent roll, no cap rate and no net operating income in the product. Your own rent numbers go in.
Is $79 a month worth it if I buy one house a year?
$79 is a lot if you buy one house a year and nothing else. It replaces a data subscription, a per-record skip-trace bill and a CRM, and skip tracing is unmetered. If you are not actively looking, cancel and come back.
Can my property manager or assistant use my account?
No. There is no CSV import and no export today, and each account is a single user — no teams, no seats, no shared pipelines. An assistant cannot be given a login into your pipeline.
Find out who really owns the houses on your street
3 days free, then $79 per month. Absentee and out-of-state flags, the owner's real mailing address, and unmetered skip tracing. Cancel anytime.
Start free