A real estate investing app you use at the house, not at the desk
SCOUTRE is a real estate investing app for finding motivated sellers, built around the property in front of you. Stand in front of any house and SCOUTRE identifies the exact parcel. No address needed. The record returns the owner, estimated equity, estimated mortgage balance, lien position and 16 distress signals across 160 million U.S. properties. Coverage varies by county.
This page covers the field workflow: capture, qualify, trace, call, analyse and mail, one property at a time. The full capability list sits in the real estate investing software overview. And it states the limit up front: SCOUTRE has no market-wide search.
Owner, equity and lien position
A house you are looking at becomes a decision. One property record holds the owner name, the owner's separate mailing address, whether the owner lives there, estimated value, estimated equity, estimated mortgage balance and lien position, across 160 million U.S. properties. Equity and mortgage figures are estimates derived from recorded loan history and assessed values. They are not statements of account balance.
The rest of the job stays on that record. A skip trace runs from it, a six-step deal analysis runs from it, and a postcard carrying the photo you just took is composed from it. Investors are one of eight roles in all SCOUTRE solutions, and the mechanism behind every one of them is set out in what SCOUTRE does.
What problems does this solve?
Off-market acquisition breaks in four predictable places, and none is a shortage of software: patchy memory, stale contact data, the gap between seeing a house and pricing it, and a per-record trace bill that decides which owners you never call.
I have twelve addresses in a notes app and I never looked any of them up
A capture becomes a property record the moment you take it, not a line of text you decode on Sunday. It carries GPS location, capture date and time, photos, voice notes and a distress rating from 1 to 5. Tag what you see: peeling paint, overgrown lawn, cluttered driveway, damaged roof, boarded windows, accumulated mail, code notices, vacancy signs. A data provider cannot see peeling paint.
I paid for a trace, called three numbers, and every one was dead
Traces run against live sources at the moment you request them, rather than being pulled from a list assembled months earlier and resold across subscribers. A trace returns multiple phone numbers classified wireless or landline, plus emails and a mailing address per owner. Hit rates vary by property and county: some owners return four numbers and two emails, some return nothing. See real estate skip tracing.
By the time I had a number, the owner had signed with someone else
Deal analysis runs on the phone at the house, in six steps: ARV, Repairs, Motivation, Strategy, Offer, Deal Summary. ARV pulls nearby sold comparable sales you include, exclude or add to, with price per square foot and a confidence score. The offer step returns your true maximum allowable offer.
I ration skip traces because every record costs me money
Skip tracing is unmetered on the $79 plan. So are re-traces. That changes behaviour more than any single feature here: you trace every property you save instead of deciding in advance which ones deserve the spend.
Can you do this without paying for software?
Yes, one property at a time. Every U.S. county publishes ownership through its assessor, property appraiser, tax commissioner or board of assessors, and the recorder or register of deeds publishes the deeds, mortgages and liens behind it. Cook County publishes at cookcountyassessor.com; the Massachusetts registries publish at masslandrecords.com. Searching is free; a recorded copy costs a few dollars.
The bill is paid in time instead. Ten addresses is an evening across four county sites, and none of it returns a phone number. If you buy two houses a year, that is enough and you should use it.
16 signals on the house you stopped at
A motivated seller is an owner whose circumstances decide the sale, not their asking price. Preforeclosure, probate, a tax lien or a long-vacant house all point that way. SCOUTRE surfaces them one property at a time: add the house from the kerb with Property in Front, or by address with Nationwide Property Search, and the 16 signals say whether this owner has a reason to sell. Availability varies by property, county and source.
From the kerb to a saved lead
The workflow starts at one property, never at a market-wide list, and every step stays on that record. You add properties one at a time — captured while driving, found by address, or worked from a list you already have.
Identify the house
GPS identifies the exact parcel with no address typed. It works on a corner lot, a house with no visible number, and a street you have never driven.
Read the record
The signals that usually decide an off-market buy sit on the same screen: high equity, free and clear, preforeclosure, probate, vacant and absentee owner.
Document what you can see
Photos, a voice note and a distress rating from 1 to 5. With no signal they save to your phone and upload when the connection returns, marked Saved on this phone.
Trace the owner
Every trace is screened against Federal DNC, State DNC, DMA suppression, and known-litigator flags. A Recent Data badge and a TRACED state show on the record.
Run the numbers
Six exit strategies are available: wholesale assignment, fix and flip, rental, creative finance, double close, and referral or JV. The offer step returns a true maximum allowable offer and a verdict.
Make contact, then set the stage
Tap a phone number and your own dialer opens, from your real number. Or send postcards and handwritten letters carrying that house's photo.
The house then sits in the pipeline. SCOUTRE does not log calls, emails or texts back onto the lead; you move the lead's stage yourself.
What comes back on a property?
SCOUTRE covers 160 million U.S. properties at roughly 95% coverage. Coverage varies by county.
- 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 full 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.
MLS status comes from participating boards. Both money figures are estimates, not statements of account balance.
SCOUTRE flags 16 distress and opportunity signals:
- 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
- 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. If your strategy is mailing five thousand absentee owners across three ZIP codes, this is the wrong tool.
There is no CSV import and no export today, and each account is a single user — no teams, no seats, no shared pipelines. SCOUTRE does not send email, texts or calls on your behalf; it opens your own apps with the message ready. Physical mail is the one thing SCOUTRE produces and sends for you. Coverage varies by county.
What does SCOUTRE cost for a real estate investor?
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 start from $0.50 and handwritten letters from $0.83, print and postage included, charged on approval. Address verification and a printed proof are shown before you pay, and your first postcard is mailed free, including its QR cash-offer page. Calls and texts cost nothing extra. The Apple Watch app is included free. Full breakdown on SCOUTRE pricing.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a real estate investing app that works without an address?
Yes. Property in Front uses GPS to identify the exact parcel, with no address typed. Parcel apps can show you the parcel you are standing on; Property in Front takes that property into the rest of the job — the signals, the owner's phone number, the pipeline and the mail.
Is SCOUTRE a good CRM for real estate investors?
SCOUTRE is a single-user CRM organised by property. It carries an 11-stage pipeline — New, Queued, Called, Texted, Contacted, Analyzing, Offer Sent, Negotiating, Under Contract, Closed, Dead — with 30+ filters over the leads you have saved, plus map, list and property views.
Can I bring an existing lead list into SCOUTRE?
Not as a file. If you already own a list you can work it by typing each address into Nationwide Property Search, though for five thousand records that is not practical.
How do you tell which owner is a motivated seller?
Motivation is scored inside the SCOUTRE deal analysis from the 16 distress signals, your own field observations and your answers. Preforeclosure, probate, a tax lien and a vacant house all point the same way. The score is not a market-wide ranking and never runs on a property you have not saved, so you choose which houses enter the pipeline.
How many properties can I save and trace in a month?
There is no cap. Saving, capturing, tracing and re-tracing are unlimited on the $79 plan, so re-tracing a six-month-old lead costs nothing. Hit rates vary by property and county.
Does the app run on Android?
SCOUTRE runs on iPhone and Apple Watch, and the full app runs from your home screen as a web app on Android. A native Android app is in development. Property in Front, capture, tracing and deal analysis all work in the web app today.
Decide the next house before you leave the curb
3 days free, then $79 per month. Property in Front, the 16 distress signals and unmetered skip tracing are included. Cancel anytime.
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