A solar door knocking app that names the owner before you knock
Eight minutes into a pitch, "I just rent" ends the conversation. SCOUTRE removes that door from your afternoon: stand in front of the house, GPS identifies the exact parcel with no address typed, and the record returns the owner's name and whether that owner lives there. Nationwide, across 160 million U.S. properties. Coverage varies by county.
Where an investor hunts motivated sellers, a solar rep hunts the homeowner who can actually sign. Written for the rep who knocks the doors themselves. Each account is a single user, and if you are buying for a canvassing team this is not the tool — better to know now.
Who owns the house, and whether they live in it
Canvassing hours are the only inventory a door-knocking rep has. SCOUTRE spends fewer of them on people who cannot sign, by answering two questions at the kerb: who owns this house, and do they live in it. Both come from Property in Front, which matches the parcel by GPS.
The houses that come back absentee or out of state are the ones to skip on foot. Their owner has a separate mailing address on the record, so they become a postcard instead of a wasted knock. Everything else — the visit, the photo, the voice note, the follow-up date — stays on that house's record.
The property is the unit, not the list, and that is a deliberate design choice. The wider toolkit sits in the real estate investing software overview.
Is this a team tool, or a tool for one rep?
One rep. There is no CSV import and no export today, and each account is a single user — no teams, no seats, no shared pipelines. Nobody can be assigned a street, and nothing you record is visible to an office.
Solar sales organisations buy on exactly those features, which is why this page is addressed to the independent or 1099 rep paying for their own tools. If that is not you, the honest answer is that SCOUTRE will disappoint your organisation.
What problems does this solve?
Three things burn a canvassing afternoon, and SCOUTRE handles all three on one property record: doors where nobody can sign, callbacks written on business cards that vanish, and good houses where nobody was home and there is no way to try again.
A third of my conversations end at "I just rent"
Renters answer doors. Owner occupancy is on the record before you knock, and the absentee owner and out-of-state owner flags mark the houses whose decision-maker is somewhere else entirely. That turns a wasted eight-minute pitch into a five-second check and a skipped door. Signal availability varies by property, county and source.
The callback is written on a card in my jacket pocket
Anything written on paper at 4pm Thursday is gone by Saturday. Record the visit on the house instead: a photo, a voice note, the outcome, and tags for what happened — left sticky note, talked to neighbor, looks vacant. Then set a follow-up with date, time and notes that syncs to Google and Apple Calendar.
Nobody was home at the best house on the street
A street address on its own gives you nothing to do next. With the owner named, you can run a trace and reach them another way — or send a postcard carrying the photo of their own house, from $0.50, print and postage included. Hit rates vary by property and county.
Can you check who owns a house for free?
Yes, and it costs nothing but time. County assessors and property appraisers publish the owner of record and the owner's mailing address for free, and comparing the two tells you whether the owner lives there. Philadelphia publishes at property.phila.gov; Cook County publishes at cookcountyassessor.com.
The problem is the clock. Looking up forty addresses the night before is an hour of unpaid work, and it does not help with the house you knock on impulse. If you canvass one street a week, the county site is enough.
Motivated sellers, translated for a door knocker
In real estate, a motivated seller is an owner with a reason to sell the house. A solar rep is not buying the house, so the equivalent is narrower: the homeowner with a reason to talk. Owner-occupancy, plus recent transfer and long-term owner from the 16 signals, point at someone who can sign that afternoon. SCOUTRE returns those at the kerb. Availability varies by property, county and source.
Six steps that cover a canvassing afternoon
The workflow is one house at a time, which is how canvassing works anyway. You add a house, read the owner, decide whether to knock, and record what happened. Six steps cover a full afternoon on a phone, with one hand free.
Stand in front of the house
Corner lots and houses with no visible number are included.
Read owner and occupancy
Owner name, mailing address and occupancy come back on the property record.
Knock or skip
Owner-occupied means knock, and you already have the name. Absentee or out of state means skip and mail.
Record what happened
Photo, voice note, visit outcome and tags — left sticky note, talked to neighbor, looks vacant.
Follow up later
Set a date and time, or run a skip trace and tap to call or text from your own number.
See what you have covered
Drive Scout records route, distance and captures. Today's route shows orange; streets already driven show red.
Every house sits in an 11-stage pipeline: New, Queued, Called, Texted, Contacted, Analyzing, Offer Sent, Negotiating, Under Contract, Closed, Dead. The names come from real estate and you set them by hand.
What comes back on a house?
One record holds the house and the owner, 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
- Beds, baths, square footage, lot size, year built, zoning, land use and Street View
- Sale history, last sale price and date — a house that changed hands last year is a different conversation
- Estimated value and estimated equity, which are estimates derived from recorded loan history and assessed values, not statements of account balance
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. Four of them change a knock: absentee, out-of-state, long-term owner and recent transfer.
What SCOUTRE does not do
SCOUTRE holds no solar data of any kind. There is no roof age, no roof orientation, no shading, no panel suitability score, no utility usage and no power bill anywhere in the record. Year built is the closest fact and it is not roof age. It qualifies the person at the door, not the roof above them.
- No teams. Each account is a single user — no seats, no shared pipelines, nothing to assign.
- Nothing is logged for you. The tap hands off to your own app and stops there. SCOUTRE does not log calls, emails or texts back onto the lead.
- No market-wide search. You add properties one at a time and the 30+ filters then work on the leads you have saved.
- Nothing is sent for you. Physical mail is the one thing SCOUTRE produces and sends for you.
What does SCOUTRE cost a solar rep?
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. Calls and texts cost nothing either, because the buttons open your own dialer and messages app.
Physical mail is the only pay-per-use item: postcards 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 designed, printed and mailed free. Detail sits on SCOUTRE pricing.
Frequently asked questions
Do solar reps use motivated seller data?
Rarely, and never the way an investor does. A motivated seller is an owner with a reason to sell the house, which is not what a solar rep is selling. The signals that matter at a door are ownership and occupancy, with recent transfer and long-term owner behind them, and SCOUTRE returns those alongside the other 16 on any property you add. Availability varies by property, county and source.
Does it log my knocks, calls and texts?
The tap hands off to your own app and stops there. SCOUTRE does not log calls, emails or texts back onto the lead. You move the lead's stage yourself. What you record by hand does stick: photos, a voice note, the visit outcome and a follow-up date.
How do I know the person answering the door owns the house?
Check before you knock. Standing in front of the house, GPS identifies the parcel and the record returns the owner's name and whether that owner lives there. Signal availability varies by property, county and source.
Can I see every homeowner in a neighbourhood at once?
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. On foot that matches how you canvass: house, check, knock or skip.
Is SCOUTRE built for a solar sales team?
No, and a sales manager should read this before buying. It is bought by the rep who knocks, for their own doors, on their own phone.
Is it legal to call or text someone whose number I traced?
SCOUTRE surfaces screening indicators — Federal DNC, State DNC, DMA suppression and known-litigator flags. You are the caller of record and you are responsible for your own compliance. This is not legal advice. Your company's rules still apply on top.
Spend Thursday afternoon on doors that can actually sign
3 days free, then $79 per month. Owner name and occupancy before you knock, unmetered skip tracing, and postcards from $0.50. Cancel anytime.
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