Ava Data Glossary
Skip tracing & real-estate data, defined.
Plain-English definitions of the data terms that drive modern real-estate prospecting — paired with how Ava Data handles each one in the dashboard and via the API.
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Skip Tracing
Skip tracing is the process of locating a person's current contact information — phone numbers, email addresses, and known associates — by stitching together public records, utility data, and proprietary identity graphs.
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Relational Mapping
Relational mapping expands a skip trace from a single subject to their household and immediate network — spouses, siblings, parents, adult children, and known associates — to give you a back-door path when the primary number is dead.
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Landlord Skip Tracing
Landlord skip tracing takes a property's owner name and address and returns the landlord's current phone and email — typically used by wholesalers and acquisition teams to reach out-of-state landlords directly instead of going through a property manager.
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Driving for Dollars
Driving for dollars is the real-estate prospecting practice of physically driving neighborhoods to spot distressed properties, then skip-tracing the owners to make a direct cash offer — turning visual signals (overgrown lawns, boarded windows, deferred maintenance) into a contactable lead list.
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People Search API
A people search API programmatically returns identity and contact information for an individual given a name and a few disambiguating fields — address, city, state, age, or DOB.
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CRM Enrichment
CRM enrichment is the process of automatically appending missing fields — phone, email, mailing address, related persons — to records already in your CRM, usually via webhook or scheduled batch job.
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Bulk Skip Tracing
Bulk skip tracing runs a skip trace over a list of records — typically a CSV of names and addresses — and returns matched contact information as a downloadable file or via async API.
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Absentee Owner
An absentee owner is the legal owner of a property whose mailing address differs from the property address — typically a landlord, an inherited-property holder, or an out-of-state investor — and a top target for off-market acquisitions.
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Distressed Property Leads
Distressed property leads are owners of homes facing financial or physical distress — pre-foreclosure, tax-delinquent, code-violation, vacant, or inherited — and are the highest-converting segment for wholesalers and cash buyers.
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Probate Leads
Probate leads are heirs and personal representatives of estates currently in probate court — typically owners of inherited real estate they did not buy and often do not want to keep.
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Pre-Foreclosure Leads
Pre-foreclosure leads are homeowners against whom a Notice of Default or Lis Pendens has been recorded but whose property has not yet been sold at auction — the window in which a cash offer can prevent foreclosure.
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Tax-Delinquent Properties
Tax-delinquent properties are parcels whose owners have fallen behind on county property taxes — a public-record signal of financial distress and one of the highest-converting lead sources for cash buyers.
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