Building the Owner List from Public Records

A farm is only as good as the list behind it. Here you build it from free public records: which parcels to pull, who owns them, who is likelier to sell, and how to reach a real person. Industrial and single-tenant NNN (triple net, where the tenant pays taxes, insurance and maintenance) get equal weight.

This lesson picks up where Choosing Your Farm ends and feeds the routine from Lesson 1. Letters and cadences live in Course 09, Lesson 5, and deep research on one property in Course 22, Lesson 3. Product background: Course 13 and Course 17.

Start with the target

Every Florida parcel carries a three-digit Department of Revenue (DOR) land-use code. Pick the codes that match your farm before you look up a name.

These come from the DOR's 2025 guide. Codes change, so open the newest guide.

Know the gaps. The state has no code for flex, mini-storage, convenience stores or drugstores, and medical office usually falls under 019. Flex is often 048 or 041, so confirm locally. Counties add local four-digit codes, such as Brevard's warehouse-flex and Lake's warehouse-condo codes, and whether they appear in a download varies. In a warehouse condo each bay has its own owner, so expect small owner-users (companies that own the building they occupy), not one landlord.

Then add parcel filters, as practice-based starting points:

• Building SF: small-bay flex (multi-tenant buildings with units of a few thousand SF) often runs 5,000-40,000 SF per building. Set your range from your farm.
• Year built: older buildings often mean owner-users, newer ones investors.
• Last sale date: 2011 or earlier is a 15-year hold, worth a look.
• Building-to-land ratio: on 048 and 049 parcels, a low ratio flags yard-heavy sites that may be IOS. Confirm with imagery and zoning.

Getting the data

County property appraiser sites. Each county offers a parcel search. Seminole, Volusia, Lake and Polk post data files, Brevard lets you export search results, and Orange has an advanced search. Layouts change, so check each site.

Florida DOR data files. The DOR publishes the statewide rolls that each county appraiser submits. Two matter to you: the NAL (Name-Address-Legal), the real property roll with one row per parcel, and the SDF (Sale Data File). Files are CSV. Preliminary rolls arrive in July, final rolls from October. County numbers: Brevard 15, Lake 45, Orange 58, Osceola 59, Polk 63, Seminole 69, Volusia 74.

NAL columns to look for: DOR_UC (land-use code), TOT_LVG_AREA (building SF), LND_SQFOOT (land SF), ACT_YR_BLT (year built), OWN_NAME, OWN_ADDR1, OWN_STATE, PHY_ADDR1 (physical address), and SALE_PRC1, SALE_YR1, QUAL_CD1 (latest sale). The NAL keeps only two sales, so use the SDF for history. Sale qualification code 19 covers transfers by executors and similar fiduciaries, a possible estate. Code 11 with a low price marks a non-market transfer, so never use it as a comp.

Public files omit owners with a statutory confidentiality exemption, so a blank owner is not a hidden one. Budget an afternoon to a day to learn one county's file (a practice estimate).

Paid tools. Categories only, since prices change:

Build your first 100 owners free. Whether a paid tool pays off is your broker's call.

Unmasking the owner

Most commercial parcels list an LLC, not a person. Sunbiz, the state business registry search, unmasks them:

1. Search the exact owner name and open the entity detail page.
2. Check status: active, inactive, or administratively dissolved (for skipping the annual report). Dissolved LLCs can be reinstated, so it is a clue, not proof.
3. Read the annual report. Florida requires the name, title or capacity, and address of at least one person with authority to manage the company. You are guaranteed one name, not every member.
4. Note the registered agent (who receives legal papers), then look past it. Many owners use a law firm or service company, a dead end for calling.
5. Search the manager or officer name to find their other entities.
6. Compare every address with the appraiser mailing address. A match to the building suggests an owner-user, another state an absentee investor, and a care-of accounting or law firm a route through their advisor.

Limits to expect:

• Layered entities: Entity A is managed by Entity B. Follow each page and expect to stop at an out-of-state manager.
• Out-of-state entities: a foreign LLC does not disclose members in Florida records, and federal beneficial-ownership filings are not a public lookup.
• Trusts: under F.S. 689.071, a land trust may name only the trustee, who is not necessarily the beneficiary.
• Common names: confirm with address and ZIP.

Portfolio owners. Industrial park owners often hold each building in a separate LLC sharing one mailing address. Match on mailing address line one plus ZIP, not just name. One owner with five buildings is one conversation, not five.

Likely-seller signals and a scoring table

No validated seller-likelihood model exists for Central Florida. These weights are teaching values from practice. Adjust them with your own results.

Add 0-2 for a verified reachable person and 0-2 for fit with your Lesson 2 farm. Tier A is 8 or more, tier B is 5-7, tier C is 0-4. Score to prioritize calls, never to decide who deserves respect.

An expired or withdrawn listing is fair game. An active one is not, so stop pitching anyone who says a broker represents them. Lesson 4 explains the exclusive-listing rules in full.

Official records for the top tier

Search county clerk records only for tier A and strong tier B. They are free and cover deeds, mortgages, satisfactions (releases of paid-off mortgages), liens and lis pendens. Until then, your tier is provisional.

• Deed type and date: a warranty deed suggests a normal sale. A personal representative's deed points to an estate, a trustee's deed to a trust. A quit claim deed often moves title without a sale.
• Mortgage amount and date: a maturity stated in the recorded document beats any guess. If it is missing, add a typical term to the recording date. Many commercial loans run about 5 to 10 years and leave a balloon (a large final payment), a common norm, not a rule. A June 2021 mortgage with a 5-year term suggests mid-2026; with 10 years, 2031. That is an inference, so treat it as a reason to call and ask about the debt. An SBA 504 loan (government-backed, for owner-occupied buildings) usually points to an owner-user.
• Documentary stamps (a tax paid when a document is recorded): deeds are stamped at $0.70 per $100 and mortgages at $0.35 per $100. Illustration: $1,750 of mortgage stamps divided by 0.0035 is a $500,000 loan.
• Liens and lis pendens: a recorded lis pendens is notice of a lawsuit tied to the property, often a foreclosure. Talk to your managing broker before contacting a distressed owner.
• Taxes: property taxes turn delinquent April 1. The county tax collector's parcel search shows balances. A sold tax certificate means a third party holds a lien. Small balances can be clerical errors, so verify.
• Probate: many filings are public, some are confidential. Estate owners often have an attorney, so keep the tone respectful.

Read these records for facts. Never tell an owner what a document legally means. That is their attorney's job.

Skip tracing at a broker level

A skip trace is a paid lookup that appends phones, emails and mailing addresses to a name. Vendors claim match rates of roughly 70 to 90 percent, and a match is not a contact. Commercial owners are often entities, so a number may belong to a registered agent, an attorney or a namesake. Verify before you call:

• Match the person to a Sunbiz officer or manager and the mailing address.
• Prefer a business line or the annual report address.
• Open the first call with a name check.

"Am I speaking with [Name], the manager of [Entity]? This is [Your name] with MaxLife Commercial. Is now a fair time for a short call about the building on [Street]?"

Guardrails. Appraiser and Sunbiz records are public, but a purchased file may be built from consumer data with its own use limits. Treat any personal or unknown number as a consumer number and hand-dial it. Lesson 4 covers the calling rules, including F.S. 501.059, DNC scrubbing, and stop requests. For sourcing:

• Never pull credit data on an owner, pose as the owner, a bank or an official, or use motor-vehicle records.
• Read the vendor's permitted-use terms, and ask whether the data is credit-based.
• Log the source and date of every number, and record every stop request in your do-not-contact log.

Confirm these points with your broker of record and a Florida attorney.

The spreadsheet

One row per owner, not per parcel. Use these columns:

Dedupe rules.

1. Normalize names: uppercase, no punctuation, one spelling of LLC and INC.
2. Build an owner key from name, mailing address line one and ZIP.
3. Count parcels and sum SF per key. Three or more parcels is a portfolio owner.
4. Keep one contact per key, with the property list in the notes.

CRM tagging and import. A CRM is the customer database where you track every contact. Tag each contact by asset class, county, signal and tier. Export a CSV with your CRM's own field names and test-import 10 rows first. Import only owners you will work, never the whole NAL. Refresh when the DOR files update, and re-check Sunbiz before a first call.

Time budget for 100 tier A owners

Practice estimates, not benchmarks: 8 minutes of Sunbiz for each of 120 entity owners, then 10 minutes of records and 8 of skip tracing for each of 100 tier A owners.

That is about five weeks at 12 hours a week. In the 90-day plan in Lesson 7, you pull and score the whole list in weeks 3 and 4, then verify contacts for tier A owners in your research blocks, about 20 a week. Start calling tier A owners as they finish. A rough list you work beats a perfect one you never call.

A worked example (illustrative numbers, not market data)

Sixteen invented owners: eight Sanford-area industrial owners, then eight single-tenant NNN pad owners across Central Florida. Total is signals plus reachable (R) plus fit (F).

Row 1 is your first industrial call: 3 + 3 + 2 + 1 + 2 = 11. Row 4 has no reachable person, so research the dissolved entity first. Row 8 scores only 4, so verify the delinquency. Row 6 is one owner with five parcels: one conversation. On the NNN side, N3 is a trust that owns a bank pad, so treat it like row 1 and keep the tone patient. N1, N2 and N3 land in tier A beside the industrial owners, so your first 25 calls include both product lines.

Key takeaways

• Filter by DOR land-use code, size and last sale date before you look up a name
• Start with free appraiser and DOR files
• Follow Sunbiz from the LLC to the manager, and stop at dead ends
• Merge portfolio owners by mailing address
• Score signals, call tier A first, and label the loan maturity guess an inference
• Verify every skip-traced person and hand-dial only
• Log every source and stop request for 5 years

Next: Lesson 4 turns the list into conversations with cold calls.