US Distressed Property Leads — Tax Liens, Pre-Foreclosures, Code Violations, Vacant

Find distressed properties across major US markets in one unified feed, straight from official city and county open data. Tax lien sale lists, registered foreclosures, code-violation cases, and vacant/abandoned buildings — with owner names, addresses, and amounts owed where the government publishes them.

Built for real estate investors and wholesalers: schedule it and get fresh motivated-seller leads without paying $100-200/mo for PropStream-style tools.

Signal Types & Markets

Source	Market	Signal	Highlights
NYC Tax Lien Sale List	New York City	Tax lien	The at-risk list published before each lien sale; borough-block-lot + address
LA Registered Foreclosures	Los Angeles	Pre-foreclosure	Includes lender name + contact phone
Detroit Blight Tickets	Detroit	Code violation	Full owner name + mailing address + balance due + collection status
Miami-Dade Open Violations	Miami-Dade County	Code violation	Active enforcement cases with parcel folio
Miami-Dade Code Liens	Miami-Dade County	Code lien	Violations escalated to a recorded lien (stronger distress)
Chicago Building Violations	Chicago	Code violation	Open building-code violations, updated daily
Chicago Vacant & Abandoned	Chicago	Vacant	Vacant buildings with fines owed + owner named

Four distress signal types across five of the biggest US metros. More markets are added as cities publish usable data — open an issue to request one.

Why These Markets

Distress data is a patchwork: many counties either don't publish it, freeze it years out of date, or hide it behind paid subscriptions and login walls. This actor only includes sources that are free, official, and actually maintained — verified live. Notably, the classic county tax-sale lists (Cook County, Philadelphia) are frozen years out of date on their open portals and are deliberately excluded rather than shipped stale.

Output

One unified schema across every source. Each lead includes (where the source provides it):

Field	Description
jurisdiction, signalType, source	Where the lead came from and what kind of distress
propertyAddress, city, state, zip	The distressed property
parcelId	Parcel/folio/APN/BBL identifier
ownerName, ownerMailingAddress	Owner and mailing address (Detroit, Chicago vacant)
amountDue	Balance/fines owed (Detroit, Chicago vacant)
status	Case/cycle status
signalDate	Date of the filing/violation/registration
description	Violation or problem description
lender, lenderPhone	Foreclosure lender contact (LA)
latitude, longitude	Coordinates where published
sourceUrl, dataSource	Official source

Input

{
    "filedSince": "last365days",
    "sources": [],
    "signalTypes": ["pre_foreclosure", "tax_lien"],
    "zipPrefix": "112",
    "maxResultsPerSource": 500
}

• sources: empty = all. Pick specific markets/lists by key.
• signalTypes: filter to tax_lien, pre_foreclosure, code_violation, code_lien, vacant.
• filedSince: date window (last7days … last365days, all). Default 365 days.
• zipPrefix: only properties whose ZIP starts with this (e.g. 112 for parts of Brooklyn).
• maxResults / maxResultsPerSource: caps. 0 = unlimited.

Data Freshness Notes

• Fresh/daily: LA foreclosures, Detroit blight tickets, Miami-Dade open violations, Chicago building violations.
• Periodic snapshots: the NYC tax lien list is published in cycles — this actor returns the most recent published cycle in full (the current at-risk list), regardless of the date window. Chicago's vacant-buildings registry updates in batches.
• Chicago's building-violation dataset is millions of rows; the actor pulls only OPEN violations within your date window. Use zipPrefix and maxResultsPerSource to keep runs focused.

Works Great With

• Property Tax Scraper - Pull full assessor records (value, ownership, sale history) for any distressed parcel you find here
• US Business Entity Search - When the owner is an LLC, look up its registration and agent
• Website Company Enricher - Enrich corporate owners with contact data

Legal

All records are public data published by city and county governments. No login, no scraping of protected sites, no data beyond what these agencies publish for public use.