Probate & Foreclosure Leads Scraper

Pull US distressed-property leads at scale — probate, foreclosure, sheriff sale, tax lien, and tax sale events in one unified feed, complete with case numbers, property addresses, named parties, filing and sale dates, dollar amounts, and estimated equity. Built for real estate investors, wholesalers, title companies, note buyers, and probate attorneys who need a steady stream of motivated-seller leads from public government records without stitching together dozens of county portals by hand.

Why This Scraper?

• Five distressed-event types in one feed — probate, foreclosure, sheriff sale, tax lien, and tax sale leads normalized into a single flat schema, so you never scrape or reconcile one county at a time.
• Nationwide US coverage across government open-data portals — pulls from dozens of county and state public-records sources and auto-picks-up new datasets as agencies publish them, no per-county setup.
• ~30 normalized fields per lead — every event maps onto the same record shape regardless of which portal it came from, so downstream imports stay stable across sources.
• Named parties on every applicable record — decedent, executor/administrator, attorney of record, defendant/borrower, and plaintiff/lender pulled out into their own fields.
• Estimated equity computed for you — property_equity_estimate_usd is derived as estimated value minus mortgage balance, letting you filter for high-equity, high-motivation leads directly.
• Parcel/APN, normalized address, and lat/lng geocodes — each lead carries a parcel/APN identifier, a cleaned property address, and latitude/longitude where the source publishes them for mapping and skip-tracing.
• Case and docket numbers preserved — court case, docket, cause, or file numbers captured so you can cross-reference the original public record.
• Filing and sale dates on every record — filing/notice dates for probate and lien events, scheduled/actual auction dates for foreclosure and sheriff/tax sales.
• Original source row kept alongside the clean record — every lead includes raw_source_fields, the untouched government row, so no data is ever lost in normalization.

Use Cases

Real-Estate Investing & Wholesaling

• Source motivated sellers before properties hit the MLS
• Target high-equity probate estates and pre-foreclosures for direct-mail campaigns
• Build auction lists from upcoming sheriff and tax sales with opening bids
• Map leads by lat/lng to focus on your buy-box neighborhoods

Lead Generation

• Filter for high-equity leads nationwide with a single minimum-equity threshold
• Segment by event type — run separate probate, foreclosure, and tax-lien campaigns
• Pull named parties (decedent, executor, defendant) for skip-tracing and outreach
• Feed fresh distressed-property leads into your CRM on a schedule

Title & Legal

• Identify probate estates and their executors/attorneys for estate-sale outreach
• Track lien amounts and tax-sale dates for redemption and payoff work
• Cross-reference case and docket numbers against court records
• Monitor foreclosure filings by county for title and closing pipelines

Market Research

• Measure distressed-inventory volume by state, county, and event type
• Track sale prices, opening bids, and winning bids across auctions
• Analyze equity distribution to gauge distress depth in a market
• Benchmark filing and sale-date trends over custom date ranges

Getting Started

All foreclosures in California

{
    "eventTypes": ["foreclosure"],
    "states": ["CA"],
    "maxResults": 200
}

Probate and tax-lien leads in Texas for 2024

{
    "eventTypes": ["probate", "tax_lien"],
    "states": ["TX"],
    "dateFrom": "2024-01-01",
    "dateTo": "2024-12-31",
    "maxResults": 500
}

High-equity distressed leads nationwide

{
    "minEstimatedEquity": 100000,
    "eventTypes": ["foreclosure", "sheriff_sale"],
    "states": ["FL", "GA"],
    "maxResults": 1000
}

Input Reference

What to Collect

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
eventTypes	array (select)	[] (all)	Which distressed-property events to collect: Probate, Foreclosure, Sheriff Sale, Tax Lien, Tax Sale. Leave empty to include all five types.
states	array	[] (all)	Restrict results to specific US states by two-letter code (e.g. "CA", "NY", "TX"). Leave empty to include all available states.
counties	array	[] (all)	Restrict results to specific counties by name (e.g. "King", "Cook", "Orleans"). Matching is case-insensitive. Leave empty to include all counties.

Date & Value Filters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
dateFrom	string	""	Only include events with a sale date or filing date on or after this date. Use the format YYYY-MM-DD (e.g. 2025-01-01). Leave blank for no start date.
dateTo	string	""	Only include events with a sale date or filing date on or before this date. Use the format YYYY-MM-DD (e.g. 2025-12-31). Leave blank for no end date.
minEstimatedEquity	integer	0	Only include records where estimated property value minus mortgage balance is at least this many dollars. Set to 0 to disable. Equity comes from value and mortgage columns that only some sources publish, so this filter works best combined with an event type and a state.
onlyOwnerOccupied	boolean	false	Only include records that are verifiably owner-occupied. Records where owner-occupancy cannot be confirmed are dropped.

Options

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
maxResults	integer	100	Maximum number of lead records to return across all sources. Set to 0 for unlimited. Tip: start with 25-50 to test, then increase.

Output

Each result is one distressed-property event, normalized to the same flat shape regardless of source. Here's a representative foreclosure lead:

{
    "event_id": "data.lacity.org:abcd-1234:CV2024-00789",
    "event_type": "foreclosure",
    "source_url": "https://data.lacity.org/d/abcd-1234",
    "dataset_name": "Foreclosure Notices",
    "domain": "data.lacity.org",
    "county": "Los Angeles",
    "state": "CA",
    "filing_date": "2024-03-12",
    "sale_date": "2024-06-18",
    "case_number": "CV2024-00789",
    "decedent_name": null,
    "executor_name": null,
    "attorney_name": "Morrison & Clark LLP",
    "defendant_name": "John A. Rivera",
    "plaintiff_name": "First National Mortgage",
    "property_address": "2401 Thornton Rd, Los Angeles, CA 90032",
    "property_address_normalized": "2401 thornton rd los angeles ca 90032",
    "parcel_apn": "5201-014-023",
    "property_type": "Single Family",
    "estimated_value_usd": 589000,
    "mortgage_balance_usd": 312000,
    "lien_amount_usd": null,
    "opening_bid_usd": 325400,
    "winning_bid_usd": null,
    "owner_occupied": true,
    "property_equity_estimate_usd": 277000,
    "status": "Pending",
    "lat": 34.0812,
    "lng": -118.1765,
    "raw_source_fields": { "case_no": "CV2024-00789", "situs_address": "2401 Thornton Rd" }
}

Core & Event

Field	Type	Description
event_id	string	Stable unique identifier for the lead
event_type	string	One of probate, foreclosure, sheriff_sale, tax_lien, tax_sale
source_url	string	Link to the source government dataset
dataset_name	string	Human-readable title of the source dataset
domain	string	Government portal the record came from
case_number	string	Court case, docket, cause, or file number
status	string	Event status (e.g. Pending, Sold)
filing_date	string	Filing/notice date (ISO), where applicable
sale_date	string	Scheduled or actual sale date (ISO), where applicable
raw_source_fields	object	The original untouched government row

Parties

Field	Type	Description
decedent_name	string	Probate: name of the decedent
executor_name	string	Probate: executor or administrator
attorney_name	string	Attorney of record
defendant_name	string	Foreclosure/sheriff sale: defendant or borrower
plaintiff_name	string	Foreclosure/sheriff sale: plaintiff or lender

Property & Location

Field	Type	Description
property_address	string	Raw property address
property_address_normalized	string	Cleaned/normalized property address
parcel_apn	string	Parcel or APN identifier
property_type	string	Property type where available
county	string	County name
state	string	Two-letter US state code
lat	number	Latitude where geocoded
lng	number	Longitude where geocoded

Amounts & Equity

Field	Type	Description
estimated_value_usd	number	Estimated property value (USD)
mortgage_balance_usd	number	Outstanding mortgage balance (USD)
lien_amount_usd	number	Lien amount (USD)
opening_bid_usd	number	Auction opening bid (USD)
winning_bid_usd	number	Auction winning bid (USD)
property_equity_estimate_usd	number	Estimated equity (value minus mortgage)
owner_occupied	boolean	Whether the property is owner-occupied

Many fields are null on any given record — a probate lead carries decedent and executor names but no opening bid, while a tax-sale lead carries a lien amount but no decedent. This is expected: every event type shares one schema, and only the fields relevant to that event are populated.

Tips for Best Results

• Start small — set maxResults to 25-50 on your first run to confirm the leads match your needs, then scale up.
• Narrow by event type + state for equity filtering — minEstimatedEquity is derived from value and mortgage columns that only some sources publish, so pairing it with an event type and a state runs faster and returns more usable leads than filtering nationwide alone.
• Not every county publishes every event type — a probate-only run in one state may return few or no leads simply because those agencies don't publish that record type; widen the state list or event types if a run comes back thin.
• Use property_equity_estimate_usd to rank motivation — high-equity distressed owners are the most likely to sell at a discount; sort or filter on this field to prioritize outreach.
• Pull named parties for skip-tracing — defendant_name, executor_name, and decedent_name are your starting point for finding current contact details.
• Combine date bounds with event type — probate and lien filings use filing dates while auctions use sale dates, so a date window applied to a single event type gives the cleanest slice.
• Keep raw_source_fields — if a source publishes an extra field you need that isn't in the normalized schema, it's preserved verbatim in the raw row.

Pricing

From $0.99 per 1,000 results — a flat pay-per-result rate that undercuts per-record distressed-lead sourcing at volume. Bronze, Silver, and Gold subscribers pay progressively less; the table below shows total cost at each discount tier.

Results	No discount	Bronze	Silver	Gold
100	$0.115	$0.110	$0.105	$0.099
1,000	$1.15	$1.10	$1.05	$0.99
10,000	$11.50	$11.00	$10.50	$9.90
100,000	$115.00	$110.00	$105.00	$99.00

A "result" is any lead record in the output dataset. No compute or time-based charges — you pay per result, plus a small fixed per-run start fee.

Integrations

Export data in JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS. Connect to 1,500+ apps via:

• Zapier / Make / n8n — Workflow automation
• Google Sheets — Direct spreadsheet export
• Slack / Email — Notifications on new leads
• Webhooks — Trigger custom APIs on run completion
• Apify API — Full programmatic access

Legal & Ethical Use

This actor collects distressed-property information from public government open-data records. Use it responsibly and in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations, including the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), Do-Not-Call (DNC) rules, and state and federal privacy laws when contacting leads. Do not use extracted data for harassment, discrimination, or any unlawful purpose. You are responsible for how you use the data.