The way to find distressed multifamily owners is to start from every building in the county and check each one for owner distress, not to start from listings. In one Scout run read for this page, 2,879 buildings of 5 or more units were screened, 597 of them carried at least one distress record, and the run said which sources it could not read.
The request
The run was made on a Titleman QA account on 14 October 2026. The first message asked for multifamily properties of 5 or more units in one county whose owners show distress signals (code violations, unpaid property tax, sheriff-sale listings), and for a ranking of the owners most worth a call.
The run started at 18:27:06 UTC and was delivered at 20:02:27 UTC: 1 hour 35 minutes 21 seconds. It came back with an Excel workbook, and the full answer in the room. 523 fact rows were recorded.
What the screen counted
| Step | Result | Checked as of |
|---|---|---|
| Buildings of 5+ units in scope | 2,879 | City property list |
| Buildings with at least one distress record | 597 | Violations to 13 October 2026; filings to 11 August 2026 |
| Buildings with today's tax balance read | 1,268 | 14 October 2026 |
| Buildings with no tax balance read | 1,611 | Not finished |
The date column matters. The violation checks were current to the day before the run. The pre-foreclosure filings were current only to 11 August, two months earlier, and the run said so. A screen without dates cannot tell you which signals are stale.
How the owners were ranked
The run grouped buildings by owner and scored the signals. The owners at the top had several at once: unpaid tax on more than one building, open violations, and violations that reached court. The top-ranked owner scored 13 points across three buildings, with tax owed on all three and one building carrying 8 open violations, 5 of them in court.
The answer names owners with their mailing addresses from the property list. We do not reproduce names or addresses on this page.
One caution came with the ranking. The run noted that a score of 4 or 5 on tax alone rests on a tax total that does not separate this year's unpaid bill from years-old arrears. Reading the period balance settles which it is. Until it is read, a tax-only score is a lead, not a reason to call.
What the run could not read
This is the part that makes the other numbers believable:
- The sheriff-sale listings. Both listing sites refused access (HTTP 403), so upcoming sales were not screened.
- Today's tax balance for 1,611 of the 2,879 buildings. The sweep was not finished, so those buildings are unchecked, not clean.
- Our own tax-delinquency register for the county, which did not answer because the city's server refused it. The run used the city's tax balance lookup instead.
- Phone contacts. None was attached. Managers of limited liability companies have to be found through the state's business filings.
A list of 597 buildings is useful. A list that also says 1,611 buildings were not tax-checked is one you can plan around.
How the 523 rows split
| Status | Rows |
|---|---|
| Derived | 222 |
| Found | 120 |
| Fact | 34 |
| Stated by the client | 1 |
| Missing | 146 |
How to run the same screen yourself
- List every building in scope. Use all multifamily buildings of 5+ units in the county, not listings.
- Check each for distress records. Code violations, unsafe-structure cases, pre-foreclosure filings and sheriff-sale exposure. Write down the date of each check.
- Read today's tax balance. Separate this year's bill from arrears.
- Group by owner and rank. Several signals on one owner beat one signal on one building.
- List what you could not read. Treat those buildings as unchecked.
- Check your call list before dialing. Individual owners may be on the National Do Not Call Registry, and a call list is only as good as its consent rules.
When a lead looks real, the next step is underwriting. See deal sourcing to underwriting handoff. Managers of limited liability companies are covered in how to find who owns an LLC-owned property. The Scout guide shows how to start a run. To see a screen on a county you work in, request a demo.
Any AI-assisted screen should state its limits. The NIST AI Risk Management Framework is a useful checklist for the questions to put to a vendor.
Frequently asked questions
How do you find distressed multifamily owners? Start from every building in scope, then check each one for distress signals: open code violations, unsafe-structure cases, unpaid property tax, pre-foreclosure filings and sheriff-sale exposure. Group by owner and rank. Do not start from listings, which only show owners who already decided to sell.
Is unpaid property tax a reliable distress signal? Only if you separate this year's unpaid bill from years-old arrears. A tax total alone cannot tell them apart, so the period balance has to be read before an owner is called.
How many owners in a county show multiple distress signals? In the run on this page, 597 of 2,879 multifamily buildings of 5+ units carried at least one distress record, about one in five. Owners with several signals at once are the ones worth a call first.
What should a distress screen leave out? Anything it could not read. A screen that skips a source should say so and mark those buildings as unchecked, instead of treating silence as a clean record.
Written by the Titleman team with AI assistance (Claude). Reviewed by the Titleman review desk. Figures read from the run's own records on 15 October 2026; the run was made on a Titleman QA account.