Skip Tracing Services to Locate Anyone, Nationwide
People Locator Skip Tracing is a done-for-you locate: we scope the search to your purpose, run it against restricted sources, verify the result before you rely on it, and document the effort — so you get a confirmed current address you can act on, usually within 24 hours. Not a database to wrestle with yourself — the professional craft of finding a debtor who moved without a trace, a defendant dodging service, or an heir lost to time. Locating people, lawfully and accurately, since 2004.
Quick Answer
Skip tracing locates a person who has become hard to reach — someone who moved, changed their information, or is actively avoiding contact. There are two ways to get it done. One — do it yourself: free searches and consumer sites are slow, frequently wrong or out of date, and can stray into legal trouble, while the databases that actually work are sold only to vetted users who have signed for a permitted use. Two — use a professional service: a researcher runs the trace against restricted sources, verifies the result before you rely on it, and documents the effort. We are the second kind. The part almost nobody explains is that the reason for your search is not paperwork — it is the thing that decides which records are lawfully in reach, and federal law puts that duty on the person asking as much as on the firm searching. For a purpose the law recognizes — service of process, judgment enforcement, account collection, probate, and genuine reconnection — we deliver a verified current location, usually within 24 hours.
Watch: What Professional Skip Tracing Delivers
A done-for-you locate, verified and documented — not a database to run yourself.
Watch Overview
When You Need Skip Tracing Services
The everyday situations that bring people to a professional locate.
A Defendant Vanished
Moved before you could serve
A Judgment Debtor Disappeared
Went quiet after you won
A Tenant Skipped Out
Left owing rent, no forwarding
A Customer Owes You
A contractor or client gone
An Heir for Probate
A beneficiary lost to time
A Relative Out of Contact
Family you want to reach
What Skip Tracing Is, and What We Do
Less a single search than an investigation — built and verified, not just pulled.
A skip trace is not one lookup; it is the work of assembling a current picture from many partial, differently dated sources and then confirming it. The defining step is the last one: verification. Even a plausible-looking address or phone number has to be confirmed before anyone acts on it, because a wrong one means a failed service, a wasted filing, or a dead-end demand.
That is what we do, and have done since 2004. You tell us who you need and why; we run the trace and verify the result; and you get a confirmed current location — with the documented effort behind it when your matter needs it. Whether the person simply moved with no forwarding address, changed their phone, or is deliberately avoiding service, the goal is the same: find them, confirm it, and let you act with confidence.
The deliverable is a person at a place — a human being you can hand papers to, name in a motion, or write to. That is a narrower promise than it sounds, and it is deliberate. We are not selling you a screening product, a background report, or a rating of anyone’s character. We are answering one question about one person, and answering it in a form you can rely on in front of a court.
Why We Ask What the Matter Is
Every skip trace is a request with a legal shape.
Most firms here make one of two claims: better data, or real people instead of an algorithm. Neither can be checked by the person reading it. Here is a third, and it is checkable, because it is written into statutes anyone can read. A skip trace is a legally scoped request, and the scope is set by why you are asking. The same name, handed to the same researcher on the same afternoon, opens a different set of records depending on whether it arrives attached to a summons, an unpaid account, a probate file, or nothing at all.
“For use in connection with any civil, criminal, administrative, or arbitral proceeding in any Federal, State, or local court or agency…, including the service of process, investigation in anticipation of litigation, and the execution or enforcement of judgments and orders.”
18 U.S.C. § 2721(b)(4)If you are serving papers or enforcing a judgment, your matter is named in the statute rather than argued into it. That is why the first thing we take is a purpose, not a name — and it matters to you as well as to us, because several of these duties bind the requester independently of the firm doing the searching. Under 15 U.S.C. § 1681b(f) the obligation not to obtain a consumer report without a permitted purpose runs to the person asking for it. A vendor who never asks why is not doing you a favour; they are leaving your side of the exposure unmanaged. No permissible purpose, no search — and we say so before taking your money, not after.
A proceeding is one door. Collection is a second, and it runs through a different statute on a narrower frame. Where a consumer report is genuinely in play, 15 U.S.C. § 1681b(a) sets a closed list of purposes for which one may be furnished at all, and account collection sits on that list — but only in the words Congress used.
“To a person which it has reason to believe — (A) intends to use the information in connection with a credit transaction involving the consumer on whom the information is to be furnished and involving the extension of credit to, or review or collection of an account of, the consumer…”
15 U.S.C. § 1681b(a)(3)(A)The qualification is the part vendors leave off: the permission is tied to an account of the consumer. It reaches the person who opened the account you are collecting on. It does not stretch over a tort defendant, a missing heir, a witness, or a relative nobody has heard from — each of those needs its own door, and usually that door is the proceeding itself. Nor is 1681b a licence we operate under; we do not furnish consumer reports at all, as the next section explains. It is the rule that decides what a report-based source may lawfully release to anyone, which is exactly why the reason for your search has to be established before the search, not reconstructed afterwards.
A third door is not ours at all — it is your collectors’, and it happens to carry the federal definition of the thing a locate delivers. The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act defines location information at 15 U.S.C. § 1692a(7) as a consumer’s “place of abode and his telephone number at such place, or his place of employment” — a description of our deliverable written into statute. Section 1692b then governs how a debt collector may go asking third parties for it: identify yourself, seek only to confirm or correct that location information, and do not state that the consumer owes any debt. Regulation F, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s implementing rule at 12 C.F.R. § 1006.10, carries the same definition and the same limits.
Say plainly what that means, because the citation without the qualification would be a boast rather than information: 1692b and Regulation F bind the client’s collectors, not this firm. We are not a debt collector, we do not make collection contacts, and those provisions are not the authority we search under. But if you are a creditor or an agency, they decide what your staff may do with an address the moment we hand it over — and they are also the reason the boundary of the product sits where it does. A place of abode, a telephone at that place, a place of employment. Not a balance, not a payment history, not a judgment about the person.
Some doors stay shut whatever the matter. We never pretext, impersonate, or deceive to obtain anything, we do not reach private financial account contents, and we do not tap or intercept communications. We are a public-records research firm, not licensed private investigators, which is why the motor-vehicle permission we rely on is the one attached to your proceeding and never the one written for licensed investigative agencies. What a locate is not — and the four decisions it must never be used for — is the subject of the next section.
Which permission opens which tier of record — and why the one attached to your proceeding can reach further than the one attached to a professional licence — is set out door by door in our skip tracing guide.
What a Skip Trace Is Not
The negation almost no one in this industry publishes — written to the statutory test, not the colloquialism.
We are not a consumer reporting agency, and that is a statement about the statute rather than a modest disclaimer. The Fair Credit Reporting Act defines an agency by what it assembles information for — furnishing consumer reports — and a communication only becomes such a report when it is collected to serve a decision about someone’s eligibility for credit, insurance, employment or housing. Purpose is the hinge, not the field.
A locate delivered so that a defendant can be served, a judgment enforced, or an heir notified is not furnished as a factor in an eligibility decision. It is therefore not a consumer report, and it must not be used for one — not for a credit or insurance decision, not for a hiring or promotion decision, and not to screen a rental applicant. If your decision is about someone’s eligibility for something, it has to rest on an FCRA-regulated consumer report furnished by an agency operating as one. We do not operate as one and do not produce them.
15 U.S.C. 1681a(f) and 1681a(d)(1)The distinction is easy to blur, and blurring it is how landlords and employers get into trouble. Chasing a former tenant for a balance already owed is a collection matter. Deciding whether to rent to an applicant is a screening decision, and it belongs with a screening company. We will tell you which of the two you are doing if the request arrives sitting on the line. The statutory reading in full — why “FCRA compliant” is the wrong question to ask about a locate, and how the four covered decisions are defined — sits on our people search page, which owns that argument. If the underlying question is simply whether any of this is allowed, the legality of skip tracing has a page of its own.
None of this is legal advice. It is general information about the statutes that govern the work, published so you can see the reasoning rather than take our word for it. Your own counsel decides what your matter permits.
The Records a Locate Is Assembled From
Named sources, not “public records” as a gesture — and what each one is actually good for.
A trace is a reconciliation problem. No single source is current, complete and correct at the same time, so the work is to collect several partial pictures, date them against each other, and find the one address that all the recent evidence supports. These are the categories that carry the weight, and the reason each earns its place.
- Postal forwarding indicatorsChange-of-address data derived from USPS records is the fastest signal that somebody moved and roughly when. It is also the most over-trusted: forwarding lapses, gets filed for one household member, or points at a relative’s house rather than the new home.
- Deeds, assessments and recorder rollsCounty recorder and assessor records tie a person to real property by name, and they are unusually durable — a deed does not go stale the way a phone number does. They also surface the spouse, the co-owner and the mailing address the tax bill goes to, which is frequently not the property.
- Utility connection recordsAn account opened for power, water or gas is one of the few records created at the moment someone physically starts living somewhere. Availability varies sharply by state and utility, so this is a strong confirmation when it exists rather than a source to rely on.
- Voter registrationWhere a state makes the roll available, registration gives a self-reported residential address with a date attached, plus a durable link between a current and a former name.
- Professional and occupational licensingState boards publish licensees — nurses, contractors, agents, cosmetologists, brokers — usually with a business address and a status history. For anyone who works in a regulated trade this is often the single most current record in existence.
- UCC and secured-transaction filingsFinancing statements filed with a secretary of state name a debtor and a mailing address, and the filing office records the date each one was lodged. On business-side matters they are the quiet route to a person who has otherwise gone dark.
- Credit-header identifiersThe identifying layer of credit files — names, past and present addresses, dates of birth — is distinct from the credit content, and it is what makes it possible to separate two people with the same common name. This is header data used for identity resolution, not a credit history and not a score.
- Courts, corporate filings and associatesCivil and criminal dockets, business registrations, and the relatives and known associates surrounding a person fill in the gaps the address records leave, and they are what turn a plausible address into a confirmed one.
Naming the sources also makes the limits visible. Utility and voter data are not uniformly available. Motor-vehicle data depends on the state and on your matter qualifying. Header data resolves identity but says nothing about creditworthiness. A researcher who tells you every source is available everywhere has not worked in enough states.
The Professional Difference
Why a done-for-you trace beats a data tool or a DIY search.
Restricted-access sources
The databases that actually locate people — industry systems such as Accurint, TLO, and CLEAR — are sold only to vetted business users who contract for a permitted use and are audited on it. We hold that access; a self-serve consumer site does not, and that is why their data is so often thin or stale.
Human method, ending in verification
Tools return data; a person turns data into an answer — resolving the common-name problem, weighing conflicting records, and following the trail when the obvious path dead-ends. The last step is the one that counts: we confirm the result is the right person and current before you rely on it, and the record of that effort is what a court wants when it is asked to permit alternative service or service by publication.
A scoped request, not an open search
Everything above is table stakes among firms that do this seriously. The part that is ours is the front of the process: the trace is written to the purpose you gave, the sources are the ones that purpose reaches, and the file says which was which. That is what makes the result defensible later, when opposing counsel or an examiner asks where an address came from.
Who We Locate People For
Anyone with a legitimate legal, business, or personal need to find someone.
Attorneys, process servers, creditors and collection professionals, landlords chasing a balance already owed, businesses missing a contractor, and families out of touch — we work with all of them. But job title is the less useful way to read that list, because the matter is what decides the scope, not the letterhead. Below, each situation is paired with the ground it stands on.
Court Papers to Deliver
A proceeding names your use
A Judgment Gone Unpaid
Enforcement is a named use
An Account in Collection
Review or collection of an account
Rent Left Unpaid
A debt owed, not a tenant screen
An Estate to Settle
Notice a probate court requires
A Person You Lost Touch With
Contact offered, never forced
What We Help You Do
From a name to a result you can act on — across the situations that matter most.
Serve legal papers. When a defendant cannot be found or is dodging you, we locate them so service can be completed — whether you need to find someone to serve a lawsuit, reach a party who is avoiding service, or serve a business or its registered agent.
Collect what you are owed. Finding the debtor is only the start. We help locate a judgment debtor who moved out of state, identify a bank account or an employer for wage garnishment, and find vehicles for levy or repossession — the assets that turn a judgment into a recovery.
Find a person from very little. Where you have a name, an old address, or a maiden name and nothing else, our people search is the right place to start, and it traces previous addresses forward to a current one. Personal reconnection mostly belongs there rather than here — if you are hoping to reach a long-lost family member, that side of the site is written for it, and the etiquette of a first approach matters more than the search does. What stays on this page is the harder end of the same work: someone who left the state in the middle of a matter, or a person who defrauded you and has to be located before any lawful remedy is open to you.
Skip Tracing Nationwide
One service, all fifty states — and the seams between them.
People move, and they rarely move in a straight line. We trace in all fifty states, and the real work is at the seams: the moment someone crosses a state line, local records go cold while new ones light up where they landed. Because we are a service rather than a state-by-state database, you do not need to know where someone went in order to begin — finding that out is the job.
What does change at the state line is the paperwork. Which records are open to the public, who may pull a driving record and on what showing, how a county recorder is organized, whether the voter roll is available at all — none of that is uniform, and a trace that ignores it wastes a week. We keep a page for each jurisdiction covering how records work there and what is realistic to expect, and the broader picture of how state privacy laws differ for skip tracing sits alongside them.
Skip Tracing Services by Jurisdiction
All fifty states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico — each with its own guide to local records and procedure.
- Alabama
- Alaska
- Arizona
- Arkansas
- California
- Colorado
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- District of Columbia
- Florida
- Georgia
- Hawaii
- Idaho
- Illinois
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- Louisiana
- Maine
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Mississippi
- Missouri
- Montana
- Nebraska
- Nevada
- New Hampshire
- New Jersey
- New Mexico
- New York
- North Carolina
- North Dakota
- Ohio
- Oklahoma
- Oregon
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
- South Carolina
- South Dakota
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Utah
- Vermont
- Virginia
- Washington
- West Virginia
- Wisconsin
- Wyoming
- Puerto Rico
The Requests We Turn Down
The line is not decoration. It is what keeps a result usable — and some searches sit on the wrong side of it.
Being hard to find is sometimes the point
Everything above describes how much of an ordinary life ends up written down somewhere. The other half of that truth is less comfortable. Some people are difficult to locate because a court told them to be, or because staying unfindable is the only thing keeping them safe. Many states run an Address Confidentiality Program for exactly that reason, and a domestic-violence survivor who has moved, changed a phone and stopped voting under a familiar name has done nothing wrong at all.
So a request that reads like a personal search for someone who ended contact gets more scrutiny at intake, not less — more questions about the matter, and a slower yes. We will not run a trace to help someone reach a person protected by a restraining or no-contact order, to support harassment or intimidation, or where the honest answer to “why do you need this address” is that the subject does not want to be reached. Where a matter is genuine but the subject is at risk, the workable route is usually contact through counsel or an intermediary rather than a street address handed across. Nobody is framed here as evasive for having moved; people live where they live.
The rest of the no-list is short and it is stated once, further up this page: no pretexting, no impersonation, no private financial account contents, no interception, and no search on a purpose you have not stated. Those are not house preferences; they are what the statutes that govern this work require, applied at intake rather than at invoice.
Where DIY Skip Tracing Goes Wrong
The pitfalls of going solo, and how a professional trace fixes each.
No tool access
The real databases are access-controlled. Our fix: we hold that access; you do not need to.
Hours of dead ends
Combing social media and directories. Our fix: a trained trace, usually within 24 hours.
Stale, wrong data
Old addresses, wrong person. Our fix: we verify the right person, current, before you act.
Legal missteps
DIY can cross privacy or harassment lines. Our fix: a compliant, permissible-purpose trace.
No documentation
Courts want proof of effort. Our fix: a documented trace for alternative service.
Failed service or filing
A bad address derails the case. Our fix: a verified result you can rely on.
DIY or Data Tool vs. Professional Skip Tracing
What each path actually delivers.
| Approach | Access | What you get | Verified? | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free search / social | Public | Scattered, often stale clues | No | A rough first guess |
| Consumer database | Subscription | A raw report to interpret | No | Low-stakes looks |
| Pro data tool (DIY) | Contracted access | Powerful data, your labor | You verify | In-house teams with access |
| Professional servicePeople Locator | Done for you | A verified, documented locate | Yes | When it has to be right |
If you already hold that access and have the time, in-house works. When you need the answer to be correct, defensible, and fast — served, filed, or collected on — a professional trace earns its place. The column that usually decides it is the fourth one: an unverified address is not cheaper than a verified one, it is just cheaper until the service attempt fails.
How Much Does Skip Tracing Cost?
What drives the price of a professional locate — and how we keep it fair.
The honest answer is that it depends on the case, and a few things set it. How much you can give us to start: a full name with a date of birth and a last-known city resolves faster than a common name alone. How hard the person is to find: a routine move is quicker than someone actively evading service or living under others’ names. And how much you need: a straight locate is different from also identifying an employer, a bank account, or assets for collection.
What we can tell you up front is the structure. We work on a single-search basis, not a subscription, so there is no recurring billing to remember or cancel. And our commitment takes the risk off you: if we cannot resolve a verified result from what you provide, you do not pay for a result we did not deliver. For a straight answer on your specific matter, tell us what you have and we will scope it for you.
It is worth knowing why the market looks so inconsistent when you shop it. Bulk data sold by the record, a self-serve consumer report, a done-for-you locate, and a licensed investigator’s field work are four different products wearing one name, and comparing their prices compares a wholesale input to a finished result. Judge any quote you receive on which of the four it actually is.
What a Skip Trace Looks Like
Illustrative of the work — representative examples, not specific client cases.
The everyday value of a professional trace shows up most where a DIY search would have stalled. A few representative examples:
Service completed. A process server had a defendant who had moved twice and was dodging service. A trace resolved a verified current address, service was completed, and the documented effort supported the filing.
A debtor found before the clock ran. Collection letters had been returning undelivered for months, and renewal of the judgment was approaching. The trace put the person in a different state under the same name, which is what let counsel decide where to domesticate the judgment before the deadline rather than after it.
An estate closed. A personal representative could not give notice to one beneficiary who had moved out of state and married under a new surname, and the probate court would not let the estate distribute until the notice requirement was satisfied. Connecting the former name to the current one through recorded property and licensing records produced a verified address, and the documented effort went into the file behind the notice.
None of the three is a specific client file. Each describes a shape of matter that recurs here, and the shape is always the same: a thin starting point, sources a consumer site cannot reach, a person doing the reasoning, and an answer confirmed before anyone acted on it.
How a Skip Trace Works With Us
A confidential process — typically within 24 hours.
You Share the Case
Who you need located, every detail you have, and your legitimate purpose for the search.
We Run the Trace
Investigative-grade sources and public records, cross-referenced by a trained investigator.
We Verify and Document
We confirm the right person and current location, and document the effort when you need it.
You Act With Confidence
A verified current location to serve, file, collect, or reconnect — usually within 24 hours.
Skip Tracing Services — Questions
What is skip tracing, and how does it actually work?
Skip tracing is the process of locating a person who has become hard to find, usually because they moved, changed their contact details, or are avoiding an obligation. In practice it is a reconciliation job rather than a single search: postal forwarding indicators, property deeds and assessor rolls, utility connection records, voter registration, professional licensing rolls, court dockets, UCC filings and credit-header identifiers each give a partial and differently dated picture, and the work is to reconcile them into one current address and then confirm it independently before anyone acts on it.
How much does a skip trace cost, and why is a service priced differently from a data tool?
It depends on how much you can give us to start, how hard the person is to find, and whether you need only a location or also an employer or assets. We work on a single-search basis rather than a subscription, so nothing recurs. The reason quotes vary so widely across the market is that four different products share the name: bulk data sold by the record, a self-serve consumer report, a done-for-you verified locate, and a licensed investigator’s field work. A per-record price buys unverified data and your own labor; ours covers the research, the verification, and a documented file. Send us the details and we will scope your specific matter.
Do I need a license to hire a skip tracer, and are you licensed investigators?
You do not need any license to commission a skip trace; you need a lawful reason for the search, and you will be asked to state it. On our side, we are a public-records research firm and nobody here holds a private investigator’s license. That distinction is substantive rather than cosmetic: it determines which statutory permissions we may rely on, so we ground motor-vehicle work in the court-proceeding permission at 18 U.S.C. 2721(b)(4) and never in the separate provision written for licensed investigative agencies.
Why do you need to know why I am looking for someone?
Because the reason is what decides which records are lawfully reachable, and because federal law puts that duty on you as well as on us. Under 15 U.S.C. 1681b(f) a person may not obtain a consumer report except for an authorized purpose, and under 15 U.S.C. 6821(b) it is a violation even to ask someone else to obtain financial customer information under false pretenses. A firm that never asks your purpose is not saving you a step; it is leaving your exposure unmanaged.
Is skip tracing legal, and what makes it legal?
Yes, when it draws on permissible sources for a purpose the law recognizes — service of process, judgment enforcement, account collection, probate, or genuine reconnection. The framework is specific rather than general: the Fair Credit Reporting Act sets a closed list of permissible purposes for consumer reports, the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act names court proceedings and service of process among the permitted uses of motor-vehicle data, and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act bars obtaining financial information by false pretenses. Our page on the legality of skip tracing works through it in full.
Can a skip trace support service of process or alternative service?
Yes, and it is one of the most common reasons people come to us. We locate a defendant who cannot be found or is evading service, verify that the address is current and tied to the right person, and the documented record of that effort is what a court usually wants before it will permit substituted service or service by publication.
What do you need from me, and what do you send back?
To start: the person’s name, your purpose for the search, and whatever else you hold — a last-known address, a date of birth, relatives, a former employer, an old phone number. A full name with a date of birth resolves far faster than a common name alone, but a single solid starting point is often enough. What comes back is a verified current address, a phone associated with it where one exists, and an employer where the matter calls for it, each dated and sourced, with the research record behind it when you need to file.
What if you can’t locate them?
If we cannot resolve a verified result from what you provide, you do not pay for a result we did not deliver. We would rather give you an honest answer on a hard case than hand you an unverified address that fails when you act on it.
Our Commitment
Two promises, and they are the ones we can actually keep. First, what you receive is a location that has been confirmed against a second source and tied to the right person, with the research record behind it when your matter needs one — never a list of possibilities to sort through. Second, if the details you give us will not resolve to a verified result, you do not pay for a result we did not produce. Twenty-plus years of professional skip tracing, scoped to a purpose the law recognizes, and only ever for one.
Need Someone Located? We’ll Find Them.
Tell us who you need to locate, what the matter is, and whatever details you already hold. We will scope the trace to that purpose, run it against restricted-access sources, confirm the right person at a current address, and document the effort when your matter needs it — usually within one day, for legal, collection, probate, and personal matters the law recognizes.
Start a Skip Trace →
