The best property data platform for real estate investors with a distressed property strategy

PropertyRadar's probate data comes from probate filings taken from the court at the initial filing, and a case appears only where the company receives that county's filings and can confidently match the decedent to an owner and a property. PropertyRadar is our pick for investors who need court-sourced distress signals and monitored lists, provided the required records are available in their target counties and any auction-tracking service is included in the order. Its monitored lists add and remove properties as they match your criteria, and alerts on new matches arrive by mobile push or email.

PropStream's Pre-Probate list matches the name on a property title against a death record before probate has started, and the company suits an investor who builds from its named lead lists and buys Lead Automator to keep saved lists current. DealMachine's Driving for Dollars app tags property condition and tracks routes, and its Basic plan includes API access, a fit for an investor who finds distressed houses from the street.

What an investor with a distressed property strategy should weigh

Miami-Dade's clerk describes a mortgage foreclosure as a civil complaint with a recorded lis pendens, followed by a court judgment and an auction, and it keeps its court files, auction listings and recorded documents in separate searches. Each is a different public record, and a platform's foreclosure flag rests on one or more of them. The same holds for other distress labels: one vendor's probate signal is a court filing, and another's is a death record matched against the name on title. Ask each vendor which office supplies the record in your target county and the date its coverage there begins. PropertyRadar's probate article adds that not every death leads to probate and not every probate requires a sale, so treat a filing as the start of research on that owner.

PropertyRadar's help center ties alerts and automations to lists with monitoring turned on, and PropStream's FAQ assigns the scanning of saved lists and the triggering of alerts to Lead Automator. Both features are separate from how often the underlying records arrive, so a daily data update does not tell you that a saved list re-runs or notifies you. Four timings are involved, and each needs its own question for the counties you work: when the vendor receives a record type, how often it checks auction status, when a saved list updates, and how an alert is delivered.

Duval County's clerk tells third-party bidders that the title issued after its foreclosure auction is not warranted free of claims and that bidders do their own research, so auction tracking tells you when a sale happens and leaves the title work to you. The National Association of REALTORS treats a lien check as part of due diligence on a transaction and describes public records and title companies as the places to run one.

PropertyRadar counts phone lookups and email lookups as separate monthly allowances, and DealMachine's pricing page pairs its Basic plan with data credits per seat. PropStream lists skip tracing as an add-on to its Essentials plan and includes it with Connect, where the monthly allowance follows the account's saves. With units that different, a plan price says little about what a list of owners with phone numbers costs. Ask each vendor for a quote that names the plan, the seats, the unit charged for a phone or an email, exports, add-ons and how a lookup that returns nothing is counted.

A BiggerPockets member answering a thread on distressed property leads recommended stacking several filters on county records and gave ownership duration, absentee status, probate and code violations as examples. Stacking narrows a broad list to properties that match more than one criterion, so the plan you buy has to include every filter in your stack. Ask each vendor to confirm the filters you need, and any stacking limit, on the plan you are ordering. DealMachine's pricing page, for one, lists saved searches and filters on Basic and names premium filters on Pro.

PropertyRadar's API help article puts API access on the paid Solo, Team and Business plans and excludes trial subscriptions, and DealMachine's Basic card lists API, CLI and webhook access. PropStream connects to BatchDialer for customers who hold that subscription. An investor who wants new matches sent to a CRM or a dialer needs that access on the plan being paid for. A phone number or an email from any of the three is contact data, and whether you are permitted to contact that person is a separate question to settle before outreach.

PropertyRadar, PropStream and DealMachine side by side

PropertyRadar: court filings matched to owners, on monitored lists

Each probate record in PropertyRadar shows the case number, filing date, court and decedent name, according to its probate article. Court records generally lack a property address, so the company matches by the decedent's name and location and leaves out any case it cannot match. Probate data is included on the current Solo, Team and Business plans.

PropertyRadar's divorce article describes court filings that become a flag only when a plaintiff or defendant is confidently matched to an owner and a property. Its eviction article covers filings from state and local courts and shows each one for up to 60 days from the initial filing. Foreclosure data comes from county court notices and recorder notices. Vacancy is a US Postal Service flag, and the company's vacancy guide says the flag can apply to a property that is not vacant, such as a short-term rental.

Trustee sale tracking is an optional service, and PropertyRadar's trustee sale article limits it to Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington. In those states it checks sales set for today every 15 minutes, tomorrow's sales every hour, sales in the next three weeks daily and later ones monthly. That schedule applies to auction status in those states, so ask separately how often probate, divorce and eviction filings are collected for your county. Confirm the tracking service on the order if you bid at trustee sales.

Monitoring adds properties to a list when they match its criteria and removes them when they stop matching. With monitoring on, alerts trigger on new matches and on status changes, which include new transfers, loans, listings and foreclosures. The same list events start automations.

PropertyRadar's subscription guide prices the Solo plan at $119 per month. A separate help article gives Solo 250 phone lookups and 250 email lookups a month as two allowances, and unused lookups do not roll over. The pricing page lists search and lists among the features every plan includes, and the page for real estate investors names list stacking among the platform's features. API support for Solo and Team runs through the user community, with technical support reserved for Business, per the API article.

PropStream: named lead lists and a deceased-owner match on title

PropStream's Lead List definitions tie its Pre-Foreclosures list to a default document filed by the lender: a Notice of Default, a Lis Pendens, a Notice of Trustee's Sale or a Notice of Sheriff's Sale. Its Auctions list holds properties with one of the two sale notices filed against them. The same page sources tax delinquency to the county Tax Assessor and vacancy to a US Postal Service flag, and it defines the Divorce list as properties whose owner has been flagged as having a divorce filing.

PropStream's pre-probate explainer says the data matches the current name on a property title with the name and address of a death record, which identifies a deceased owner still on title before probate has started. The page itself separates that from probate data, so the list fits an investor who wants deceased-owner leads ahead of a court case more than one who works from case filings. It also says the pre-probate filter stacks with other Lead List choices such as tax delinquency.

PropStream's plan comparison table marks search filters as included on Essentials and Lead Automator as an add-on there, with Lead Automator included on Pro and Elite. The FAQ says Lead Automator continuously scans saved lists for updates and triggers alerts and outreach actions on criteria the user sets, and the campaigns page says it adds new leads that match the search filters and removes leads that no longer qualify. The FAQ also describes combining automated lists by dragging one into another.

Skip tracing is listed as an add-on to Essentials, and Connect includes it with a monthly allowance equal to the account's saves. Connect's feature list says requests without results do not count against usage, and the skip tracing page says you pay only for traces that return information. For calling, a February 2026 announcement describes Push to BatchDialer, which sends skip-traced leads into BatchDialer campaigns over a native API connection.

DealMachine: condition tags and driving routes, with API access on Basic

DealMachine's Driving for Dollars page describes tagging a property's condition in the mobile app and tracking the route driven, with routes assignable to teammates. The pricing page lists the app on every plan. That workflow suits an investor whose first distress signal is the condition of the house.

The Basic plan costs $99 per seat per month, billed monthly, and carries 10,000 data credits per seat. Its card lists nationwide property and owner data, saved searches and filters, pay-as-you-go postcards and connections through Apps and Zapier. Credits are the unit for data use, so ask how many a phone or an email lookup takes before you size a list.

DealMachine's property data page lists fields for lis pendens, notice of default, tax lien amount, foreclosure status, auction date and vacant status, and it states daily updates for property records in general. Ask whether a saved search re-runs on its own and how you are notified. Each city search page defines its list its own way: the Phoenix tax-delinquent search covers owners behind on property taxes within the last two years, and the Cincinnati probate search covers properties whose most recent title change indicates a titleholder has passed away.

Basic also includes API, CLI and webhook access, and the pricing page says the REST API runs on data credits. DealMachine's API page sends custom rate limits and service-level agreements to its sales team, so a team planning high-volume API use should raise them before building on Basic.

Which property data platform is best for investors working distressed property?

PropertyRadar is our pick for investors who need court-sourced distress signals and monitored lists, provided the required records are available in their target counties and any auction-tracking service is included in the order. Its probate, divorce and eviction signals are court filings with a documented match to an owner and a property, and its help center states where that coverage stops. Monitoring keeps a saved list current and alerts you to new matches, and API access comes with the paid entry plan. For a strategy built on filings, we weigh the record source and the monitored list above the other factors.

PropStream's skip tracing carries a term we count in its favor: a request with no result does not count against usage. A buyer who traces long lists should value that. For this buyer we still put the court source first, because a skip trace is run on owners the list has already found.

PropStream's Pre-Probate list reaches a deceased owner still on title before probate has started, and its lead lists take further filters on top. It is the better pick for an investor who builds from those lists and buys Lead Automator so that saved lists add and drop leads on their own.

DealMachine puts condition tags and route tracking in a mobile app that every plan includes, and its Basic plan adds API, CLI and webhook access. It is the better pick for an investor who finds distressed houses by driving a market and wants API access on the entry plan.

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