You happen on to a vacant house that doesn’t appear to be listed for sale or your buyer finds one they are interested in buying. Of course you first check the MLS to see the sales history and find it’s not on the market. Next you check the tax records to see who owns it. Then you find the owners name and that the mailing address for the tax bill is the same as the vacant house with no telephone number. You might think that there is no way to find the owner at this point. But not so fast. You might just ask a neighbor. But there are also a few free tools on the Internet that may help you find the owner.

The most common way to search for someone on the Internet is to do a name search in a search engine like Google or Yahoo but you end up with millions of possibilities. Here are a few free websites that can really help you find phone numbers, addresses, employers and even social media sites to put you in contact with the owners.

ZabaSearch is a website that will provide you with basic address and telephone listings but if you aren’t pretty sure you know what state or city they live in it may give you too many options. Knowing the middle initial is helpful in narrowing down the search.

Pipl is a website that does a deep web search and will give you public records, blog posts, social media sites, personal profiles and web pages. Some of the results may be paid services though.

PeekYou and CVGadget are similar to Pipl in that they search a number of websites and social media sites. It also lists known cities for the individual to cross reference.

USsearch is a good site for cross referencing known cities for the individual and possible relative’s names. However for detailed information you’ll have to pay a small fee.

By using these websites and cross referencing the information you may well be able find that missing home owner to get the listing or the sale.