Two kinds of source, labelled.
Six signals per parcel. Nothing is scraped from listing sites. Where a signal comes from a licensed supplier rather than a county record, it says so below.
Ownership of record, owner mailing address, assessed value, homestead and other exemption filings, year built, and parcel characteristics.
Delinquency status, amount owed, and years outstanding. Taken straight from the counties: Nassau's weekly unpaid-tax listing and Suffolk's published tax-lien sale notice. This is the file most list vendors never join against.
Last sale date and price, the basis for tenure. Sourced from a licensed property-data supplier rather than pulled from the clerk directly; the counties restrict bulk access to their deed indexes. Coverage is partial, and a lead with no sale date on file scores no tenure points rather than an assumed value.
Estates entering administration, the flag that ownership is passing to heirs. Surrogate's Court dockets are public but not published in bulk, so this comes from a licensed supplier.
Foreclosure actions filed against a parcel, the recorded start of the pre-foreclosure clock. Recorded with the county clerk, obtained through a licensed supplier.
Whether anyone actually occupies the property. Not a county record; sourced from a licensed supplier. Distinct from absentee, and the distinction matters: on our boards a majority of vacant homes have a local owner.
Leads don't linger.
We re-pull every source monthly and re-score every parcel on each pull. Each lead carries a LAST VERIFIEDdate so you know exactly how fresh the record is. Counties publish on their own schedules — some weekly, some once a year — so a monthly pull reflects whatever the county had posted at pull time. If a signal disappears (taxes get paid, a homestead is filed), the score drops on the next refresh; leads don't linger on boards after the record stops supporting them.
The weights are not secret.
Every parcel starts at zero. Six signals, plus ownership tenure, add points when the record shows them.
Scores cap at 100. A single signal never clears 30 — the model is built to surface overlap, because overlap is what predicts a motivated seller. One transparency note: a lead is never penalized for missing data — absent signals simply contribute zero. We also do not carry municipal code violations: too few Long Island towns publish that data for us to score it honestly. And to be precise about what it measures: the motive score reads seller motivation only.Est. ARV and equity never feed into it; they're shown alongside so you can judge the deal, not the seller.
Probate and pre-foreclosure.
Added to the model in July 2026. Both are court filings — dated and verifiable — obtained through a licensed supplier.
The owner of record is deceased and the estate has entered probate administration.
Heirs settling an estate usually want resolution, not a project property — especially out-of-state heirs carrying taxes, upkeep, and a court timeline.
Surrogate's Court filings, through a licensed supplier, re-applied on every refresh.
A lis pendens — the first public filing of a foreclosure action — is recorded against the parcel.
The owner is on a court clock. Selling before judgment preserves equity and credit, so motivation is high and time-bound.
County clerk lis pendens, through a licensed supplier, re-applied on every refresh.
Trust the prefix, not the precision.
Two numbers on every lead carry the prefix, and it's load-bearing.
After-repair value. From the county's full market value — its assessed value adjusted by the county's typical assessment-to-market ratio — or, where a licensed supplier provides one, that supplier's valuation. It is not a comp-based appraisal: comps integration is on the roadmap, and until it ships this number is a screening figure, not an offer basis.
We carry no mortgage records. Where a licensed supplier provides an equity estimate — about a fifth of the board — we show theirs. Everywhere else we show the full estimated value, which assumes no mortgage at all. Read it as a ceiling, never a payoff quote.
Public records contain errors and publish late. Verify both numbers independently before you make an offer — we'd rather you trust the prefix than the precision.