Contractors will occasionally receive a work order giving a property address that can not be found and therefore leads the contractor to think they have been given an invalid address.  Returning the work order marked as “invalid address” is unacceptable unless the contractor includes a history of an exhaustive research into trying to locate the property.

The following resources are good at helping contractors locate a property.  If use of these resources results in the property still not be correctly identified and found, contractors should document their use of the resources and the results received from the resource.

Assessor LInks USA – State by State guide to Tax Assessor Websites

Zillow.com – Your Edge in Real Estate

United States Postal Service – Zip codes by address or city

Google Earth – View satellite images, maps, terrain, etc.

Google Maps – Get directions, find streets, etc.

Bing Maps – Find businesses, addresses, landmarks, etc.

Yahoo Maps – maps, directions, businesses, etc.

Rand McNally – maps, directions, stores, etc.

When reporting an invalid address, give as much information as possible including all the resources used to try to find the property.  Give the results obtained from each resource you used.

Do not return an invalid address report for properties that are out of your area – those should be reported as “out of area.”

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. From Contractor’s Property Preservation Field Manual  by Terry W. Platt, Published by Gulf Thunder Corporation, 2009