Skip tracing

Skip tracing is how Pillar finds phone numbers, emails, and best-known mailing addresses for parcel owners. It's the bridge between "I know who owns this" and "I can actually contact them."

What skip tracing returns#

For each owner we successfully match, you'll get:

• Mailing address — the owner's current residential or business mailing address, which is often different from the parcel address.
• Phone numbers — primary and secondary phones, with metadata indicating landline vs. mobile and do-not-call flagging.
• Email addresses — best-known addresses, ranked by recency and confidence.
• Age and relatives (where available) — useful for disambiguating common names.

How credits are charged#

Skip tracing consumes credits only when an uncached lookup returns a result. The cost depends on the lookup mode:

• 3 credits for the enhanced Get Owner's Contact lookup from parcel details.
• 1 credit for a successful standard or bulk skip trace.
• 2 credits for a successful Whitepages retry.
• 0 credits if no match is found or Pillar reuses a cached result.

Pillar shows the cost before you run a lookup. See Credits for how credits are provisioned and topped up.

Running a trace#

• Per-parcel — open the parcel detail drawer and click Get Owner's Contact. The enhanced lookup charges 3 credits when it returns a new result.
• Bulk on a list — Enrich → Skip trace all contacts from any list view. Successful, uncached traces cost 1 credit each.
• Selected rows only — select rows in a list and use Enrich → Skip trace selected.

Accuracy and freshness#

Skip-trace data comes from aggregated public and commercial sources. No dataset is perfect — expect roughly:

• ~85% match rate for individually-owned residential parcels.
• ~65% match rate for LLC-owned parcels** (the LLC obscures the human behind it; we surface managing member information where available).
• ~95% freshness for matches less than 60 days old.

For owners behind deeply-nested entity structures (trusts, series LLCs, holding companies), the match rate falls off. Pillar shows the entity chain when we can resolve it.

Data hygiene and compliance#

• Do not use for stalking, harassment, or any non-business purpose. Skip-trace data is business contact information, not surveillance.
• Respect do-not-call flags. Pillar marks numbers on the federal DNC registry; do not call them for solicitation.
• Honor opt-outs. If someone asks you to stop contacting them, suppress the contact in Pillar (Contact → Suppress) and they won't be included in future enrichments.

Failed matches#

When a trace fails, the row gets a No match flag. Common reasons:

• The owner is a very common name and we couldn't disambiguate safely.
• The owner is an entity with no filed managing member.
• The mailing address on file is stale.

Failed matches are free. You can try again later (data updates on a rolling basis) or look the owner up manually.