Driving for dollars to skip tracing, without an app subscription

Driving for dollars becomes a skip trace like this: record each property's street address as you drive, look up the owner's name and mailing address on the county assessor's site, save the rows as a CSV, and upload it for a per-record skip trace. On Skipmatch an address alone is not enough; every row needs the owner's name.

Price your list See a sample result

Key facts

Price: a flat $0.03 a record at any list size from 50 to 100,000 records.
Unit: Priced per matched record.
Minimum order: 50 records
Minimum charge: Minimum charge $0.50 when any record matches.
Single search: Single search: $0.10, charged only on a match, paid from prepaid credit ($10 minimum top-up).
Prepaid credit: Prepaid credit expires 12 months after your last credit purchase, single search or credit-paid list, and unused credit is refundable on request within 90 days of purchase.
Free tool: Check your list free at /tools/skip-trace-csv-checker. Check columns, split addresses and download a fixed CSV in your browser before tracing at $0.03 a record. No account needed.
Subscription: None. A list order is paid for on its own by card or prepaid credit.
Max per order: 100,000 rows or 50 MB per file
Output: Up to 10 phones per owner, each with its line type (mobile, landline or VoIP), plus emails where found
Sources: 3 core providers: idiCORE, Enformion and Delvepoint
Not for: FCRA uses: credit, insurance, employment or tenant screening
Prices last changed: 2026-10-02
Last updated: 2026-10-02

The short answer

You do not need an app to drive for dollars. You need the addresses, the owners behind them, and a file a skip trace can read. The step people skip is the middle one: Skipmatch traces a person, not a house, so every address you record has to be turned into an owner name at the county before the list can be traced. Budget for that step, and batch a few drives into one list, because Skipmatch orders start at 50 rows.

Step 1
Record each property as you drive
Pull over and note the street address, city, state and ZIP, plus what made you stop: overgrown yard, boarded windows, piled-up mail. A spreadsheet on your phone with the template's columns is enough.
Step 2
Look up each owner at the county
Search each address on the county assessor's or tax office's website or GIS parcel map. Copy the owner's name, the mailing address the tax bill goes to and the parcel number into the row.
Step 3
Build the CSV and check it
Save the sheet as a CSV and run it through a CSV checker to see that the name and address columns map. Delete rows where you found no owner name.
Step 4
Skip trace the list once it reaches 50 rows
Upload the CSV to a per-record skip trace. Orders start at 50 rows, so save up a few drives into one file. The result comes back with phones, line types and emails on the same rows.
Step 5
Check the rules before you call or text
Calls and texts to owners are regulated by the TCPA, state rules and the do-not-call registries. Scrub the numbers and follow those rules before you dial.

Recording properties: the field-note template

Set up one spreadsheet before you drive, on your phone or in a notes app you copy into a sheet each evening, with one row per property. The columns below are the whole template: the ones marked "In the car" get filled as you drive, the rest at the county. The header names are spelled so the order upload recognises the name and address columns on its own, and every other column comes back in your result file unchanged.

Driving for dollars field-note template: the columns, when to fill each one and what the upload does with it
Column	Filled in	What goes in it	What the upload does with it
`Date Seen`	In the car	The day you passed the property.	Returned unchanged. Useful for re-driving a street later.
`Property Address`	In the car	House number and street, exactly as on the mailbox or the curb.	Required unless you add the mailing address. Mapped as the property address.
`Property City, Property State, Property Zip`	In the car	Three separate columns. Use the postal city, not the neighborhood name.	Required with the street for a complete property address.
`What You Saw`	In the car	Short notes: overgrown yard, boarded windows, tarp on the roof, piled-up mail, a code notice on the door.	Returned unchanged. Sort and prioritize by it after the trace.
`Photo`	In the car	The photo's file name or a link to it.	Returned unchanged.
`APN`	At the county	The parcel number from the county record.	Returned unchanged, so results line up with the parcel.
`Owner First Name, Owner Last Name`	At the county	The owner as the tax roll names them, split into two columns.	Required. Skipmatch cannot trace a row without a name.
`Mailing Address, Mailing City, Mailing State, Mailing Zip`	At the county	Where the tax bill goes. Often not the property itself.	Recommended. The stronger address for an owner who does not live there.

Every row needs an owner name and one complete address (street, city, state and ZIP), property or mailing. Both is better. Mailing address vs property address explains which one to lead with.

Copy this header row into the first line of the sheet:

Date Seen,Property Address,Property City,Property State,Property Zip,What You Saw,Photo,APN,Owner First Name,Owner Last Name,Mailing Address,Mailing City,Mailing State,Mailing Zip

Habits that save the county step later

Record the house number, not "the blue one past the church". The county search runs on the street address; a row with no number is a row you will drive back for.
Pull over to type. Note the address when parked, or take a photo of the house and mailbox and fill the row later from the photo.
One property per row. Two neglected houses side by side are two rows, even if you suspect one owner has both. The county record will tell you.
Write what you saw in plain words. After the trace, that column is how you decide who to call first.

Owner lookup at the county

This step is not optional on Skipmatch. Every row needs the owner's name as well as a complete address. A file with no name column does not get past the mapping step; the upload says: "Choose the columns holding the owner's first and last name, or one column with the full name. Skip tracing searches by the owner's name, so every row needs one." A driving-for-dollars list is addresses only, so the owner names have to be added before it can be traced.

For each row:

Open the county assessor's or tax office's property search, or the county's GIS parcel map. Most counties put it online and free to search.
Search by the property's street address. If that finds nothing, try the street name alone and pick the house number from the list.
From the record, copy the owner's name into the two owner columns, the mailing address the tax bill goes to into the four mailing columns, and the parcel number into APN.

How to find a property owner's phone number covers this county search in more detail, and when a single free lookup beats a paid trace.

What the county record can throw at you

A mailing address that is not the property. Common on neglected houses: the owner lives elsewhere. Keep both addresses; the mailing address is where the owner actually gets mail.
Names printed last-name-first, such as SMITH JOHN A. Split them into first and last name yourself, so the right word lands in each column.
An LLC, trust or estate as owner. Such a row can still be uploaded, but a company name is not a person to phone. How to skip trace an LLC-owned property covers finding the person behind it.
No record found. Delete the row before you upload. A row with an empty name is still counted as a record in the order.

If all you have is the address

Be clear on the limit: Skipmatch cannot trace an address on its own, and no setting changes that. If the county step is more work than you want, there are three honest options:

Do the lookup anyway. It is free in most counties, and it also gives you the mailing address and parcel number, so the trace has a second address to work from.
Use a service that starts from a parcel number. Tracerfy lists a Parcel (APN) trace at 5 credits per hit, which is $0.10 a hit at its pay-as-you-go credit price (tracerfy.com/pricing (opens in a new tab), checked 2026-09-25). You still need each property's parcel number, which comes from the same county record. Skip tracing by parcel number covers that route.
Use a driving-for-dollars app. Recording and skip tracing happen in one place, on a monthly plan. See what DealMachine publishes, below.

Building the CSV

When the owner columns are filled, save the sheet as a CSV: in Google Sheets, File, Download, Comma-separated values; in Excel, File, Save As, CSV UTF-8. Skipmatch reads .csv files only, so an Excel workbook has to be saved as CSV first.

Then drop the file into the skip trace CSV checker. It reads the file in your browser without uploading it, and shows which of your columns will be used for the owner name, the mailing address and the property address, how many rows are exact duplicates, and what is missing. With the template above, all ten name and address columns should map on their own. Fix what it flags, then upload the same file.

One order takes 50 to 100,000 rows in a file of up to 50 MB. How to format a CSV for skip tracing goes through the format column by column.

Skip tracing and price for small lists

A driving-for-dollars list is small by nature: a good afternoon might give you a few dozen addresses. Skipmatch orders start at 50 rows, and a smaller file is refused before anything is priced. So keep adding to the same sheet until it reaches 50 rows, then trace it in one go. For three or four addresses, a free people search on each owner is the better tool.

Skipmatch charges per matched record: $0.03 a record at any list size. The whole list is priced at one rate, the total is shown before you pay, and there is no subscription, seat or credit balance. Minimum charge $0.50 when any record matches.

Skipmatch price for a small driving for dollars list
Rows in the list	Price a record	At most
50	$0.03	$1.50
100	$0.03	$3.00
250	$0.03	$7.50
500	$0.03	$15.00
1,000	$0.03	$30.00

Worked from Skipmatch's current price ladder when the page renders. "At most" because exact duplicate rows are removed before the count is priced. Full pricing.

The result is your file back, row for row, with up to 10 phone numbers per owner, each labelled mobile, landline or VoIP, emails where they exist, and a match flag on every row. Your own columns, the notes and photos included, come back unchanged. The sample file shows the layout.

Calls and texts to owners are regulated by the TCPA, state rules and the do-not-call registries. This is general information, not legal advice; see the permissible-use terms.

What DealMachine publishes

DealMachine is a driving-for-dollars and lead platform, and its skip tracing draws on plan data credits. As published on dealmachine.com/pricing (opens in a new tab) and dealmachine.com/features/skip-tracing (opens in a new tab), checked 2026-09-25:

Basic: $99 a seat a month with 10,000 data credits a seat.
Pro: $149 a seat a month with 20,000 data credits a seat.
Scale: $599 a month for a 100,000-record package with 10 seats.

No separate per-record price is published, and neither page says how many credits one skip trace uses, so credits cannot be read as a trace count. Basic and Pro are priced per seat, each seat with its own credits. The fee recurs every month you keep the plan, whether you drove that month or not.

When it fits: if you drive every week and trace in volume, an app can be worth it. Counting the whole Basic fee against skip tracing, one seat works out below $0.03 a trace from 3,301 traces a month, as far as its credits reach, and the fee also buys the rest of the platform. If you drive now and then, a Skipmatch list of up to 3,300 rows costs no more than one month of one Basic seat ($99), and nothing recurs after it. DealMachine skip tracing cost works through the plans in full.

Figures are quoted as of Sept 2026 from each company's own pages; prices change, so check the linked pages before you buy. Nothing here says anything about any service's match rates or data quality.

Questions

What is driving for dollars?

Driving for dollars is driving (or walking) neighborhoods to spot properties that look vacant or neglected, such as an overgrown yard, boarded windows, piled-up mail or a tarp on the roof, and recording their addresses so you can contact the owners about selling. The result is a list of addresses you picked yourself.

How do I skip trace driving for dollars leads?

Record each property's street address, city, state and ZIP. Look each one up on the county assessor's or tax office's website to get the owner's name and mailing address. Put one owner per row in a spreadsheet, save it as a CSV, and upload it to a bulk skip trace. On Skipmatch an order starts at 50 rows.

Do I need an app for driving for dollars?

No. A spreadsheet on your phone records the addresses, the county website gives the owners, and a per-record skip trace takes the CSV. An app such as DealMachine puts recording and skip tracing in one place on a monthly plan, from $99 a seat a month with 10,000 data credits a seat (dealmachine.com/pricing, checked 2026-09-25). That suits someone who drives every week and traces in volume.

Can I skip trace with only the address?

Not on Skipmatch. Every row needs the owner's name as well as a complete address, and the upload will not go ahead without a name column. Search the address on the county assessor's site, which in most counties is free and shows the owner's name and mailing address, and add both to the row. Tracerfy lists a Parcel (APN) trace, which starts from a parcel number, at 5 credits per hit (tracerfy.com/pricing, checked 2026-09-25).

How much does it cost to skip trace a driving for dollars list?

Skipmatch prices per matched record: a flat $0.03 a record at any list size from 50 to 100,000 records. A 50-row list is at most $1.50 and a 250-row list at most $7.50, at $0.03 a record. Orders start at 50 rows, with no subscription. Minimum charge $0.50 when any record matches.

Price your list before you pay for it.

Create an account, upload the file, and see your total before you pay. Records with no phone and no email are never charged.

Price your list