How to skip trace property owners by parcel number (APN)

To skip trace by parcel number, first turn each APN into an owner name and mailing address at the county assessor or GIS parcel map, because a parcel number identifies land, not a person. Keep the APN column, save the list as a CSV, and trace the owners. Two services also list an APN-based search.

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

A skip trace searches for a person. An APN (assessor's parcel number) names a piece of land, and nothing in the number says who owns it. The county holds that link: its parcel record carries the owner's name and the address the tax bill is mailed to. So a list of parcel numbers is traced in two passes, a county pass that turns each APN into an owner, and a skip trace that turns each owner into phones and emails. Keep your full APN list beside it: the results come back one row per owner and address, and you join them back to every parcel that owner holds.

The five steps from a parcel-number list to owner phone numbers
Step	Where	What you end up with
1Group the parcel numbers by county	Your list	APNs sorted by county and state
2Look up each APN at the county	County assessor or tax office property search, or the county GIS parcel map	The parcel's record
3Copy the owner name and mailing address	The parcel record	An owner name and a mailing address beside each APN
4Build the file and check it	Your spreadsheet, then the CSV checker	A CSV with a name and a complete address on every row
5Skip trace the owners	The upload	Phones and emails for each owner, ready to join back to your parcel list

Steps 1 to 3 are the county pass; searching a county's parcel records is usually free. Steps 4 and 5 are the skip trace. Each step is spelled out below.

APN to owner at the county

Counties keep a record for every parcel they tax, and most now put a search of those records online. The page goes by different names, property search, parcel search, assessor's roll, real property records, and it can sit with the assessor, the tax office or the treasurer. The steps are the same everywhere:

Group the parcel numbers by county. A parcel number is only unique inside the county that issued it, so sort the list by county and state before you look anything up. Take the county from the list itself or from wherever the APNs came from.
Open the county's property search. Search the county name with "assessor parcel search" or "GIS parcel map" and use the county's own site, the one on the county government's domain.
Search by parcel number. Pick the parcel number, parcel ID or PIN field rather than address or owner. Type the number the way that county writes it: the same digits with the dashes in a different place, or with a leading zero missing, often finds nothing.
Read the owner block. Copy the owner name exactly as printed and the mailing address, not the parcel's own situs address. On land and absentee-owned parcels the two are usually different, and the mailing address is the one that reaches the owner.
Or use the map. The county GIS parcel map shows the same owner details when you click a parcel, which helps when an APN from an old list no longer searches because the parcel was split or combined.

One county's record, as an example

APN formats vary from county to county, in length, in grouping and in what each group means, so take this as one worked example rather than a rule. Clark County, Nevada writes its current parcel numbers as 11 digits in the pattern XXX-XX-XXX-XXX, for example 162-35-113-001, built from its map book, section, page and a subdivision or acreage sequence, with the last three digits identifying the parcel. Its older numbers are 9 digits, XXX-XXX-XXX, for example 440-211-047. The same glossary says a parcel record shows at most two lines of owner names, and that "ETAL" at the end of the first line means more owners are on record than fit. It also says the mailing address shown is the one the county treasurer mails the property tax bill to, and that the owner can change it (Clark County Assessor, parcel record glossary (opens in a new tab), checked 2026-09-25).

Two things from that record matter for a skip trace. "ETAL" means the name you copied is one of several owners; if you want to reach the others, find their names in the deed and give each one a row of their own. And because the owner sets the mailing address to wherever they want the tax bill, it is the county address most likely to reach them.

A long list of APNs

Looking parcels up one at a time is fine for a few dozen. For hundreds or thousands, check whether the county offers its parcel data as a download: many publish the GIS parcel layer or sell the assessment roll as a file with the parcel number, owner name and mailing address on every row. Land data platforms export the same fields. Then join the owner columns onto your list by parcel number with XLOOKUP or VLOOKUP. Format both APN columns as text before the join, and make them match character for character: Excel opening a CSV turns 0123400 into 123400, and 123-45-678 will not match 12345678.

In South Carolina the parcel number is called a TMS number; elsewhere you will see parcel ID, PIN, folio or account number. The glossary entry on APNs lists the common names.

Building the file

After the county pass, each row should carry the parcel number and the owner. Every row needs an owner name and one complete address, street, city, state and ZIP: the upload will not go ahead until a name and a full address block are both mapped. Rows that still carry only an APN have nothing to trace, and at upload they all look alike, so they collapse into a single row; fill them in or take them out first.

The columns a parcel-number list needs before it is skip traced
Column	What to put in it	Traced?
Parcel number (APN)	The APN as the county writes it, formatted as text so leading zeros survive.	No. Carried through untraced; one owner's parcels at one address come back as one row (see below).
Owner first name, last name	From the parcel record. Split "SMITH JOHN A" into first and last name columns.	Yes. Required.
Mailing street, city, state, ZIP	The tax-bill mailing address from the parcel record, all four parts.	Yes. Required unless the property address is complete.
Property street, city, state, ZIP	The parcel's situs address, only when it has a street number.	Yes, when mapped.
County, acreage, anything else	Whatever you want to keep for sorting later.	No. Carried through untraced.

Header names do not have to match these; you point each column at a field when you upload. The CSV checker reads the file in your browser, without uploading it, and shows how your columns will map.

Owner names and entities

County rolls often print the owner last name first, as SMITH JOHN A. We read that order when the file shows it (a ; between owners or a middle initial at the end), but to be sure, add a comma (SMITH, JOHN A) or, better, split it into first-name and last-name columns in the spreadsheet. LLCs, trusts and estates are common on parcel lists; upload them like any other row, and see how to skip trace an LLC-owned property for finding the person behind one.

Format and size

The upload takes a CSV of 50 to 100,000 rows. Save an Excel sheet as CSV first; workbooks are refused. A list longer than 100,000 parcels goes in as more than one order.

Skip tracing the owners

With a name and a mailing address on every row, the list is an ordinary skip trace. Upload the CSV, map the owner name and the mailing address (and the property address where it has a street number), and leave the APN column alone. The result has one row for each distinct owner and address in your file, with columns added after your own:

Up to 10 phone numbers per owner, in the order returned, each labelled mobile, landline or VoIP.
Up to 3 email addresses where they exist.
A match flag on every row: HIT when at least one phone or email came back, MISS when none did.
Your own columns, the APN included, taken from the row that was kept, in their original order.

One owner, several parcels

At upload, rows with the same owner name and the same mapped addresses are merged into one row, even when their parcel numbers differ. The merged row is quoted and traced once, and the result carries the first row's APN. That is common on land lists: an owner of several vacant parcels has one mailing address, and parcels with no street number leave the property address blank. So keep your full APN list, and join the results back to it by owner name and mailing address with XLOOKUP or VLOOKUP, which puts the same phones and emails on each of that owner's parcels. Mapping each parcel's own situs address, where it has one, keeps those rows separate.

Skipmatch charges per matched record: $0.03 a record at any list size. The price is under 5 cents a record on every list. A 1,000-parcel list is at most $30.00. A 10,000-parcel list is at most $300.00. The quote is shown before you pay. Minimum charge $0.50 when any record matches. The cost calculator prices any other size.

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

Services that accept APN rows directly

Skipmatch does not take a parcel number on its own. Its upload has no parcel-number field and will not start without an owner name and a complete address, so the county pass above is yours to do. Two other services published an APN option when we checked in Sept 2026. If your list is thousands of bare APNs and the county offers no download, one of them may save you that pass. Skipmatch is one of the services compared.

What each service published about parcel-number input, as of Sept 2026
Service	Parcel-number input	Published price for it	Source
Tracerfy	Lists a Parcel (APN) trace.	5 credits per hit: $0.10 a hit at its pay-as-you-go credit price, $0.05-$0.07 at its monthly plan credit prices.	tracerfy.com/pricing (opens in a new tab), checked 2026-09-25
Bulk Skip Trace	Lists a bulk property search by parcel number (APN) or street address.	Not priced separately in what we read; check its own pages.	bulkskiptrace.com (opens in a new tab), checked 2026-09-25
Skipmatch	Not accepted on its own. Each file needs an owner name and a complete address; the APN column is carried through untraced, one row per owner and address.	Priced per matched record, as above.	Pricing

Each competitor's line is quoted from its own pages as of the date shown. What each APN option returns, and how it is billed beyond the figures above, is set out on those pages; nothing here says anything about either service's match rates or data quality. More on each: Skipmatch vs Tracerfy, Skipmatch vs Bulk Skip Trace.

The trade is time against control. Doing the county pass yourself costs an afternoon on a short list, and you see every owner name before you pay to trace it: parcels owned by the county, a utility or a church can come out before they are counted. Handing the APNs to one of those searches may skip that afternoon, at that service's price, if what it returns carries the owner fields you need; check its own pages.

Questions

Can you skip trace with just a parcel number?

Not on Skipmatch. The upload needs a column mapped as the owner name and one complete address (street, city, state and ZIP), and it has no parcel-number field, so look each APN up at the county first and keep the APN list to join the results back to, since rows with the same owner and addresses are merged into one. Two other services published an APN option when checked in Sept 2026: Tracerfy lists a Parcel (APN) trace, and Bulk Skip Trace lists a bulk property search by parcel number.

How do I find the owner of a parcel by APN?

Open the county assessor's or tax office's property search, choose the parcel number search and type the APN the way that county formats it. The record shows the owner's name as it appears on the tax roll and the mailing address the tax bill goes to. You can also find the parcel on the county's GIS parcel map and click it for the same owner details.

Where do I find a parcel number?

On the property tax bill, often on the deed and closing papers, on the county's GIS parcel map, and in the assessor's property search, which you can search by street address or owner name. Counties call it different things: APN, parcel ID, PIN, or in South Carolina a TMS number. List exports usually carry it in a column with one of those names.

Can I get a phone number from a parcel number?

Not from the county. A parcel record gives the owner's name and mailing address, not a phone number. The phone numbers come from skip tracing that owner: turn the APN into a name and mailing address at the county, then run the owner through a skip tracing service. Keep your full APN list, because one owner can hold several parcels: join the phone numbers back to each parcel by owner name and mailing address.

How do I convert an APN list to owner names?

For a short list, look each APN up on the county assessor's site and copy the owner name and mailing address. For a long list, download the county's parcel or GIS data where it offers it, or export the parcels from a land data platform, then join the owner columns to your APNs in a spreadsheet with XLOOKUP or VLOOKUP. Format both APN columns as text and write them the same way, dashes included, or the join misses rows.

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