4 Ways Real Estate Investors Can Easily Find LLC Owners

Looking up properties and property owners with PropertyRadar is easy. But what do you do when the owner of a property you’re interested in is an LLC? Give up? Nope. Finding the owner of an LLC is much easier and faster than you think.

And while there are companies that charge $200 to $300 per month to provide this service, I’m going to show you how to pierce the corporate veil to find the owner of an LLC…for free (most of the time).

In this post we'll cover:

• Importance of Finding the Owner of an LLC?
• What Is Piercing the Corporate Veil?
• Watch: How To Find the Principal Owner of an LLC
• 4 Ways to Find The Real Estate LLC Owner
• Contacting Corporate Owners

• Easily Find LLC Owners & Save Money Doing It

Importance of Finding the Owner of an LLC?

Smart real estate investors, like yourself, know that you can’t send out a direct mail piece, text message, or email with it addressed to ACME LLC. It’s a waste of time and money.

Closing any investment deal starts with making a personal connection from day one. And that can’t happen if your marketing materials are littered with ‘Dear ACME LLC Owner’.

You connect with and sell your services to people, not corporations. And that is why finding the owner of an LLC is so important, to make an impact with your first impression.

But finding the principal owner of an LLC means you have to pierce the corporate veil.

What Is Piercing the Corporate Veil?

Piercing the corporate veil is a fancy way of describing the process of pulling back the corporate curtain to see who owns what assets.

There are a number of reasons someone might want to ‘pierce the corporate veil’. And while most are related to legal issues, your goal is to find out who the actual person, or principal owner of a property is with the intention of marketing to them (a living breathing person) rather than to an entity.

Finding LLC Owners is Fast and Often Free

As mentioned, some companies charge $200 to $300 per month to pierce the corporate veil and find the owners of LLCs for you – it’s part of their packaged services. The problem is, you’re not guaranteed to always get the right info. Or worse, get any info at all.

Plus, how often do you need to find the owner of an LLC? Is it so often that it warrants an additional $200/month? Probably not (hence, this post).

The good news is that the information you need to find the owner of an LLC is readily available through public records if you know where to look. Even better, it’s pretty quick and easy.

I know your time is valuable. So I wouldn’t be recommending you waste your time if every search took 10 minutes or more to find your answer. It takes just a couple of minutes to find the owner of an LLC, especially after you’ve done it a time or two.

You’ll end up saving yourself hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars by doing it yourself. And that’s time well spent in my book.

Watch: How To Find the Principal Owner of an LLC

4 Ways to Find The Real Estate LLC Owner

When searching properties, you’ll inevitably find ones owned by LLCs, like the one in the example below. There’s no name or contact information.

Don’t give up. You have a few options to discover who the owner is of this LLC.

Option 1: Finding the LLC Owner in PropertyRadar

Staying within PropertyRadar, it's possible to find the owner of the LLC. Here’s how:

Go to 1) Property > 2) Transactions > 3) Loan Document

If there is a Loan Document, you have the option of buying the document for a couple dollars. If the name is on the document, great. You’re done. You can now use the 'Owner Lookup' function in PropertyRadar and find out everything you need to know about that person.

If the name isn’t available in the Purchase doc, don't fret, you have other options.

Option 2: Finding the LLC Owner via Secretary of State Website

Click this link here: Research LLC Owner – Secretary of State (SOS) Links. It takes you to a PropertyRadar page that looks like this:

This page contains all 50 Secretary of State’s websites where you can find the owner of an LLC of any given state. (You might want to bookmark this page for reference later.)

To find the owner of the LLC you're looking for, follow these steps:

1. Click the State of interest to access the Secretary of State website. NOTE: all State websites are different but generally follow the same path to find the owner of an LLC. In this example, we’re using the California SOS website.
2. Copy the LLC name from within PropertyRadar.
3. Paste it into the ‘Business Search Field’ as shown below and click ‘Search’:

On the ‘Search Results’ page, click the ‘Entity Name’:

Click the Statement of Information PDF icon:

This opens up the PDF of the State of Information document, where you will find the actual name of the person who owns the LLC. In this case, Kishan Patel is the owner of JH2K LLC:

Now that you have the name of the owner, go back to PropertyRadar, enter the name in 'Owner Lookup' to learn everything you need to about the owner, the other properties they might own, mortgage details, and much more.

Option 3: Corporationwiki

In the video, I also show you how to use CorporationWiki.com:

One of the things I like about CorporationWiki is it quickly shows you if the person is associated with any other entities.

Option 4: OpenCorporates

I didn’t mention it in the video, but another popular site used by real estate investors is OpenCorporates.com:

Whichever path you choose, you’ll find what you need with only a few clicks. And you’ll be saving yourself a lot of money in the process.  

Contacting Corporate Owners

Now that you found the living breathing person who owns the property you’re interested in, conducting your research is the next step. This is where in PropertyRadar you’ll find everything you need to know about your prospect to make a personal connection.

None least of which is their actual contact info.

Owner Contact Info

Under ‘Contacts’ you’ll find (if available) the owner’s phone number, email, social profiles, mailing address, and more.

Now, with contact info in hand and clean, comprehensive, actionable data and insights into your prospect, their properties, mortgages, and more, you’re ready to reach out and make that ever so important first impression.

Conclusion - Easily Find LLC Owners & Save Money Doing It

Finding the owner of an LLC isn’t impossible; it’s not so challenging that you need to pay hundreds of dollars to have someone do it for you. I just demonstrated how fast and easy it actually is (and in most cases, free).

Whether you send a single piece mailer, make a call, or initiate a comprehensive multitouch, multichannel marketing campaign, the important thing is, with PropertyRadar you now have everything you need to make sure your marketing and direct mail is dialed in for success.