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Finding excess unclaimed money can be a hugely profitable career, but most new finders start out by searching for and collecting the wrong kinds of funds. Sometimes, without realizing it, they even operate illegally. Here are a couple of inside secrets to finding unclaimed surplus money that you’ll need to know to stay ahead of your peers.
1. Don’t chase surplus money not claimed by the state. In most states, while it is legal to act as a finder, there are restrictions that make it difficult for a finder to earn money. Things like required credentials, black-out time periods, and finder fee caps as low as 5% make seeking state funds a losing proposition.
Not only that, but unclaimed surplus money withheld at the state level is often token amounts, like $50 here and $100 there in unpaid stock dividends or savings accounts with so little money that people forget the had. Even if you can charge a reasonable 30-40% more on those, it still won’t be enough to put food on the table.
2. Look for unclaimed surplus money created by real estate transactions. Foreclosure and tax foreclosure create a large amount of surplus funds. These are the best to work with. Since they are not conducted at the state level, in most states that solves the problems mentioned above. You can often avoid finder fee caps and you don’t have to be accredited to act as a money finder.
But even better than that is the amount of these unclaimed surplus money. You’ll find plenty of funds to work with in every state, and these average in the thousands, not the hundreds. Real estate surpluses in the tens and even millions of thousands are also common.
Where are these funds located?
Well, they are NOT located at the state level, like the State Department of Unclaimed Funds, or similarly named offices in every state. They will take place outside the state level, in places like local treasurer’s offices, tax commissioner’s offices and the like. There’s no general location across the country, but you’ll usually find them in county offices like that.
If you spend the time to find these funds and locate their owners, instead of taking 5-15% of a lost $500 bank account, you can collect a much more reasonable 30-50% of a large surplus, say, $10,000 or more. . This means that to run a very successful business, you only have to close one or two claims each month, and with the foreclosure rate at an all-time high, there is no shortage of these funds to work with.