For those in the property tax lending business, this is our busy season. Tax delinquencies peak the first day they are past due, normally Feb 1st, then gradually reduce during the year as property owners pay or make arrangements to pay their taxes. It’s during the first six months of the calendar year that tax lenders incur the majority of their marketing expenses as we attempt to identify and market to property owners who need help with their past due property taxes. 
How Do Property Tax Lenders Generate Their Mailing Lists?
While tax lenders have many means of marketing to prospective clients, the most pervasive method is direct mail. Tax Assessors are required to make their delinquent tax rolls available through public information requests. Through these requests, property tax lenders receive the information used to derive their mailings lists. For the most populous counties, these initial lists are typically very large, some with millions of records. The lenders then slice and dice the delinquent tax rolls to develop their direct mail lists. While an effective marketing method, direct mail is expensive. Tax lenders take great effort to narrow their target lists to remove properties that would not qualify for a tax loan. However, when dealing with millions of records mistakes can happen and some properties owners are inadvertently mailed property tax loan offers. We apologize if you were mailed a property tax loan offer that you did not wish to receive.
How Do I Remove My Name From Property Tax Lenders’ Mailing Lists?
During our busy season we occasionally get phone calls or letters requesting removal from our mailing lists. We attempt to respond to each request accordingly; however, my best advice would be to save your time and just toss out the letter or better yet recycle it. If you are receiving multiple offers from lenders, you might want to check with your tax assessor(s) since this is the ultimate source of the data. If you’ve recently paid your taxes, your name will automatically fall of our mailing list when we refresh our tax assessor data.
If you are really serious about getting rid of promotional mail, you can register with the Mail Preference Service of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA). It won’t guarantee you a life free of junk mail, but it can help. DMA will list you in its database in the “Do Not Mail” category. Direct marketers are not required to check the database, but most companies that send large volumes of bulk mail do use the DMA service.
