TL;DR — plain-English definitions for every term used on the Project 1 and Project 2 pages. Green pills = good outreach signal, grey/red = excluded or unknown.
A home we'd actually reach out to: $5M+ single-family, owner-occupied (has the Homeowners' Exemption) and owned by a person, not an LLC or trust. Only these homes were sent to Tracerfy for name / email / phone.
A small California property-tax break (~$70/yr) that an owner can claim only for the home they live in. If it's on the tax roll, the owner is a resident — that's our free "owner lives here" proof. It's optional, so no exemption ≠ renter; it just means we can't confirm.
Page labels: owner-occupied (HO exemption) = confirmed resident · no HO exemption — owner-occupancy unconfirmed = unknown, greyed out.
A home shown for context but not sent to Tracerfy. Reasons: owned by an LLC / trust, or no Homeowners' Exemption (owner-occupancy unconfirmed). Can be traced later if approved.
Who holds title. Person(s) = a named individual or couple (what we want). LLC / company and Trust = the home is held through an entity; the real owner is hidden, so these are excluded per the brief. Unknown = no exemption and not yet traced.
The owner's mail (tax bill) goes to a different address than the home. Usually means they don't live there — rental, second home, or temporarily displaced (e.g. fire-rebuild lot). Mailing = property is a strong "they live here" signal.
Land value + building value from the LA County Assessor's tax roll. This is the assessed value, not the market price. Under Prop 13 it's frozen near the last purchase price (+2%/yr), so a "$5M" home here is often worth $10M+ on the market. Our $5M filter is therefore conservative — it catches homes that are at least $5M.
The Assessor splits every parcel into land (the lot) and building ("improvements" — the house itself). A high land value with a low building value usually means an older or smaller house on a prime lot (tear-down / rebuild candidate); the reverse means a new or large house.
California law (1978) that caps property-tax value at the purchase price, rising max 2%/yr until the home sells. It's why assessed values lag market values — and why long-time owners look "cheap" on paper.
The unique 10-digit ID for a parcel of land in LA County. Used to dedupe homes and to join permits to properties. Same thing as AIN (Assessor's Identification Number).
Assessor use codes starting with 01 = single-family residence. Condos, apartments and commercial parcels are excluded.
Straight-line ("as the crow flies") miles from the crime's hundred-block location to the home's parcel, computed by us. Not driving distance.
We look for $5M+ homes within 1 mile of each crime. If fewer than 3 homes qualify, we widen to 2.5 miles. Each crime block shows which radius was used.
A home appears under every crime it's within radius of, so a home can show up several times on a tab. Counts of "unique homes" and Tracerfy lookups are deduped by APN — each home was traced once.
An LAPD record in the last 60 days whose offense is on the requested list (burglary, theft, vehicle theft, robbery, assault, vandalism, arson, trespass, stalking / intimidation…) and happened at a residence (home, driveway, single-family). Crimes at stores, streets or businesses are excluded.
The FBI's standard for classifying crimes, used by LAPD since 2024. Each record has a NIBRS code (e.g. 220 burglary, 240 motor-vehicle theft, 120 robbery, 13A/13B assault, 290 vandalism, 200 arson, 90J trespass). We map the 20 requested crime types to 13 NIBRS codes.
These are calls for service (someone phoned the police), not reported crimes, so they never become NIBRS records and can't appear on the page. Same for "porch piracy" — it shows up as theft / larceny.
Open = the case is still under investigation (most recent crimes). Closed = cleared, usually by arrest or the case being adjudicated. Open, recent cases are the best outreach hook — the neighborhood is still aware of it.
LAPD publishes locations rounded to the nearest 100-block (e.g. "1600 Courtney Ave"), never the exact house. Distances are measured from that block.
Date of crime = when it happened (date_occ). Reported = when the victim told police. Can be days apart.
Opens the raw LAPD row on data.lacity.org (by its unique NIBRS number) so anyone can verify the incident.
For every crime we searched Google News (street name + crime type + area, published within 10 days). Most residential burglaries and car break-ins never make the news, so this is usually "none found"; the search ↗ link runs the same query live so you can re-check later. A found story shows as a headline link.
LAPD gives no zip code, so we assign the zip of the nearest parcel to the crime's lat/lon. Area = the neighborhood name for that zip (Bel Air, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Beverly Hills, West Hollywood). Division = the LAPD station (West LA or Hollywood).
The paid service we use to turn a property address into the owner's name, mailing address, emails and phones. Pay-as-you-go: ~$0.10 per hit on single lookups, ~$0.04 in bulk; misses are free.
Hit = Tracerfy returned at least one person for the address. No match = we looked, nothing found (no charge). Pending = eligible but not yet looked up. Not looked up (excluded) = greyed row, intentionally skipped.
Tracerfy's own marker that the person it found is the owner of record (vs. a resident or relative). Names with this flag are the most reliable.
Tracerfy's confidence order — rank 1 = most likely current. Emails are ranked only; they are not checked for deliverability (a $0.01 email verifier can do that before sending).
Mobile vs. landline (or VoIP), plus the carrier. Mobiles are texts/calls; landlines are calls only.
The number is on the national Do-Not-Call registry. Cold sales calls to it are restricted by law; email or mail instead.
The person has previously sued companies under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (robocall / spam-text law). Skip these numbers.
Tracerfy's records say this person has died. Skip; the home is likely in probate or held by heirs / a trust.
Our crime data comes from LAPD, which only polices the City of Los Angeles. Beverly Hills has its own police (BHPD) and West Hollywood is patrolled by the LA County Sheriff (LASD); neither publishes an open crime feed. So those two tabs show only the LA-city slivers of each zip (Beverly Crest, Hollywood Hills) — real crimes, but probably half or less of the total. Filling the gap needs a paid aggregator (~$100+/mo).
City of LA's public crime dataset (data.lacity.org, k7nn-b2ep), refreshed about every two weeks. Source for every crime on the page.
County GIS API with every parcel's address, use code, land / building value, Homeowners' Exemption, year built, beds / baths / sqft and coordinates. Does not include owner names online (blocked by CA Gov Code 6254.21).
Assessed = the Assessor's number for taxes (Prop 13, usually low). Market = what it would sell for today. We only have assessed; a market estimate (AVM) would need a paid source like ATTOM, which is currently out of scope.
The unmodified data exactly as each source returned it, shown at the bottom of an expanded row for auditing.
City of LA's permit office. Its open-data feed lists every permit (address, type, valuation, dates); the per-permit detail page lists the contractor, architect and engineer.
The construction cost the applicant declared on the permit (e.g. $3M+ remodel / new build). Not the home's value — that comes from the Assessor.
The company doing the work and its California State License Board number. Pulled from the LADBS detail page (the public feed dropped this field in Jan 2025).
One row per permit joining permit → contractor → Assessor property (value, owner-occupied) → owner contact (Tracerfy), matched by APN.
A card marked "sample" shows rows we pulled by hand rather than live — used where the source can't be called from a browser. Everything else on the pages is fetched live or pre-computed from live pulls.
The legal document filed with the LA County Registrar-Recorder when a property changes hands. It is the only public record that names the buyer within days of closing; the Assessor roll and the permit "owner" field lag it by months. Project 2 now takes the homeowner from the latest deed, not from the permit.
Grantee = the party receiving the property on the deed (the buyer). Grantor = the party giving it up (the seller). "Grantee (buyer on deed)" on the cards is the name we skip-trace.
Signed is when the deed was executed (usually close of escrow); recorded is when the county stamped it into the public index, typically 1–5 days later. All "bought within" and "permit after deed" tests use the recording date.
What kind of transfer the document is. Grant / Warranty Deed with a price = a normal sale. Trustee's Deed = sale out of a trust or foreclosure. Quit Claim, Intrafamily Transfer, Affidavit of Death, trust re-titling = no money changed hands; the household is the same.
A sale between unrelated parties at market price — a Grant, Warranty or Trustee's deed with a recorded sale price. Only arms-length deeds can create a "new owner". Everything else is a non-sale transfer.
The latest deed moved title without a sale — e.g. owner puts the house into their living trust, adds a spouse, inherits. The people living there did not change, so the card is greyed out: contacting them as a "new homeowner" would be the old-owner mistake from the first run.
NEW OWNER ≤ 90 d — arms-length deed recorded in the last 90 days. 3–12 mo — arms-length sale 3–12 months ago (shown when "Owner bought within" is widened). Long-term owner — last sale more than a year ago. Family / trust transfer — see non-sale transfer. Deed not pulled yet — we have not yet bought the deed lookup for that parcel; it is unknown, not "no new owner".
How recent the arms-length deed must be for the owner to count as new. 90 days is the project requirement; 12 months is offered because buyers typically file their first permit 3–9 months after closing.
The permit's issue (or submission) date compared with the deed recording date. ✓ = filed after the purchase, so the work is the new owner's. ✗ before the deed = the seller started the work; the buyer inherited a permit — not a remodel signal for the buyer.
Contacts are now looked up on the name on the deed (plus their mailing address). The first run looked up the property address, which returns whoever the data vendor last had at that address — often the seller. Where both exist the card shows the old lookup so you can see the mismatch.
The buyer took title as "The Smith Family Trust; John Smith, Trustee". Wealthy individuals routinely close in a revocable living trust for estate reasons — the trustee is the homeowner, so these are kept as reachable people and skip-traced on the trustee's name.
Title held by an LLC, LP, Inc. or "Holdings" entity (often the address itself, e.g. "1120 Summit Drive LLC"). Could be a developer, a flipper or a private individual hiding ownership; the deed gives no person, so these are excluded from outreach until the LLC is resolved via the Secretary of State or the deed image.
Which of the three buckets above the grantee falls into. Only the first two are outreach-eligible.
Whether the grantee's mailing address on the deed is the property itself. "Absentee / mail elsewhere" right after a purchase is common (buyer still living at the old house during the remodel) and is not a disqualifier here.
The price implied by the documentary transfer tax on the deed, and the previous recorded sale of the same parcel. A large jump plus a fresh permit is the strongest "just bought, now remodeling" signal.
The data vendor's automated market estimate (AVM). Unlike the Assessed (Prop 13) value it tracks the market; use it, not the assessed value, to judge a $5M+ home.
The second tab on Project 2: starts from every $2M+ single-family deed recorded in the last 90 days in the five zips (138 buyers; the view defaults to $5M+), then checks each parcel for a permit filed after the deed. Most have none yet — treat as a watch-list and re-check weekly.
A confirmed new owner with no post-closing permit yet. Not a "no", just "not yet" — permits are checked against LADBS open data (any type, since 2026-01-01) and the Beverly Hills monthly PDFs.
Which city issues permits for the parcel. 90210 is Beverly Hills (own permit office, monthly PDF reports only); 90046 straddles City of LA and West Hollywood (WeHo's portal blocks automated access, so WeHo permits are a coverage gap); the rest is City of LA.
Each deed pull costs 10 vendor credits; the bulk closings list costs 5 per row. "Deed not pulled yet" means the credit budget ran out before that parcel — 48 of 148 permit parcels are pulled so far.
A home sale that finished ("closed escrow") recently — here, single-family homes sold for $5M+ in the last 90 days. New owners are prime security prospects: new house, often renovating, security not yet set up.
Redfin publishes a public CSV download for any "sold" search: address, sale price, closing date, beds/baths/sqft, MLS #. It only includes sales that were listed on the MLS — off-market / pocket sales are missing, and some listings are withheld per MLS rules. Free; replaces the paid ATTOM feed for now.
A sale arranged privately without an MLS listing. Common at $5M+ (maybe 20–30% of deals, more in Beverly Hills). Not visible in Redfin; only the county recorder sees it, months later.
Right after a closing, Tracerfy's records may still name the seller. Best signs the contact is the buyer: the "property owner" flag, mailing = property, or a name that differs from the pre-sale Assessor record. A "no match" usually means the buyer hasn't shown up in records yet — re-run in 1–3 months.
On a just-sold home the Assessor value still reflects the old owner's Prop 13 basis. It resets to roughly the sale price on the next tax roll.
Paid property-data API (~$300–500/mo) that would add off-market sales and deed-level buyer names. Left out for now in favor of the free Redfin export.