No doubt you’ve heard somewhere (the TV, the newspaper, online) that there is a lot of unclaimed property held by the government. Maybe he even went to a state’s unclaimed property website and searched and found some good sums of money owed to people. If he searches his estate right now, he’ll probably find at least a few people who are owed a few thousand dollars. The next logical step is to ask yourself how to collect searchers’ fees for unclaimed property by letting these people know about your money.
When learning how to charge search fees, the first thing you should do is read your state’s unclaimed property code and find out what the limit is on what a person can charge as a search fee. In most states it is around 10%. Next, you will need to try to locate the owner of the funds. Often, they no longer live at the address on file with the state and that is why they do not receive notice of their unclaimed funds.
Finally, once you find them, you’ll need to try to get them to sign a contract agreeing to pay you your 10%, before disclosing where you found the money record. Unfortunately, since most states have an unclaimed property website, if these people are smart, before they sign anything with you, they will search the website and collect without paying you anything.
Sounds pretty bleak, right?
This is where most people give up on learning how to collect finder’s fees altogether…and this is why there are some secret sources of unclaimed property left that are enriching the few money seekers who do. they know. These funds are held outside of the state level and are therefore not subject to the finder’s fee caps. They are typically created from real estate transactions and therefore are often in the five figures or more. Best of all, they are never listed on the state’s unclaimed property websites, and their owners are almost always unaware of their existence.
If you can locate the records of these funds (and there are many) and locate their owners, it’s fairly easy to hire them, process your claim, and get paid 30-50% per transaction. This is by far the best and easiest way to collect finder’s fees for unclaimed property. It’s a very simple process: search records, find owners, get contracts signed, process the claim and get paid.