Questions clients ask us most often.

A skip trace is an investigation to locate a person's current whereabouts and contact information. It produces the best available leads: current address, active telephone numbers, employment where it can be developed, and known relatives and associates. These are assembled from public records, licensed data sources, and investigative follow-up, then cross-referenced across sources and rated for confidence.

One caveat: nothing is verified until someone lays eyes on it in person. Cross-referencing raises confidence a great deal, but a record only shows where someone was reported. When certainty matters, we send an investigator to look.

An asset search identifies recorded and registered holdings: real property and the deeds of trust against it, registered vehicles, vessels and aircraft, business entity interests, UCC secured filings, tax liens, civil judgments, bankruptcy history, and professional licenses. Each finding carries its jurisdiction, recording reference, and date so it can be pulled or attached as an exhibit.

It does not find bank balances, cash, or unrecorded personal property. Financial accounts are a separate search governed by different law.

No, not by default. A standard asset search is conducted from licensed, aggregated, and electronically available record sources, which are current only to their last update cycle. Live county-level record retrieval and public records requests to state agencies are not part of the base search and must be specified at intake.

We do that work: direct pulls from the recorder, auditor, assessor, or clerk, and formal public records requests drafted, submitted, and tracked through response. It's quoted separately, and the agency's statutory timeline controls, so our seven-day turnaround doesn't apply. If you have a hearing date coming, tell us when you open the assignment.

We can lawfully identify the financial institutions a person or entity has a relationship with, which is what you need in order to serve a writ of garnishment or a subpoena on the right bank. We identify the institution and the type of relationship, and we document the source of each finding.

We do not search active account balances, and no lawful investigator can. Those come from the institution in response to legal process: a garnishment, a subpoena, or a debtor's examination. Any vendor promising you a balance is either guessing or pretexting.

What we do provide alongside the institutional findings is an assessment of the subject's financial health and posture: how many institutions they deal with, whether relationships look active or dormant, what is encumbered, and whether the overall pattern reads as solvency or as winding down. That helps you decide whether a writ is worth serving.

Lawfully, by working from sources that are open to a licensed investigator with a permissible purpose: UCC-1 financing statements that name the secured lender, deeds of trust that name the beneficiary, court filings and bankruptcy schedules that identify institutions directly, prior discovery productions, litigation exhibits, and permissible-purpose data sources. The relationships are inferred and verified from those records. Nothing is obtained from the bank.

The unlawful method is pretexting, which means calling the institution under a false identity. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act prohibits that, and prohibits hiring someone else to do it. We don't do it and won't subcontract it.

Typical turnaround in business days: skip trace investigation 2 days, asset search 7 days, bank search 7 days, brokerage search 5 days, insurance coverage searches 15 days, and witness interviews 14 days. Timing depends on jurisdiction, record availability, and how much identifying data you can provide. Rush handling is available on most searches, and every assignment is confirmed with a delivery date before work begins.

Our full price list is published. A skip trace investigation is $200, or $20 to $50 per comprehensive report for bulk database work at volume. Asset searches are $350, statewide bank searches $325, nationwide bank searches $450, brokerage searches $550, and insurance coverage searches $150 to $1,295 depending on the search and the age of the loss. Everything is flat-rate against a defined scope. See all rates.

On financial searches you pay the full rate only if we find something. If the search comes back empty you pay the no-hit rate instead, typically $40 to $85, and $0 on policy limits searches. You still receive the full report documenting what was searched and where, which is what supports a diligence showing or a decision to close a file.

Rates are set by what the underlying data costs to license and maintain, plus the investigator time to reconcile it. Proprietary material has to be acquired, indexed, corrected, and kept current, and local records that nobody updates lose their value quickly.

A $39 instant bank search is usually a recycled aggregator record that may be years old, with no verification and no source listed. If you garnish the wrong institution on the strength of it, you lose far more than the search saved.

Yes. Recurring and bulk work is priced on a sliding scale. The per-file rate falls as sustained volume rises, because batch submission lowers our per-file data cost. Tell us your expected monthly volume when you introduce your firm and we'll quote the tier price for that volume. This applies to skip tracing, financial searches, and bulk service of process.

You don't order through the website. We open a client account first: you introduce your firm, we confirm terms and any volume pricing, and from then on assignments run directly with an investigator by email, secure portal, or batch submission. Permissible purpose is documented per assignment. Introduce your firm.

We work from three layers of sources. The first is licensed commercial databases, which every vendor has. The second is proprietary local source material we have built across the Pacific Northwest since 1980: indexed county-level records, historical address and property data, and working relationships with local custodians. Much of it predates digitization and no national aggregator carries it. The third is privately sourced OSINT, meaning structured open source intelligence tradecraft run against the subject's digital footprint by people with cyber and military intelligence backgrounds.

This matters most on searches that come back empty everywhere else, like a subject whose trail goes cold in 2003 or a property transfer recorded under a variant spelling. Sometimes it's an old username that ties to a current account. A national database only returns what someone scanned into it, and our local records and online work reach further back than that.

Yes to both. We are an investigative agency that serves process, so when an address fails, the file goes straight to a locate and you don't get a non-est return. Bulk and volume service is available for collections portfolios, eviction calendars, high-volume debt litigation, and subpoena campaigns. It runs on batch submission with consolidated invoicing, priced on a sliding scale. Service of process detail.

Yes, face to face. A witness who won't return a call will often talk at their door, and sitting across from someone is the only way to see where they hesitate and what they steer around. You receive the statement, recorded or written, with a transcript if you want one. We also write a memo on how the witness is likely to come across on the stand.

Yes. Surveillance and activity checks are run by licensed field investigators and documented with time-stamped video and photographs, along with written logs. Each assignment is quoted per matter. For their safety, we do not name field team members publicly. More on the field team. Surveillance operations.

For a person: full name and any variants, last known address, and at least one identifier such as date of birth, a partial Social Security number, or a known relative. For an entity: the registered name and state of formation. Plus the matter type and, where applicable, the case number and jurisdiction, so we can document permissible purpose.

Send identifiers through the secure channel we provide at intake, not by unencrypted email.

You get a report that says so and documents exactly what we searched and where, source by source. A negative report still gets used. It supports a diligence showing for alternative service. A creditor can use it to stop spending on an uncollectible file, and counsel can learn a defendant is judgment-proof before the client funds the case.

A permissible purpose is the lawful basis for conducting a search and accessing restricted data, such as a judgment you are enforcing, pending or contemplated litigation, a fiduciary or receivership appointment, a fraud investigation, or a legitimate business need in a transaction.

We document it on every engagement because federal and state law restricts access to financial, motor vehicle, and personal data based on purpose. A vendor who doesn't ask is exposing you as well as themselves.

No. Our reports are investigative work product, not consumer reports under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and they may not be used to determine eligibility for employment, credit, insurance, or housing. Those decisions require a consumer reporting agency operating under FCRA procedures. We don't take that work, but if that is what you need, tell us and we will refer you.

Yes. Northwest Investigative Services operates as a licensed Washington private investigative agency, license number 22031080, under Chapter 18.165 RCW. For field work outside Washington we work within the destination state's licensing requirements.

Yes, if we know early. Reports are structured so findings and their sources can be attested to, and a declaration of the investigator is available on request.

If there is any prospect you will need testimony, say so when you open the assignment. We securely destroy matter files 30 days after delivery unless extended retention is arranged, so an investigator asked to testify two years later needs the file to still exist. Extended secure retention and storage is available as a separate paid service.

Matter files are securely destroyed 30 days after delivery. The substance of inquiries that never become engagements is deleted after 30 days as well. We keep only the sender's contact details, to market our own services, and delete those on request.

We do this on purpose. Data we don't hold can't be subpoenaed from us or breached, and nobody can mishandle it. Any of those would be your problem as much as ours. The trade-off is that you retain your own copies, so download and file our reports when they arrive.

If you need us to hold a file longer (for anticipated testimony, an appeal, or your own record-keeping), arrange extended secure retention and storage at the time of the assignment. It is quoted separately. Rates.

Yes. We decline requests without a lawful permissible purpose, anything requiring pretexting, searches that appear intended to facilitate stalking or harassment, locates on a person protected by an order against the requester, unauthorized access to accounts or communications, and any use of our reports for FCRA-regulated eligibility decisions. Our compliance standards set this out in full.

We run records-based searches nationwide: skip tracing, asset searches, bank and brokerage searches, and due diligence. Field work and our deepest proprietary source coverage are based in Washington State, including Seattle, Bellevue, Tacoma, Everett, Olympia, and Spokane, and field work is available elsewhere through licensed local association.