Build a Florida vacant land and absentee owner list

What you’ll make

A spreadsheet with one row per parcel, including owner mailing details, acreage, land-use codes, values, and source information. You’ll need an Apify account and a spreadsheet app. The actor reads Florida Department of Revenue tax-roll files for your selected counties.

These are periodic snapshots. Owner names can lag a sale, and a vacant land-use code does not establish buildability or road access. The export contains mailing addresses where published, with no phone numbers or email addresses.

1. Try one county

Open Florida Vacant Land & Absentee Owner Leads on Apify and paste this into the JSON input.

{
  "counties": [
    "Polk"
  ],
  "roll": "latest",
  "landUseCodes": [
    "000"
  ],
  "ownerLocation": "out-of-state",
  "maxResults": 20
}

000 selects vacant residential land. ownerLocation checks the mailing state on the roll: an out-of-state match is an owner mailing outside Florida, not every owner living away from the property. A missing mailing state matches neither location filter.

Check the actor’s current pricing and set a maximum charge before starting. A small maxResults limits delivered rows; it does not make a sample a complete county export. Check the run log for limits and incomplete results.

2. Narrow the parcel list

After checking the sample, add minAcres and maxAcres for size, or maxJustValue for the roll’s just value. Missing values do not match an active size or value bound. Just value is a tax-roll field, not an asking price.

Use 010 for vacant commercial land or 040 for vacant industrial land. excludePublicOwners is on by default. ownerNameExcludes accepts name fragments if you want to remove particular organizations.

lastSaleBeforeYear: 2024 retains parcels whose latest sale on the roll predates 2024, including parcels with no sale recorded in the file. It is not proof of continuous ownership since that year. The roll carries up to two recent sales rather than a complete sale history.

3. Export and check the fields

When the run finishes, open its output dataset and inspect a few rows. Choose CSV or Excel from the export options. In Google Sheets, use File → Import → Upload. Keep identifiers and ZIP codes as text so leading zeros survive the import.

Keep county, parcelId, ownerName, the ownerAddress1/ownerAddress2 mailing fields, ownerCity, ownerState, and ownerZip. The situsAddress is the property address; it may differ from the owner’s mailing address.

Retain rollYear, rollType, sourceFile, and sourceUrl alongside your research. Blank source values become null. In some counties, owner ZIP codes are missing even when the street address is present.

4. Check a parcel before using it

Look up selected parcel IDs on the county property appraiser’s website. Compare ownership, the mailing address, and land use with your export. Keep separate spreadsheet columns for your checked date, source link, and research notes so your conclusions remain distinct from the published roll.

For a broader run, list more counties or use "counties": ["all"]. Counties run in order and share one result cap, so an early county can fill the limit before later counties are read.

5. Refresh when the source changes

Save the input as an Apify task. A monthly schedule can check for updated files, but repeating a run against the same roll returns the same snapshot. Use roll: "latest" to follow the newest available roll, or choose preliminary or final with a rollYear to reproduce a particular published set.

Keep each dated export. For a current working sheet, match rows by county and parcel ID and update them instead of appending duplicates. For history, retain the roll year and type as well. A parcel missing from a capped or differently filtered run is not evidence of a sale.

If the export is empty

Remove the owner-location filter first, then loosen acreage, value, or sale-year bounds. Confirm the chosen county and roll are available. Review the log for download failures and limits; a missing source file is different from a completed search with no matching parcels.