Twice this month I pulled reports where the so-called current address was from a 2022 utility record, and this keeps showing up in TLO and CLEAR batches (last one 9/14). Are others seeing the same lag, and is there a better way to flag the source timestamp before we rely on it? I’m not looking for guarantees — just general pointers I can research and test myself.
Same here with TLO/CLEAR — if the “current” is a 2022 utility, I DPV it via USPS (e.g., https://www.melissa.com/resources/lookups/address-check) and only treat it as live if I can get a <90‑day “last seen” from a quick Tracers or IDI reverse. I also sanity-check the subject’s active phone CNAM/billing ZIP; mismatch = historical, then I pivot to the 2024 tax roll. Did your 9/14 CLEAR export include the source category so you can auto-flag utilities older than 12 months?
Quick tip: in TLO/CLEAR, pull the address’s event/last-reported date into your export and auto-flag anything older than 12 months, then cross-check with USPS NCOALink for a move effective date (https://postalpro.usps.com/NCOALink)… If NCOA shows a later move or no activity while the utility is 2022, treat “current” as marketing, not evidence. Caveat: NCOA misses people who never filed a forward — does a simple 12–18 month threshold fit your workflow?
I treat a “2022 utility” as historical unless the county tax site shows the parcel’s mail-to updated and a tax payment posted this year — “trust recency over frequency.” For batch, I score by last-seen date and only call it live when two fresh sources agree; stale “current” is milk, not wine — @beaver14, which states are you seeing the worst lag in?
Same here. I’ve had better luck keying on the voter-registration last-update date and treating the address tied to the newest voter file as the tentative current, then sanity-checking it with USPS RDI/DPV (https://postalpro.usps.com/address-quality-solutions) — like a smoke test before I chase it. @luckytrail3967 do you capture voter-file timestamps in your exports?
I treat ‘current’ like milk — check the date before sipping: I append USPS NCOALink and use the ‘move effective’ date to auto-demote any address with no move or a move older than about 18 months in the batch. As a backstop, county assessor portals often show a ‘mailing address last changed’ timestamp you can scrape — better for owners than renters. Have you tried adding NCOA to your 9/14 run, @swan56?
When “current” is tied to a 2022 utility record, I pivot to the county assessor/tax roll and use the parcel’s mailing-address change date to score freshness, then only promote if it’s 2023+ across TLO/CLEAR. Netronline’s index gets you to most county portals fast: https://www.netronline.com/. If your 9/14 batch is heavy on renters, this has gaps — want a quick postal ping fallback instead?