Bail Bonds

[Jon Liberatore]

Im just curious if anybody has marketed to Bail Bonds. If so how much business do you get?

 

[J Grant]

I never have, might be a good ave of marketing under served. Apply to a couple and see. The only experience I had was years ago as a trainee did one with mentors for a bail bonds. I remember the family bringing cash to office to pay and the fee was good...we had to go to court and sit there and answer 1 easy question from judge regarding competence. You will be dealing with people charged with serious crimes, I'd put a PO box on your address line of report.

 

[Thomas Fiehler]

I completed one a number of years ago for a neighbor (attorney's wife) who had a very good friend that was arrested out of state and needed an appraisal on the friend's parents house in Ohio. Ordered on Saturday and needed on Monday-charged accordingly and never heard back.

 

[Walter Kirk]

I was called on a few years ago by an Attorney to appraise three properties to be posted as bail. After dropping everything and rushing out to inspect the properties I found that one of the houses was a total wreck, uninhabitable. One had just been forclosed upon and one didn't belong to the the person who was posting the bond. Needless to say I didn't make any money.

 

[Renee Healion]

You can find bail bond companies easily by their advertising which is hard to miss. Some police departments have a list in the lobby or at least on hand. Most of their bonds are written for state cases and they use appraisals.

For federal bail bonds, the collateral is pledged directly to the court. There is a bail hearing before a judge.

In my experience, the federal court-appointed defense attorney requested my services. As I understand it, there are bail bond companies who do prepare bonds for federal court but there are fewer of them compared to state bondsmen.

 

[Nancy Heiss]

I've got a friend who owns a bails bond company. I approached him a few years ago about doing appraisals. They typically do not want to pay for an appraisal and use a database to determine what value might be.

 

[Jon Liberatore]

I figured they probably use websites like zillow or another automated valuation site

 

[bryanknowlton]

I used to do a ton of bail bond appraisals and even created a tutorial on how to do a postcard mailing to market your services to them. They pay really well because you can usually triple your fees for same day rush services.

I was by the courthouse a couple weeks back and decided to pass out some of my postcard / brochures. Seems like most of the offices were just there to have their phone number advertised in big letters across from the courthouse as there was nobody in their offices and the doors were locked.

Back to doing mailings to them from now on!

 

[Mile High Trout]

They have many a substitute value service available. They're unrestrained for the most part, regarding value advice. Typically a bondsman lends his own money.

I like the idea of approaching this line of work, offering desktop services, with various ranges of value based on quality. Then the bondsman can inspect himself, or make basic quizzes to his client who's requesting the service, essentially.

Crappy X-y. Avg y-z. Nice improved z+

Never pursued it though, because I'm too lazy to get a po box number.

Got to want a po box number, for that specific line of work.

 

[bryanknowlton]

Most of my bail bond work has come directly from my brochures or postcards mailed or left in the bail bond offices. The bail bond companies will tell their clients they need to get a full appraisal. Other times people found me by looking for an appraiser in their area using a search engine.