Clients often say to Mr Tracer that they are surprised how efficiently he can find a missing person.

The fact is that most people in New Zealand are traceable, the key being where to start looking.

In this blog, he will talk to you about the basics and give you some ideas as to how to start the process.

Let’s  will start with a basic scenario and see where that takes us.

You had a close schoolboy friend in Masterton in the 1990’s and you would love to track him down and reconnect.

You know his name, the address where he lived at the time and his parents names but very little else.

Friends have told you that he might have attended university in Wellington and completed an engineering degree.

The key to finding him is establishing his full name and from there, you can look at other options to find him.

Electoral Rolls

Most public libraries have copies of historical Electoral Rolls and they are free to view.

Back in the day, students attending university often used their parents address when registering to vote.

In this case we will look in the 1990’s rolls for your friends parents full names and occupations.

You might be surprised to find that your friend is registered in the rolls to the same address and bingo, you have his full name.

If you have his full name then you can start checking the latest rolls looking for the same name.

Start in the Wellington Region and move out wider looking for his name, address and occupation.

Social Media

Facebook is a great place to start searching as well. You may well find your friend on FB and then be able to send him a message through Facebook Messenger.

Friends Sites

There are a number of sites on the Internet where you can put messages out seeking information about individuals. You will be surprised with the responses you get. You might ask about your friend and say that you both attended Masterton College in 1995 and someone could well come back to you with an answer.

Property Ownership

There are sites on the Internet where you can check for an individuals property ownership and thereby find a current address. This is something that you might be inclined to use a professional investigator for but individuals can do so if they subscribe to the right site. One example is www.terranet.co.nz  which details current and previous property ownership.

LinkedIn

This is a great site for finding friends/coworkers etc.

Check out this blog for more details

https://blog.linkedin.com/2015/03/04/search-for-coworkers

White Pages

The good old White pages is still a great source for finding people. If you know the region where the friend was last known to be living then check out the White Pages.
Ringing people in the same area  with the same surname might result in locating a brother, sister, uncle etc.

Summary

Obviously there are many informal ways of locating old friends.

You might know other people who were friends with them or their parents so try tracing them as well using Facebook etc.

When you finally contact Mr Tracer, you will not have located your friend but you will have collected lots of  information along the way.

Mr Tracer will take the information you have and continue with the search using his own resources including multiple private databases that he subscribes to using experience gained over decades.

Hopefully this basic information is a help to get you started in your search.

You can contact Mr Tracer through this webpage if you have further questions and he would be happy to assist.

At the end of the day, if finding your friend is important then paying the associated search cost would be of value to you.

Good luck, Mr Tracer.