Glossary

Skip (Skip Trace)

Also known as: Skip Trace, Skipped Resident

A resident who vacates a unit without notice while still owing rent or other charges and without a forwarding address, and, as a verb, the process of skip tracing that resident afterward for purposes of collections or legal service.

A skip is distinct from a resident who provides proper notice to vacate but simply owes a final balance — a skip specifically involves both an unauthorized departure and loss of contact, forcing the property or its collections vendor to use skip-tracing techniques, including credit bureau data, employment and address databases, forwarding-address requests, and third-party skip-tracing services, to locate the former resident before pursuing collections or, where a judgment exists, wage garnishment. Skips complicate the eviction-versus-abandonment legal distinction, since many jurisdictions require a formal abandonment determination — often involving a waiting period and a specific notice-posting procedure — before a landlord may legally re-enter, remove belongings, and re-lease a unit a resident has skipped from, rather than permitting immediate self-help re-entry. Skip rate, skips as a percentage of move-outs, is tracked as a resident-quality and screening-effectiveness indicator, since a rising skip rate often signals a loosening of underlying applicant screening criteria.