Why RefundLocators exists.
County clerks across the United States are sitting on billions of dollarsin surplus funds owed to former homeowners. Most of those homeowners never learn the money exists. The companies built around finding them learned a long time ago that desperate, displaced people don't shop around.
How surplus funds work — in two paragraphs.
When a home is sold at sheriff's auction, the buyer pays cash. The county uses that money to pay off the mortgage debt, court costs, and any liens. Whatever's left over — the surplus — legally belongs to the former homeowner under Ohio Revised Code § 2329.44. Sometimes that's a few thousand dollars. Sometimes it's six figures.
The catch: nobody at the courthouse calls you. The money sits in the clerk's account waiting for you to file a motion. Most former owners never find out — they've moved, the paperwork is dense, and the system assumes you know the law. Five years later, the money escheats to the state.
The industry that exists today.
Before I built this, I spent months looking at every surplus recovery company I could find. The pattern was consistent enough to be a category:
- 30 to 40 percent fees were standard. Some shops charged more. Almost none disclosed the percentage on their website.
- The intake was a phone number. No address search, no way to know if you actually had a claim before you talked to a salesperson with an interest in pushing you to sign.
- The technology was Squarespace circa 2018. Nobody was using AI, nobody was personalizing anything, nobody was making the experience easy for a 65-year-old who lost their house.
- The trust signals were thin.Stock photos of gavels. Generic “attorney-led” claims with no name. No founder. No accountability.
- The cold outreach was bad. Spam-feel mailers, dead phone numbers, scripts read by call centers. The exact pattern an actual scam would use.
Most of these companies aren't scams. They're extractive businesses operating in a space where the customer has no leverage. The product is fine; the experience is built for the operator, not the homeowner.
What I built.
RefundLocators is built around the principle that the homeowner is the customer — not the lead. Five things make us different from the rest of the industry:
- Disclosed 25% fee, no add-ons.Not 30. Not 40. No “administrative fees,” no “filing fees,” no “case prep fees.” The fee is on the homepage, on this page, in the agreement, and in every quote. If we recover $0, you owe $0.
- A way to get your specific question answered instantly. Lauren has read every Ohio foreclosure case in the public record. She knows the Revised Code, every county's clerk procedure, and the common scenarios. You can ask her at 11pm when you're scared and Googling and get a straight, plain-English answer. Free, private, no signup. Every other shop in this category wants you on a sales call.
- An address search that actually returns a result. Type your former Ohio address; we tell you in ten seconds whether there's a case match and roughly how much surplus is involved. Every “eligibility tool” on a competitor's site is a disguised lead form that hands you to a sales agent. Ours actually checks the records.
- A licensed Ohio attorney files your claim.Not us — them. Their name and Ohio bar number go in the agreement before you sign. You can verify them at the Ohio Supreme Court's attorney registry while you read the contract.
- My direct cell is on every page. (513) 516-2306. Not a call center. Not an answering service. If you call during business hours and I'm free, I pick up. If I don't, I text back.
The math — a real Hamilton County example.
To make the fee structure concrete, here's how the numbers shake out for a typical Cincinnati-area foreclosure where a surplus exists:
Who I am.
I'm the founder. I run this company. My phone number is on this page because I believe the homeowners who lost properties to foreclosure deserve to talk to a person, not a call center. If you tap that number and I don't pick up, leave a voicemail or send a text — I'll get back to you the same day.
We're a young company. We don't have hundreds of testimonials yet. We don't need to. The math is the math, the attorney is real, the fee is fixed, and you can verify every claim on this page in a few minutes. That's the only trust signal that means anything in a space full of bad actors.