Primary sources. Published arithmetic. No courses.
Pattern break · Edition 002
Pennsylvania Treasury's Money Match mailed more than 100,000 checks worth nearly $23 million in March with no claim filed and no search performed — but only for property "valued at up to $500 belonging to a single owner." Anything above $500, with multiple owners, or with "other complexities" still requires a claim and documentation from a human being. Treasury did not describe a feature. It drew the boundary of the remaining manual market, in dollars, and put it on its own website.
The consensus trade on this money is the post-Tyler surplus-recovery boom: find the foreclosure overage list, chase the former owner, take a thirty-percent contingency, sell the course. On 23 June 2026 the Supreme Court took the upside out of that trade 8–1. What is left is the part nobody wants, and the reason nobody wants it is that the legislature already capped what it pays.
That cap is the whole opportunity. North Carolina registers a property finder for $100 and caps the fee at 20% or $1,000, whichever is less. A market whose revenue per transaction is fixed by statute at $1,000, with a mandatory 24-month wait before you may even sign a client, cannot carry an ad budget, a sales team or a venture return. It can carry exactly one person. Most operators read a fee cap as a reason to leave. It is the only barrier to entry available for $100.
Michael Pung's estate owed $2,241.93 in property tax on a parcel assessed at $194,400. Isabella County, Michigan auctioned it for $76,008; the buyer resold it eighteen months later for $195,000. Pung recovered the $73,766.07 surplus and the Court, 8–1 per Justice Alito, held that is all he was owed: the just-compensation baseline is "the price obtained in a tax sale," not hypothetical fair market value. Every contingency pitch built since Tyler (2023) on the ~$119,000 gap between auction and resale lost its legal theory in one afternoon.
Money Match sent out more than 100,000 checks totalling nearly $23 million, automatically. Treasury's own wording sets the limit: property "valued at up to $500 belonging to a single owner" goes back "without the need to search or file a claim," while anything larger, jointly owned, or complicated "still requires a claim to be filed along with the submission of required documentation." Pennsylvania also returned a record $334.1 million in 2025 and still holds more than $5 billion.
FY2026 was a near-record year: $40,168,816.26 paid out across 25,407 claims covering 95,760 properties. The database still lists more than $529 million — more than the program has returned in fifty-nine years of operation. NAUPA's own inaugural report gives the mechanism plainly: states "return roughly 50% as much as they take in." The backlog is not an execution failure. It is the design.
North Carolina's 2026 Property Finder packet (Treasurer Bradford B. Briner) charges a $100 registration, caps the fee at "20% or $1,000.00, whichever is less," and forbids a finder contract until the Treasurer has held the property 24 months. Illinois charges a $500 non-refundable application fee, a fidelity bond the Treasurer may set as high as $100,000, and caps compensation at 10%. Texas Tax Code § 34.04 is blunt: "A person who is not an attorney may not charge a fee to obtain excess proceeds for an owner," and an attorney may not exceed 25% or $1,000. Five-times spread in price, and one outright prohibition, across three state lines.
The North Carolina fee is min(20% × face, $1,000), so it stops growing the moment face value passes $5,000 — at $20,000 of face you still earn $1,000. Pennsylvania now mails anything under $500 back on its own. Between those two edges, a $2,500 claim pays $500 and a $5,000 claim pays $1,000. So $5,000/month is five claims at the cap or ten mid-band claims, and there is no arrangement in which one large recovery carries a month. Volume is the only lever the statute leaves open, which is also why the market stays unattractive to anyone who has to report growth.
Seven rungs from $500 to $5,000/month. Every rung is a reading task before it is a working task: in this route the statute, not the customer, sets the price.
The customer list is already public — every state publishes its unclaimed-property database free. So the $500 does not go to software, scraped leads or a data vendor. It buys three to five state finder registrations at roughly $100 each. You are paying for standing to be paid, which is the only thing in this market that is actually scarce.
$500 → ~3–5 state registrations @ ~$100North Carolina: $100, 20% or $1,000. Illinois: $500 plus a bond up to $100,000, capped at 10%. Texas: a non-attorney may not charge a fee at all. This is the single highest-leverage decision in the route and it is made by reading three PDFs, before any claim exists. Picking the wrong state is not a slow start; it is a business that cannot legally earn.
Below $500 of face value the state now mails it back by itself. Above $5,000 the fee goes flat. Everything outside that band is either automated away or unpaid labour, and the band is defined by two documents you did not write and cannot influence.
fee = min(0.20 × face, $1,000) → flat above $5,000 faceFive claims at the $1,000 cap, or ten claims at $2,500 of face, or any mix between. Because the cap forbids a big month, the forecast is unusually honest: the only question is how many qualifying files you can close, and that number is knowable by week three.
5 × $1,000 = $5,000 · 10 × ($2,500 × 20%) = $5,000Money Match already took the single-owner exact matches. What remains is what Treasury itself calls "multiple owners or other complexities" — dead owners, dissolved companies, changed names, heirs who never knew. Probate indexes, corporate dissolution filings and deed records are the actual product here. The claim form is clerical work that anyone can do; the chain of title is not.
North Carolina bars a finder contract until the Treasurer has held the property at least 24 months. Everything you identify this week is inventory dated 2028. That lag cannot be bought, accelerated or funded — which is precisely why the work survives contact with better-capitalised competitors.
Twice in three years the Supreme Court has redrawn the edge of this money: Tyler in 2023 opened it, Pung in June closed the speculative half. A route whose price is legislated is a route whose risk is legislative. Read the docket the way an operator reads churn, because the next opinion reprices your book before it reprices anyone's expectations.
$76,008 auction − $2,241.93 tax = $73,766.07 surplusPost-ready. Counts are computed live from the text and flag anything over 280.
Pennsylvania Treasury mailed 100,000+ checks worth nearly $23M this year with no claim filed and no search done. The cutoff: $500 per owner. Above that, a human still has to file. A state agency just published the exact edge of its own automation. 🧵
West Virginia's treasury returned $40,168,816.26 in FY2026 across 25,407 claims. It is still sitting on $529 million. Since the program opened in 1967 it has returned $388 million, total. The pile is bigger than 59 years of work.
Everyone reads a statutory fee cap as a reason to skip a market. North Carolina: $100 to register as a property finder, fee capped at 20% or $1,000, whichever is less. Nothing with legislated revenue per transaction can fund a sales team. The cap is the moat.
June 23, 2026. SCOTUS decides Pung v. Isabella County, 8-1. Pung owed $2,241.93. The county auctioned the property for $76,008. The buyer resold it for $195,000. Held: the baseline is the auction price, not market value. The surplus-recovery gold rush lost its theory.
So the $500 doesn't buy software or leads. The state publishes the list free. It buys 3-5 state finder registrations at ~$100 each. The only real decision is which states. Illinois: $500 fee, a bond, 10% cap. Texas: non-attorneys may not charge a fee at all.
The window is narrow and the law drew both edges. Under $500 of face value: the state mails it back itself. Over $5,000: the fee goes flat at $1,000. Target the middle. A $2,500 claim pays $500. $5,000/mo = 5 claims at the cap, or 10 mid-band. That's the P&L.
Last piece: NC bars a finder contract until the treasury has held the property 24 months. Everything you find this week is inventory dated 2028. That lag can't be bought, rushed or funded. Which is exactly why it stays yours.