A state agency published the exact dollar line where its automation stops. The line is $500.

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.

1. Buy registrations, not tools

   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 @ ~$100

2. Let the fee statute choose the states

   North 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.

3. Work only inside the window the law left open

   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 face

4. Price the month, not the claim

   Five 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%) = $5,000

5. Sell the research, because the matching is gone

   Money 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.

6. Build the pipeline two years before it pays

   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.

7. Watch the takings line, not the balance

   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 surplus