@PropertyFilter Is CHANGING How Property Investors BUY HOUSES | BIG Property Podcast Ep 26 |

Most people actually just spend their time scrolling through the likes of rightmove and then they say, oh, nothing sucks, there's no deals out there. And then they just not achieve anything because they stay in this place here you want to look for people rather than properties. It's an investment. You're not going to live in it completely detached. And it's a whole different way of looking at things and thinking about it. So before property I used to build bridges. So some world record bridges around the world. I moved countries, I moved to eight different countries. I moved home 14 times in my tenure career before proper traveler. Yeah, yeah. The rate is not as sexy as it sounds. You know, it looks great at the beginning, but the truth is you're working 15 hour days.

Guillermo. The last four years you've been burying away like a mad scientist building, building this tool to find property deals. Property deals seems to be the, the bane of most property investors in terms of the biggest challenge for them. So what created this? How did it come about?

Yeah, so we build it for ourselves really as we, as we started out there was, you know, I spent the first 18 months really when you start out in property, achieving nothing, you know like analysis paralysis, procrastinating, not really knowing what to do. And then there was a true before and after for us. And then fast Forward the following 18 months basically got me out of my job. You know, like all about finding motivated sellers, going straight to the deals and yeah, the rest is history really.

Yeah. So really it's about the procrastination is there's a potential opportunity, but we start over analyzing it, we reanalyze it. We kind of almost talk ourselves out of a deal sometimes the indecision. So how by following the path that you have, has that led to a different outcome?

Yeah. So basically most people out there will be randomly booking viewings based on the pictures, the layout, only to find themselves queuing at viewings and then the vendor is not motivated and then someone paid more for it and we're just wasting our time going around the property viewing treadmill like this. And that's for the people who view properties. Most people actually just spend their time scrolling through the likes of rightmove and then they say oh nothing stacks, there's no dealers out there. And then they just not achieve anything because they stay in this place here. And we kind of studied success at the time when we were starting. We're just meeting quite a few people yourself, people in your network who introduced us as well and just studied success. And it's really a case that property is a people business and it's a numbers game. And we realize, okay, we want to buy from motivated sellers and then it's just we want to be less emotionally attached to this one deal and then try to make this one work. And then you tweak it, you stack it left, right and center, it doesn't work. And so you want to look at an abundance of deals and then it's a numbers game. So the old blueprint, if I were to summarize it in a sentence, is you want to go straight to the motivated sellers, then value your time, focus on these, and then it's a numbers game. So it's where you value your time, where every viewing you do, you put an offer in and then you never miss a follow up. And this is in contrast to all your competition right now, which is doing the opposite, like randomly viewing properties based on the pictures, the layout, wasting their time and therefore not putting offers in. And then on the ones that put offers, they never follow up, basically. So this is all you just go to the top 1% of property professionals out there.

Yeah, I guess the thing that you're referring to that many people end up doing is they go and look at something that looks interesting. They think, oh, I could probably turn this into, you know, a hmo. I could run it as essay, I could flip it on or whatever it might be, whatever they're thinking and they're thinking about what suits them, what is it that they want. Whereas really when we talk about finding a deal and finding an opportunity, it's that you're, you're making money on day one, maybe you're buying it for less than what it's worth, for example. And as you touched on, that's really by working with sellers that are multi page that are keen to sell and by focusing on that category of people, we increase the chances of success. So you recognize that that's the approach that needs to happen rather than trying to make the deal fit.

Yeah, that's right. So you want to look for people rather than properties. It's an investment, you're not going to live in it, so it doesn't really matter is it pretty, do you love it or not? And it takes a learning for people starting out because we are used, we look at properties for ourselves, you know, initially and then you want to completely detach and it's a whole different way of looking at things and thinking about it. So you want to look for the people that are a bit, you know, struggling to sell or they've got a bit of a history. What's the, what's the story? Yeah, and then you want to help them and then, then you want to find a solution for them that works for you, that works for the universe. You know, that's really. And that's how you carry, you know, momentum across, you know.

Yes, because when, when we're dealing with people that are motivated, ultimately they're going to be more flexible around the price and around the terms of how we structure the deal and that's really what we want, that's what we're looking for. But by just randomly scrolling for stuff on the screen, we don't know that that's the case. That, that's. That there is some motivation there.

Yeah, you don't know until you booked. Yeah, you don't know until you drove around and wasted your whole afternoon all day and then you're just back at square one, you know, so, so definitely that was my story at the, at the beginning when I started in the uk. Property investing in the uk. So you just randomly book viewings and then you just waste your time and then if you're lucky, sometimes there's someone where there's a bit of a story. We want to get rid of all this noise and go straight to the ones where there's a bit of a story and we want to go straight to them basically.

So give us a little bit of background in terms of how the journey began. Because you mentioned you've not been in the UK all that long, you're doing a busy full time job and you're trying to fit property in there as well.

Yeah, that's right. So before property I used to build bridges, so some world record bridges around the world. So I moved countries, I moved to eight different countries. I moved home 14 times in my tenure career before proper traveler. Yeah, yeah. The rate is not as sexy as it sounds. You know, it looks great at the beginning but the truth is you're working 15 hour days. 15 hour, you know, 15 days in a row and you just expected, you know, to, to do quite a bit and. Which is fine and fun at the beginning, you know, but the novelty fades away. And so this allowed me, you know, as an expat to, to start to do property. So I've been doing some stuff in France since 2012. Never made any money on it. Did some bond conversions, flats and stuff like that. But the truth is only when I realized, when I came to the uk, okay, this is, this is gold, you know, like interest only mortgages you can refinance, you can use the same capital on multiple deals. You know, like this is, this is.

Because we're quite unique in this country in that sense that the conditions are ideal to be able to, to build a business around property, to be able to profit from property, whether you're keeping, selling, developing, whatever it might be.

Yeah, basically in France you're stuck in a job and we make you even stucker, you know, in job because you want, you need to subsidize your property investment by getting increase in salary if you like because you can't draw profits because it's all repayment mortgages and you can't add value. Refinance. You can buy back a loan from one lender to another, but you can't raise more capital basically. So the wire kind of touched when I came here 2016. So not immediately but it took me a couple of. You study, you plot around these things and then I decided to start in 2018 and as I say it took me quite a while to get it to work because as you know I was still working full time, 67 hour week for somebody else and it didn't matter how much of a network I was building around myself, the education and knowledge I was quite who I was getting. And then you just scroll through rightmove in the really early hours of the mornings, you book the viewings during the lunch breaks and then you stack them on the weekends. And because like most people you randomly book viewings based on the pictures and the layout. You just, you just find, you know like you just waste your time week after week. I was just delaying by week, you know, my progress because I couldn't find these motivated sellers. So and so we create created props filter for, for ourselves and at the time it was, you know, it didn't have a name or a brand, it was less software, you know, it was pretty and you were in the early, you know, we, we kind of built it around as we started, you know, we. To work with the, with yourself and the inner circle. So. So you know about it since right the outset it was clunky, it was ugly. Only basically me and the team could use it.

But it was designed to extract certain data for you. That's what you were looking for. And it was doing that a bit clunky but it was doing the job.

Yeah, it was all about qualifying the viewings. So if you think saj, what would make a vendor motivated? What would you say?

Yeah, so things like it's been on the market for a long time. They're not getting the offers, for example, or they may be in debt, for example. Properties in negative equity, you know, divorces. Indications that we see is like, you know, multiple boards, agents selling one property. Those kind of things will lead us to a clue that there might be some motivation there for that seller.

Yeah, absolutely. So basically that's what we created. So we wanted to, we basically we wouldn't go and view a property if the sale didn't fall through before, as well as being reduced.

Yeah.

And then we looked at, we bought on other things, you know, like when it was listed with multiple agents or for sale, as well as to rent or an agent lost the instruction and a new one was instructed, you know, all sorts of things like that.

So just to pick up on what you've just said there, initially what you were looking for is right, what was previously listed for sale and was sold. But then as the, for whatever reason, the sales fall out of bed, it's become available again. Maybe the price has also been reduced. So that gives you a high degree of confidence that this seller is very likely to be motivated. So your time becomes much more efficient by talking to somebody like that than just going. Viewing 10 houses, most people out there.

Will have time to view 5, 10 properties a week or 5, 10 conversations with agents and vendors. So if you're going to have five or 10 conversations, you might as well have them with people who start to have a bit of a story about their struggle to sell. And this is in a context where most investors out there have become addicted to their right move alerts. And so you react to properties that are newly arrived on the market. But if you're looking for motivated sellers, that's probably the opposite if you look at the vendor's journey. So they'll be, if someone decides to sell their house, they'll be going on the likes of Zoopla asking for a valuation. And then these platforms are actually lead magnet for the agents.

Yes.

So then they get three to five agents to come and outbid each other, you know, to get the business and say, oh wow, you know, we bought this Property in the 90s for 40K and now, now they all want to sell it for more than 350k. And I'm like this incredible. You know, they can't even believe it.

Yeah.

And then because everybody's addicted to their right movie, then everybody's emails goes ding, ding, ding when it comes on the market. And then they get 20 people view the proxy on day one. So the expectation is right up here and Then it's kind of confirmed by the traffic of people who come. So if you're looking for motivated sellers.

That'S the wrong place to start. And that works very well for estate agents. It works well for the sellers, but it doesn't work for us as investors looking to buy property or looking for a bit of a deal or an opportunity that we can add value and maybe make some money from that property as well. As you said, what's happened is the agent has just listed that property. The seller's excitement is up here, the expectations are up here. So if we turn up and it's up for 1, 000, we said, we'll give you 70 grand for it. You get slapped in the face.

Yeah.

And then we surprised. Why has that happened?

Yeah, that's right. And Most, you know, 90% of what's on the market is a waste of time for us, you know, so. But yet you hear case studies of people doing deals all the time, you know, like, oh, this was on right move on the open market. Nobody saw it, you know, so some people get lucky and some people create luck, you know, and so this is all about creating luck and going straight to these and filtering out all the noise around, basically. So with this in mind, you really want to observe the mass and do the opposite. And then what happens with those properties where the vendor time, the media, the context, is going to be your best ally in negotiation. So this property is the best property in the eye of the vendor. They have their kids, birthdays, memories, they have festivals and Christmas memories and all this.

They're really mostly invested in that property.

The best house in the world. And then it's confirmed by the agents pitching it high and then traffic on day one. But then over time, with low interest, low offers or something coming in the way, like the sale falling through, it becomes a lot more transactional and a lot less emotional, basically. So this is where we can come and help. We are in a business of creating value, adding value with property and, you know, the thing you make money when you buy kind of thing. So the truth is, if these properties struggle to sell because it's just the price is not right or there's a problem to it that the mass market can solve. So this is where we come and we can solve this problem. And by solving problem, we can add value. So it's really focusing our time energy to those properties where the vendor might have a bit of a story or the property has got a bit of a problem, we can solve and create value for everybody.

So initially when you were working on this, we were working together, Inner circle, which is the mentoring group. We were there, you know, from engineer mindset, you were thinking, how can I make a more efficient method of finding the deals I'm looking for? You created this clunky tool that started to bring some deals to you. How did it then transition from that to what it is now known as Property filter?

Yeah, so it's really been by accident. So I mean like accidental entrepreneurs, you know. So if you imagine, you know, it takes a big step from a French raised, you know, Engineer working for 10 years for the same company to then transition into like property, never mind, you know, like technology, you know, tech startup and stuff like that. So, and we've learned on the way, you know, and, and we're always very mindful of taking small steps, you know, and learn on the way. So we didn't want to be the, the fastest to go up and down, you know, and we wanted to, we want to win. You know, at the end we realized this game is. There's no, there's no end. You know, it's build or die, you know, so we want to make. It's either you're the best or you're, you're one of those that fails, you know, that's, you know, everybody knows Amazon, but when Amazon came out there were hundreds of others, you know, like so basically, so it's just understanding the game, what industry you are in. And we had conversations in a way because, oh, we just want to have it as a lifestyle. Nothing, just want 200 sort of members, you know, it's kicking on the back and then we can do our property stuff, you know.

Yeah.

And it's. So then we realized, okay, so how many kites do you want to fly in the garden? You know, it's like do you want to launch a rocket into space or you know, fly a few kites in the garden? So we had to, we had to, we had, yeah, we had to change and focus everything on it if we wanted to make it work. So, so it started a bit by accident because it was, we were showing it to. So we attracted some attention basically because all of a sudden we were getting some traction and results, you know, in propsy. And then people started to ask questions and people would come and meet us in the flat, you know, meet Florian, say, oh, I'll show you around how it works. And then we started to get feedback. We gave it to friends, people in our networks and then friends of friends. And then it just grew organically like this from people talking to each other and referring it. And then we thought we started to see that, okay, so actually we can use this for ourselves basically to let's say make a million pound in property. But we will be capped at what we can do and then we realize that we could impact a thousand people, make a million pound. So all of a sudden we don't have a million pound impact, we have a billion pound in the asset. And these are not the real numbers.

But yeah, I guess the point you're making is you could just use the tool to be able to just go and extract some deals for yourself and that's it. But actually as you could see the benefit from other people benefiting from it, it's case, well actually you could achieve a lot more by opening up to other people as well, allowing them access to it.

And it's been super, super rewarding so far. I've been sort of running commercially if you like for a bit more than a year now and get people up and on the country calling us, you know, every week, every week, if not every day, you know, like say, oh, I found yet another deal, you know. Yeah, it's really, it's really, yeah, been really super rewarding.

So the, the kind of four year journeys, initially it was a case of trying to just put something together to, to try and extract some data for you to use. You mentioned Florin earlier, your, your business partner and then from there it was a case of sharing it with a few other people. The people within inner circle were using it and kind of a being a guinea pigs with it. And then from there it's kind of molded to more, would you say a beta phase.

Yeah. So if we think year by year. So 2019 was our year where we, we sort of use it only for us. 2020 we started to share it with other people.

Yeah.

And then we realized at that time that this could have a bigger impact than ourselves. If you think 20 can't remember which year we are now, but 2022 was really a year where we did, we grew in beta. So we had like 250 sort of customers basically based on the, you know, like referral. They had like an early membership kind of deal and it was all beta and learning. So during that year I had more like more than 400 one to one conversations. So I had, I knew all our members and we learned a lot. So we know exactly what we needed to build to help people get results basically. So it was all about really understanding. So we have our own experience but it was being open and humble. If you like to listen to what everybody else needs and then build this thing, which is really about getting the results, really about finding deals, which really informed our roadmap last year. And then this year we are now pushing it, pushing it a lot more.

So now it's becoming more talked about, more people using it. So talk us, talk to us about what it currently looks like, what is the product right now because we haven't really explained what it is in its current form right now.

Yeah, so it's just taking the principles of what makes success in property all about finding deals. So if you think so. Yeah, if you think of. All right, move, work. Right, move works right now. So you're scrolling through pages and pages of properties. Tomorrow you scroll through pages and pages again. You know, there's no end to the list. You stay at the surface of things and there's no start, there's no end to it. So we've built, in contrast with this, we've built things in a really as a blueprint. So it's all about finding motivated sellers where you sit and forget your criteria, you go straight to the motivated sellers and then you clear your inbox of deals. So the machines bring you deals that match your criteria on a daily basis. You take a decision on every lead. Hell yes, I want to save this and I'm going to work on this or I never want to see this again. So it's kind of a methodology to clear the noise, go straight to the red hot leads if you like and then you've got a framework basically to convert all these good leads into great deals along the property pipeline and it makes things very predictable. So all these things about finding motivated sellers being a numbers game. You can go straight to the good leads, the good deals and then you've got a step by step kind of framework where you convert them into deals when it's quite, it makes things very predictable in the end.

So initially the criteria set by the user in terms of what it is that they're looking for, then effectively the system is scanning the market to see what's on the market at the moment and bring in to you things that match that criteria, but also helping you show you where the motivation may be, what things may be leading to motivation, that's kind of initially what it wasn't. Then you built more and more data.

Yeah, that's right. So it works for and off market deals. So you know, the truth is everybody wants direct to run the deals.

Yes.

But the truth is a Lot of the, the marketing we do is direct to owner. So if we look at the maths, you know, and there's 33 million properties in the country. Yeah, 1 million change ends every year. Out of this 1 million, 23% or 230,000 are suitable investment properties. So if I now divide 230,000 by 33 million. You follow me, Sahaja? So that's 0.7%. So if you think of a battleship sort of game, if you want to aim for the motivated sellers or the sellers alone, basically the math skewer, you've got 0.7% chance of finding someone that might be looking into selling their property in the next 12 months. And most of them will not be motivated. So there was a lot about this direct to Vander, you know that it's kind of the contrarian truth behind Property Filter is like, okay, everybody wants this, but the truth is what we are doing now, we're going to struggle if we don't do something clever about it. And the truth is, yeah, all different channels work. We can go. If you and I were to team up and start to send leaflets every two weeks to every 33 million properties, I guarantee you we'll find some deals.

I'm happy to do as long as you fund it.

At what cost? I would cost. So it's like, okay, how can we be more strategic than this? So it's why we use on and off market sort of insights and information to find direct to vendor or the vendors that are on the market that are motivated.

So just to be clear, you're not just looking at what's on rightmove. You've got multiple databases you're tapping into to pull data together and reference points to be able to kind of pinpoint where the opportunities are.

Yeah. So it's not just, it's not just like a filtering service for. Right Move, you know.

Yeah.

So basically we match and merge hundreds of data sources, millions of data points. Some of them are on market sources. So it's the equivalent of having rightmove Zoopla on the market or in one place. But then there's quite a few other databases that we cross check and we built into it. So it's why. It's how we find the full address of properties. It's how we find all these things we talked about, about the motivation of vendors and all these things that just are a lot of admin that people have to do when they do due diligence and things like that. So if it's owned by a company. There'll be a link to the company's house if it's got a lease. So we'll tell you the lease length of the property. And this is not just based on keywords, what the agent says. This is based on a proprietary database we built of all the lease lengths in the country. There's quite a lot automation. We use AI and there's quite a lot of things that go into it. And then like this, you find the on market motivated sellers, but also you can pull out a lot of directive on the opportunities as well.

Yes. So the system is, I guess this is not very visual. I'm trying to kind of explain. We've integrated into our trainings because we massively see the benefit of it hugely saves time in terms of much more time efficient in a way of finding deals. But the research and the due diligence part, more and more that is becoming built into filter. So we don't identify the property then go off somewhere to do the research. More and more of it is just presented straight with that property.

Yeah. So we're adding to it all the time. So initially it was built to find, go straight to the motivated sellers and then have a framework basically to convert this motivated seller lead into a deal. That was the initial sort of idea and we're building to it all the time. So when you sign up for propsfilter, you don't get a CD and that's it.

You mean you don't send a cd?

Most definitely. We can, I can send you a T shirt maybe or something. But so we're adding to it all the time and people are amazed and impressed by the velocity of the tool. So because we've been growing quite fast since the beginning of this year, every penny we make, we reinvest. So every tier, more members comes, okay, I can get another developer. And it's all about adding to the service, adding to the platform. So one of the aspects is some analytics bits to help you with picking your area and, and doing your due diligence, but built in a way that is not where you don't procrastinate. It's just built about the results with the results in mind, which is very disruptive compared to other tools you have out there because the data is easy. So a lot of people say, oh, you've got some competitors and things like that. We can talk about this later if you like. But the reality is the data part is easy. So everybody can pile lots of data somewhere, but then where people come to us is because they get the it's put in a way where it gets them results. It's all about the next step, next step about getting the results. So it's the old blueprint that surrounds it that makes it incredible for people.

Take the procrastination away, which is the thing we started at the beginning, which is what many people get stuck with. They're not really sure what to do. Do I move forward with this? Do I not move forward with this? It's simplifying that process.

I could sit here and be the data guy. I could say, look, we've built the biggest and most comprehensive database in the uk. Like take data driven decisions. The data doesn't lie, but it's not how it works. Property is a people business. So it's a people business because all the actors in the industry, they are irrational. So the vendors, the buyers, it doesn't make sense what people do. So if all the deals I bought, all the deals we did with Property Filter, there are anomalies in the data. So the data will give you average performance of an area, but you want above performing assets. And the truth is the data won't tell you I want to invest in the all money out area or the 50% plus ARI area. So these are the kind of deals or investors people on the platform do. It's not data driven, it's because they go straight to the motivated sellers. They put the offers in, they move on to the next one. They do a number of these. It's a numbers game.

Yes.

And then at the end, on the other side, if they convert these good leads into great deals.

You know, when I first started, 16, 17 years ago, the old school way was we leafleted everything that we massively in campaigns, newspaper adverts, that was the main source of our leads. And as you said, it was like the 0.7% where the vast majority of people that saw those messages is irrelevant to them. We're trying to pinpoint the, the very, very few it was relevant to, to try and see if they would respond to that marketing. And it was tweaking the advert, tweaking the headline, just to try and get response. But now really there's so much data out there, there's so much noise and how. And as you mentioned, there's other tools that are in the marketplace as well. So how is it what Property Filter does is different to some of the other software tools that exist in the property space?

So I would say first about competition, I love it, I love competition because the first thing I need to explain to people is that time have changed and they need to subscribe to some form of a service to really help them go further, faster in property. And what the competition, the so called competition, if you like other people doing similar things in our space do, is they educate people that they need some kind of a service. And then when people are there, they tend to shop around.

Yeah.

And then they come to the best product, you know, so it works out quite well for us. But then how is it different? So we touched on that a little bit. It's really about being super focused on certain things and outcome focused. So where others if you like will say, okay, here are all the data of the world you want and you can't really do anything with it for us, it's all built in a methodology in a framework where it's all about, okay, next step we do this, next step we do that. And then you push your leads and your deals forward. And people don't realize sometimes the cost of a software can be irrelevant compared to what actually takes. So most people that are serious about property going for it, they'll need some form of a system or teams or something like that. People use virtual assistants and they have spreadsheets and trello boards and nobody's been successful in property just as a one scaled to a good life changing size. And I'm just talking moving full time into property from being in a job to moving full time in property just on their own and doing everything. So there's a cost basically to get success in property. And mainly it can be a staff, it can be teams and it's the time you spend not getting results as well.

You touched on something earlier as well. When people start sometimes they'll find one potential opportunity and they get all emotionally involved in that and they try and force the deal to fit and it doesn't quite work. And they think, well actually maybe if I get a bit more rent than the market rent or maybe I'll be able to do this refurb a little bit less than everybody else says it's going to cost and I'll be able to get the deal to work. And that deal eventually doesn't work and they've spent months on it and then they feel really deflated because there's nothing else in the pipeline. And this is really helping build that pipeline. And having a number of deals, which is which I think as we talked about before is property is a numbers business. It's people, the numbers. Yeah. It's a relationships and it's having a number of deals flowing along like on a conveyor belt, then you, you don't get mostly involved. You pick out the ones that are right for you and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work and have a great follow up sequence.

And it's a bit uncomfortable for people because. So we put people on the spot. When you come and join Props Filter, so most people out there, most investors out there, they spend most of their time in the admin scrolling through the portals, telling a bit of a lie to themselves that there's no deals out there, nothing stacks, look, I'm spending three hours on rightmove every day. And they spend a lot of time doing these things that don't make money in property. And then a little bit of the time on the, on the viewings, on building the relationship with the vendors, the agents, the rapport, putting the offers, negotiating, follow up. This is what makes money in property, but yet it's the minority of people's focus in the main. And so when you join Property Filter, basically all of this admin lead generation, all these things are automated. So you're ready to make a phone call right now to go and view a property. So it puts people on the spot because it's what we realized and it was a bit surprising. People were quite comfortable in this thing where, you know, they sort of say, oh, there's no deals out there, you know.

Yeah.

And I'm quite comfortable not, not making phone calls and things like that. So a lot of the time people, when people tell me, fools, they're busy.

But they're actually, they're not achieving anything but because they're not really doing the right things.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. When people tell me, oh, there's no deal out there, so how many viewings have you done? Yeah, and then, and then, and then the truth appears, you know, say, all right, so you've not put any offers, so you've not spoke. So the truth is you want to be out there. Nobody wins the lottery without buying a ticket. And I can improve the odds of you winning your form of property lottery by giving you this golden ticket if you like. Yes, it's really.

So we touched on also we've been integrating this into our programs, our training and our mentorship as well. And how do you think the property training, mentoring, coaching space is evolving with the level of data that's now available and technology?

Yes, I think we are on a mission with Propsfilter to help empower people excel at finding deals. And you were the first one of the. And really the first to start to integrate into your education. And there really is going to be like a before and after, if you like. So the educators that embrace this and the ones who don't, and we can see this now as more and more we work with more and more education companies that it's really changing the way people learn about property. Because if you think about it, the way courses are run, so people go on a webinar, then they sign up to like a three day course or something like that, they get overwhelmed over three days. There's a lot of information. So it's a lot of the information and knowledge. And then comes Monday, the end of the three day event and everybody goes home a bit, a bit overwhelmed. It's really hard to get some traction and get started. So in contrast, what's starting to happen with property filter is that the educators who understand this will get property filter for their members before the three day course and people come to the course with Reddit leads and then it's no longer about information because information is everywhere on YouTube, people subscribe to your channel, they have everything they need basically in terms of knowledge in property, so they can come to a course for education. Sorry for execution. And it puts educators on the spot because some of them are great at sharing knowledge and stuff in theory. But I know for a fact working with you and doing all the role plays around raising finance, all the role play around speaking with vendors, negotiating with agents, and we've had phone calls in your courses where the deals were happening in the room. So it works really well where the educators embrace this and it puts them on the spot because they need to do all these live demonstrations and stuff on the courses and we get more and more people coming to us and there's starting to be a cleavage between the knowledge industry, if you like, and the execution industry within the property educators.

Yeah, I think also there's been a huge shift in the way training is working, should be, should happen. Years ago it was really about a lack of knowledge. So again, referring back to when I first started, it was a case of we didn't know how certain things work. There was no YouTube channels and there are a few books and a few network meetings across the country. That was it. So it was, the drive was for we need to learn how to. But actually now there's no shortage of knowledge. There's a huge amount of information out there. Yeah, it is. It's almost information overload that it needs to be really filtered out to, to the bit that's relevant to that person. But the most important thing is doing something with that information. So the. I agree the trainer's role should be helping skilling up in implementing the knowledge, not just teaching the knowledge.

Yeah, absolutely. So and we see this happening now and it's, you know, again it's a, it's part of the mission and the vision is like, okay, we want to get people, help people get more successful in property. And we see that the side effect of this has been the change in the education company. So we'll see how far this will go. But this is a big area of focus for us, putting you guys on the spot.

Guillermo, I'm guessing this tool is not really going to be for everybody. For all property investors, who is it for, would you say?

So really it's for property investors that are going for it. So if you are starting out getting educated and you want to change your life basically with property, so you can't afford not to have this. It's great for scale ups as well. So if you are establishing properties you already and you want to grow. So it's a tool that will put money in your pocket right away because it will save on your team if you've got VAs and things like that. So like a direct cost immediately, it works for you. And then you actually get, you get deals super quick with this as well as a side sort of segment will be for deal sourcers. So sourcing agents, people, we do volumes of deals and I would say for people starting out. So a lot of people come to us and ask us, oh, you know, I don't really have money in property. What do you reckon I should do? Like rent to rent or deal sources. It's what deal sourcing is what I've been advised. And I'd say if you start out in, in property, you probably want to learn a skill. And I've got nothing against rent to rent. But I feel like the, if you think the, the good times of rent to rent are a bit behind, you know, because the rent's gone up quite a lot, the utility has gone up quite a lot.

Those markets are peaked.

It's a big liability to take on. And also it's. You need a lot of business skills, you know, to make it work. You know, some education company might tell you, oh, you're two deals away from being at the beach, you know, but the reality is you create yourself another job. So it works if you can scale it, you know, like 40 units, 50 units, you know, 200 units as a, as a business. But Then you know, it's, there's quite a big entrepreneurial and you know, business skills you need to learn, you know, from, from it at that stage. So it's not really, I would never recommend someone to get into rent to rent right now. But sourcing on the other hand, you know, like the market is making the right noise, you know, like property price falling down, you know, and this and that. So there's more and more motivated sellers.

Yeah.

And then it's a skill. So if, if you think the, the main purpose of Property filter so it's to get you to the agent's little black book. So basically we've learned, we've studied success in property as we said earlier. And outside of a few, if you like, like buy my house for cash, unicorns websites, you know, pay per click sort of big websites out there that I've got huge, you know, like property trading companies and things like that that got huge overheads, you know, huge cost is a big buyer to entry because you can say, oh, you just set up a website and then motivated sellers will come. But the truth is this website that works really well, they spend 50 grand a month on paid per click and traffic and SEO and all of that. So this works, but it's out of reach for most people. And then of all those people that are successful in property, what we've seen is that they've made it when the agents start to call them with deals all the time. So with Property filter we want to make, to help you make it to the agent's little black book as soon as possible and then you graduate basically you don't need, you know, you don't need, you know, you've made it, you know, so in a way. And then you've got it's deals on tap, you know, like you are known for solving problems in such and such postcodes. You've built relationships with 1, 2, 3 different agents and they bring you deals all the time. You know, basically people calling you to get deals so you can, as Roger Hamilton say, you can go and dig a hole in the desert if you like. You know, if you're looking for water, you can dig a hole in the desert and then maybe you'll find, you create your own stream, you'll find water somewhere. And that's if you want to go and compete with all the other agents, which is what those direct to Vander kind of websites do. And it's like I think there's 2,000 agents in Birmingham alone. Some of them have been established for 2030 years. So if you're starting out and say I'm going to set up a website and attract people's instruction to sell their house and stuff, it's quite.

Yeah, you're competing with all those agents.

It's not impossible, but it's really, really hard. But if you think of. If you're looking for water, so why don't you use this river here that exists, this massive flow of deals here and you dig out your stream on the side. So by working with agents, it's what happens. And the truth is most 90% of the deals are there. They are for the residential markets, the agents, this is what they do. But then they've got. They'll have problem properties.

Yes.

And it's where they work with investors. And then we want to be known, you know, raise our profile to be the problem solver for any property problems, you know, in our area. And you do this by buying again and again, basically from agents. I went on a bit of a tangent on this because we're talking about the sources and building a skill. So if I were, you know, if I were to start right now, I would definitely get into sourcing because you can, because of the volume of deals you can do. So we have one guy on property filter. He found and sold 31 deals in 10 months. And it's just one of the many success stories we have. And the truth is he's now known by all the agents around there because when you start to buy three, four deals a month, you are the problem solver in your area.

And the data and the information he's got and what he's got access to is more often than what the agent is even awareness sometimes or the agent is even thinking about.

So like a simple scenario which is quite common on property filters. So because we match and merge different listings and historical listings as well. So you'll see one agent currently listing the property and then the sale falls through and they reduce the price or something like that. And before that there's another agent who lost the instruction. And sometimes there's like a row of four agents like this who have been.

Trying to sell it.

Have been trying to sell it. And that's the story of the first deal we bought with propsfeeter like some years ago. Now on the market for 250 listed with three different agents, some of them, you know, not anymore. Sell fallen through twice, reduced a couple of times as well. We bought it for 173, you know, and it's now worth, you know, 420 it was worth 420 a couple of years ago, so probably worth quite a bit more.

Yeah.

And it's all these, all these things you know, you can do by picking up and go straight to those motivated sellers and then, and sometimes with agents it's you come in with one property that gives you a bit of an edge because you talk about this property and this problem and so on. And I was like, all right, these guys are talking to me in a way that they seem quite professional and they know what they're talking about and they seem to be quite on point with things and all of a sudden they've got this off market thing that just came the next day and then you never know. So again about this thing, about you're.

Nurturing that relationship with the agent as.

Well and with sourcing because you're going to buy quite a volume of these, you build this skill and you build this relationship super fast. Because most people who buy for themselves will buy two deals a year average, let's say. And it's worth it. You've got your pipeline, you follow up on your deals all the time and then you just get the best deals basically on property filter like this. But it takes longer basically to build a relationship but with people starting out rather than be swimming against the tide of the agent. Sorry, we don't do corporate lets, you can just solve them property problems one after the other on the sourcing side.

Yeah. And I think it doesn't matter what strategy somebody chooses to follow and I completely agree that the rent to rent strategies, rent to hmo, rent serve accommodation are much, much more tougher now than they were years ago. When I first was teaching rent to rent. I think seven, eight years ago now. You know, when we'd ring the agent we'd kind of explain we're often a guaranteed rent and, and now if we did the same thing today, they'd say, oh, you mean rent to rent because the market's much more educated so it's much more tough. But doesn't matter what strategy you pick, the core skill that you need to master is your ability to be able to find deals, which is what sourcing is.

Yeah, it's. If you can't find deals and investor, it's a non startup, it doesn't matter.

What strategy you're doing. Yeah. So it's, it underlines any and every strategy that you might want to do. The ability to be able to go out, find deals, negotiate and build relationships with the agents, with the sellers as well.

And it's a really good point. This because it's why we've built, you know, props filter all about finding deals and then yes, we've got a roadmap with quite a few things that we're going to build, etc. And people ask us does it, does this, does it, does that, you know, and I say, yeah, it's in the roadmap or not quite yet or we're working on it or I didn't realize this was important. And people try to find like, oh well, you know, I wouldn't really want to commit to a tool that's going to help me find deals if it doesn't also has these bells and whistles that does this other thing. But it's like, okay, the number one problem you want to solve is you want to be getting deals, you know, and then a few other things, you know, you can do on the side. Or we'll add it, you know, because we're adding to it all the time.

You know, but yes, yeah, and you've got lots and lots of things you're adding into it constantly. It's not like the roadmap is in six months we'll add this other thing you're like constantly adding. Just in the last few months and even this week actually in the inner circle WhatsApp group you were testing some new things. So what sort of things are in the roadmap?

Yeah, so basically I think our big strength now is because we are really close to our community of members and I spent all of last year doing five to 10 one to one meetings with people asking them open ended questions, how do you do this, how do you do that? And then to really understand what is it that one needs to be successful in property and we've got a really, really strong understanding of what we need to build and what we've informed what we've built so far and we're adding to it all the time. So if we think of stages, so the first thing is really to nail all the motivation indicators, going straight to the motivated sellers and having the framework, this blueprint if you like, to convert all these good deals into great deals and then it was making the whole thing more efficient, more automated. So it's where we started to pick up the full address of properties. We started to cross check things with lease length of properties or is it in or out of Article 4 area. So we've digitalized all the Article 4 maps so you can look for existing HMOs inside an Article 4, find a four bed and add a couple of rooms. There's a precedent. You can add a lot of value in these areas. Or like some of the deals I bought they are like you know article 4s they have like a little kink sometimes. So they are like right on the edge, right at the edge. You know article one the garden is touching the article four aria and it's a seven day nature monast. So it's really been these things and now the next thing is so analytics. So it's helping with the problems people have before or after Property Filter what it was. So we are expanding on the analytics so people, people come to us where they are not so clear with the area and strategy which is a prerequisite to set your criteria and then the system just finds them and we are just building up on that side here. So we're building more analytics tools now. So I think in the last, very recently we had sort of last sold map. So if you're looking for comparables and all these things. So we put a lot into these, into these so that people can find the areas we want to invest in. And again it's relevant but it's not relevant, you know, it's not relevant because you want to buy from motivated sellers.

You're adding more features on just to make everything much more easier. The core fundamentals are there now you're adding more and more onto it just to make it even, even better. Like the comparable just doing it straight away from the page there rather than going away and trying to do it somewhere else.

And the big vision with it is props Filter is a place where all the deals are. So right now is where most of the deals are but we want to make it where all the deals are and so we want to integrate with other marketplace. So we've got people where investors and sourcers speak so maybe we can integrate with them and so bring getting these off market deals from sourcers. We want to do a big thing around direct to vendors. So today we give access to a lot of the off market facilities within property Filter but you just want to make it a lot easier. So if you want to send basically we want to be the click funnel for direct to vendor. So if you think of saj, have you ever thrown away some junk mail last week? Last week?

Yeah, very regularly.

Have you ever thrown away a parcel?

A parcel? No. Without opening it first?

Yeah. So it's looking at what works.

Yes.

And making it integrated with the platform. So we can send mail basically with that filter for on and off market deals. So if you look for the low EPC landlord owned properties. If you're looking for unbroken freehold, if you're looking for short listed properties that are people who bury their heads in the sand, we know from the data they've got a problem, but we can reach out to them and solve them with the right copy at the right time, et cetera. So it's this ability of sending letters and then letters that work. So it's not integrating with a third party junk mail sender kind of facility, but maybe have some form of our own facility where we can send things that work. So that's really where we want to take this. And it's really a bit of a, it's a journey. So we like to take our members with us. So people, we feed off people's feedback so people feel really involved and we've got really core members. They're just adding to it all the time by the way. They feed into the feedback. And I think we're the most customer centered software, if you like, in this field where we are really close to our members. You think of the support we put out for them. It's unheard of.

There's a lot of access to you generally the support team.

Absolutely. People can book a call with someone in your team every day. So you run like 10 calls a week. People can book every weekday and there's like two or more calls people can get into with our colleague, you know, head of customer success and just you can speak to someone, you know, in a video call every day. You get access to me every week, same thing on the call in between those sessions. You can always send, you've got a dedicated email. People, you know, we respond to them, you know, super quick and then we're just adding lots and lots to.

It's a huge amount more and more you're adding to it. As I said, the core fundamentals are there. It's doing a fantastic job as it is. It's now how do you make it even, even better?

And a lot of those support is actually reiterating this blueprint because people have to unlearn their ways where, okay, I've, you know, like, can I give this to my VA's? You know, it's all done, you know, like, you know, it's all done for you already, you know.

So yeah, explain what you mean by the blueprint.

Yeah, so the really, the high level is about going straight to the motivated sellers, focusing on the motivated sellers and then rewiring our brain where, you know, the competition is, you know, status quo. People Waste their time. Don't really view every, don't really put offers on every property. And the idea is to flip this on its head where you want to go. Yeah, we're going to go straight to the motivated sellers for every properties we want to go and view, we want to offer and then never miss a follow up. So that's really like the eye level kind of thing. And we get a lot of people come to us where they miss the scrolling, you know, like they miss the procrastinating, the procrastinating bits, you know, so it really puts them on the float. On the spot. Sorry. It puts them on the float. It puts them on the spot right away where they're ready to make the phone call, you know, so. And the blueprint works the action bit.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's all about the implementation and execution. It's why it's very unique. So people come to get results. So you could say, oh, I can do all of this myself. And we've had people say, oh, that's great, looks amazing. I'm going to try. I'm only buying one property this year, so I'm going to look for myself. And then they come back six months later in no better place. And then they start at that point using the blueprint and then they get the results very quickly. So, oh, what's the cost of you not getting a deal if roof or six months? So you can come follow the blueprint, get the results. So again, it's this idea of properties of people business. It's a numbers game. So it's people business, buy from motivated sellers. It's a numbers game. You want to be detached emotionally from the deals and then convert all these good leads into great deals. And a lot of the support we do is really about rate heriting these principles. And because it's the way we studied success and it's really the way this works.

Yes.

Yeah.

There's no secret behind success. It's a model that you follow. We've talked a lot about what the tool is, how we've created it, where it is now, where it's potentially going. I guess in a podcast we can't visually show it. I'm just thinking maybe over the next couple of weeks we can put together a live presentation on it and, and show viewers how it works.

Yeah, I think it's. Yeah, it would be quite, quite beneficial. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It's a bit harder on the podcast, kind of.

Yeah.

And it's like, you know, follow my.

Arms, you know, so we'll we'll put a link up once the editing of the podcast is done, we'll put a link in there and we'll put in the description afterwards as well. And the link will then set up a presentation that will sort out that.

Yeah, we can take people through things and then, you know, we work quite closely to each other so we can do like a special deal as well for people. And then it's not going to be, I don't imagine this being a sales thing because people can. The offer will be to try it out for free, you know. Yeah, I think so. We'll do something around this, you know, around the trial length or maybe like a special offer basically for you, Sergeant.

Okay, I appreciate that. And then I guess if people are watching this or listening to this after the presentation is done, we'll set the link up in such a way that they can still go and get the presentation and see it anyway. So the link still works after the live presentation anyway.

Yeah, let's do something.

So just before we finish, then, what would you say is maybe been your key learning in the last four years or so of being involved in a property. Well, even longer. Four years of property filter.

Yeah, so. So really it goes, it goes back to the blueprint, you know, so you can, you can waste a lot of time not achieving anything. You need to find what works, the methodology that works for you and then follow it. So biggest mistake. And everybody, a lot of everybody has to go through these mistakes before they realize, they realize that, you know, it's the, it's the cost of not getting results. You know, it's not, it's the actual cost of. The actual cost of finding deals. You know, if you think so what the worst thing people do is, is go on the likes of Rightmove Birmingham, 50 mile radius, sold by price, and then go and view the, you know, book viewings for the three cheapest property, the five cheapest property. And then as you're driving around, you realize, wow, they are the cheapest. And then you say, all right. And then most people have to waste this time. They have to have these experiences where they can't get traction for six months to really realize the stuff we're talking about today. And you want to find. And again, I refer to this as the blueprint, but you want to find a process, a methodology that works, that you can apply and implement and then follow it. So. So I guess my biggest learning from my own mistakes is you probably want to avoid all these things where you waste your time and money on Things on not getting results and see what works and go and apply it as soon as possible to front load your results and front load. The sooner you get a deal, the sooner it cash flows and the sooner it starts to the capital value works for you rather than against you. And it's all this cost. It's not waiting to buy property, it's buying property. The cost of not getting your deal done soon enough is huge actually because this compound effect that we benefit from property, it works for us when we own a property and against us when we don't.

Yes, absolutely.

So that's really, I guess my learning.

Guillermo, really appreciate taking up your time and sharing an insight into Property Filter your journey as well.

Thanks so much for having me.

Thank you.

You know, if I were to start right now, I would definitely get into sourcing because you can because of the volume of deals you can do. So we have one guy on property Filter. He found and sold 31 deals in 10 months. And it's just one of the many success stories we have. And the truth is now known by all the agents around there because when you start to buy three, four deals a month, you are the problem solver in your area.

And the data and the information he's got and what he's got access to is more often than what the agent is even awareness sometimes or the agent is even thinking about.

So like a simple scenario which is quite common on property filters. So because we match and merge different listings and historical listings as well. So you'll see one agent currently listing the property and then the sale fall through and they reduce the price or something like that. And then before that there's another agent who lost the instruction. And sometimes there's like a row of four agents like this who have been.

Trying to sell it.

Have been trying to sell it. And that's the story of the first deal we bought with Propsfilter some years ago. Now on the market for 250, listed with three different agents, some of them not anymore. Sell fallen through twice, reduced a couple of times as well. We bought it for 173 and it's now worth 420. It was worth 420 a couple of years ago, so probably worth quite a bit more. And it's all these things you can do by picking up and go straight to those motivated sellers. And sometimes with agents, you come in with one property that gives you a bit of an edge because you talk about this property and this problem and so on. And I was like, all right, these guys are talking to me in a way that they seem quite professional and they know what they're talking about and they seem to be quite on point with things and all of a sudden they've got this off market thing that just came the next day and then you never know. So again about this thing, about you.

Need to be nurturing that relationship with.

The agent as well and with sourcing because you're going to buy quite a volume of this. You build this skill and you build this relationship super fast. Because most people who buy for themselves will buy two deals a year average, let's say and it's worth it. You've got your pipeline, you follow up on your deals all the time and then you just get the best deals basically through on property filter like this. But it takes longer basically to build a relationship but with people starting out rather than be swimming against the tide of the agent. Sorry, we don't do corporate lets, you can just solve them property problems one after the other. On the sourcing side.

Yeah. And I think it doesn't matter what strategy somebody chooses to follow and I completely agree that the rent to rent strategies, rent to hmo, rent serve accommodation are much, much more tougher now than they were years ago when I first was teaching rent to rent, I think seven, maybe eight years ago now, you know when we'd ring the agent we'd kind of explain we're offering a guaranteed rent and, and now if we did the same thing today, they'd say oh, you mean rent to rent. Because the market's much more educated so it's much more tough. But doesn't matter what strategy you pick. The core skill that you need to master is your ability to be able to find deals, which is what sourcing is.

Yeah, it's if you can't find deals and investor it's a non startup, it.

Doesn'T matter what strategy you're doing. Yeah. So it's, it underlines any and every strategy that you might want to do. The ability to be able to go out, find deals, negotiate and build a relationship with the agents, with the sellers as well.

And it's a really good point in this because it's why we've built props filter all about finding deals and then yes, we've got a roadmap with quite a few things that we're going to build, et cetera. And people ask us does it does this, does it, does that. And I say yeah, it's in the roadmap or not quite yet or we're working on it or I didn't realize this was important. And people try to find like, oh well, I wouldn't really want to commit to a tool that's going to help me find deals if it doesn't also as these bells and whistles that does this other thing. But it's like, okay, the number one problem you want to solve is you want to be getting deals and then the few other things you can do on the side. Or we'll add it on that because we're adding to it all the time. Yeah.

And you've got lots and lots of things you're adding into it constantly. It's not like the roadmap is in six months we'll add this other thing you're constantly adding. Just in the last few months and even this week actually in the inner circle WhatsApp group, you were testing something new, some new things. So what sort of things are in the roadmap?

Yeah, so basically I think our big strength now is because we are really close to our community of members and I spent all of last year doing like five to 10 one to one meetings with people, asking them open ended questions, you know, how do you do this, how do you do that? And then to really understand what is it that one needs to be successful in property and we've got a really, really strong understanding of what we need to build and what we've, you know, it's informed what we've built so far and we're adding to it all the time. So if we think of stages so.