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How Ben Taylor Uses Property Filter to Track, Follow Up, and Close Manchester HMO Deals

Manchester HMO tracked in pipeline for months - asking price £280,000 negotiated down to £200,000 through disciplined, notes-driven follow-up

Ben Taylor · Manchester · HMO investor · Interviewed Aug 2025

AT A GLANCE

Member

Ben Taylor

Company

Taylor Smith Property (with husband Gareth)

Background

Luxury hairdresser for ~25 years; now building a Manchester HMO portfolio

Location

Manchester (investing); London (based)

Strategy

HMOs - 3-bed, generous room sizes, walking distance to tram stops

Deal 1

Manchester HMO: asking £280,000, agreed £200,000 - all money deal

Deal 2

Brighton (in progress at time of interview): delayed completion, non-refundable deposit to service seller's debt; projected revaluation ~£500,000

PF Feature Used

Pipeline tracking and notes, notification alerts, search filters (sq ft, transport, amenities), timeline history (agents, days on market)

"It's good for beginners and for advanced really. If you are a beginner, know what your niche is, stick to your guns on that, input it into the software - then yeah, Property Filter is great."

- Ben Taylor, Taylor Smith Property, Manchester

Results like these are happening every week. See how Property Filter works.

Ben Taylor spent the best part of 25 years in luxury hairdressing before he and his husband Gareth decided to build something different. Gareth is ex-Royal Engineers, a systems person. Ben describes himself as someone who dropped out of school young and was never comfortable with spreadsheets. Together they built Taylor Smith Property, a Manchester HMO business running on organisation, relentless follow-up, and Property Filter at the centre of everything.

The problem: offering on 300 properties from a spreadsheet

Before Property Filter, Ben and Gareth used a deal tracker and analyser - a spreadsheet-based system that Ben found hard to keep on top of. Investing in property is a numbers game. You are not offering on one property; you are offering on 300. And across that volume, things fall through the cracks.

"I used to have to try and navigate the spreadsheet. You know, it's a numbers game, isn't it? You're not offering on one property, you're offering on 300 properties. And you forget - you forget the estate agents, you forget what you've offered on, you just forget."

Without a reliable system to track notes, conversations, and follow-up timelines, the process of finding motivated sellers and staying close to agents became unmanageable. Properties would sit in the pipeline and stall. Agents would be called without context. The kind of deliberate, relationship-building follow-up that moves deals forward was almost impossible to sustain across a large number of live opportunities.

Ben is candid that he is not a natural numbers or tech person. What he needed was not a more complex spreadsheet - he needed a single place where every property, every note, and every alert was organised for him. That is what drew him back to Property Filter.

How Ben Taylor uses Property Filter every day

Ben uses Property Filter as the operating system for Taylor Smith Property. Everything runs through it - finding properties, tracking them, making notes, following up, and catching the moments when a deal that looked dead comes back to life.

The search setup is precise. HMOs require a specific type of property: generous square footage, the right room sizes, and reliable tenant demand. For Manchester, that means walking distance to a tram stop and easy access to supermarkets. Ben inputs those three criteria as filters - square footage, proximity to transport, proximity to amenities - and the daily feed narrows to properties that actually fit. Rather than sifting through hundreds of irrelevant listings, the platform surfaces what matters.

"Know your niche, know your things you're looking for, and you just input that into your search engine. If you aren't so specific, you'll get 10 million properties and it's overwhelming. If you can niche it down and understand what you're looking for, it just makes the system easier."

On top of filtering, Ben relies on the pipeline tracking and notes system in Property Filter to manage every active opportunity. Every call with an agent gets logged: who she spoke to, what they said, what was agreed. When he calls back a week later, she picks up the conversation exactly where it left off - and agents notice that.

He also uses Property Filter as the dedicated property sourcing software that feeds the broader business. Gareth's systems background means Taylor Smith Property runs on process: Asana for project management, multiple tools across the business. But Property Filter is specifically where they track, negotiate, and find properties.

"With Property Filter, one of the biggest purposes for me is I use it just to track. I mean we use it for everything, but we use it to track, negotiate, and find properties."

The problem: offering on 300 properties from a spreadsheet

"I used to have to try and navigate the spreadsheet. You know, it's a numbers game, isn't it? You're not offering on one property, you're offering on 300 properties. And you forget - you forget the estate agents, you forget what you've offered on, you just forget."

How Ben Taylor uses Property Filter every day

"Know your niche, know your things you're looking for, and you just input that into your search engine. If you aren't so specific, you'll get 10 million properties and it's overwhelming. If you can niche it down and understand what you're looking for, it just makes the system easier."

"With Property Filter, one of the biggest purposes for me is I use it just to track. I mean we use it for everything, but we use it to track, negotiate, and find properties."

Feature Spotlight

Ben's most-used Property Filter feature: "notify me when there's a change"

When Ben adds a property to his pipeline in Property Filter, he switches on the notification so that any change - a price drop, a return to market after a fall-through - fires an alert immediately. Given that roughly one in three UK property sales fall through, this feature means he is consistently first in the queue when a deal re-emerges.

"When we select the box - you know, when it says notify me when there's a change - every time something comes back on the market because someone's pulled out, we get a notification and we immediately phone up. And that's very often how we pick up properties."

Ben's most-used Property Filter feature: "notify me when there's a change"

"When we select the box - you know, when it says notify me when there's a change - every time something comes back on the market because someone's pulled out, we get a notification and we immediately phone up. And that's very often how we pick up properties."

Property Filter notification alert feature - notify me when there's a change

The results: £80,000 negotiated off a Manchester HMO - and a Brighton deal in motion

£280K

Asking Price

Manchester HMO

£200K

Agreed Price

all money deal

£80K

Negotiated Off

below asking price

300+

Properties Tracked

active pipeline at any time

Spreadsheets

replaced by Property Filter

The Manchester deal came through months of disciplined pipeline management. Ben had identified a property priced too high for the area at £280,000. He saved it, added it to his Property Filter pipeline, and started calling the agent. Not once. Every week. Each call was logged - who he spoke to, what they said, whether the vendor showed any sign of moving.

"We ended up getting them down from - they wanted 280. We ended up agreeing on 200,000. No one wanted it because it was too expensive for the area. It's the follow-up. It's the follow-up."

The agreed price was £200,000 - £80,000 below asking. Ben describes it as a total unicorn deal, bought all money, made possible entirely by the system he had in place. Without pipeline notes and regular follow-up logged in Property Filter, he says it would simply not have happened.

The second deal came through the timeline history feature in Property Filter. Ben spotted a Brighton property that had been on the market for a long time, been with multiple agents, sold, gone off market for around two months, and then come back. Every one of those signals was visible through the Property Filter timeline - and every one of them pointed to a seller with genuine urgency to sell. Ben and Gareth came in at the right moment with a creative structure: delayed completion with a non-refundable deposit placed upfront to service the seller's debt. The projected revaluation once the work is complete is around £500,000.

"The longer it's been on the market and the more agents it's been with, the more desperate they are to sell. That's a huge thing for us."

For investors ready to see what a platform built around following up, tracking, and reading the timeline behind every listing can do for a portfolio, watch the Property Filter demo.

Watch Ben Taylor's full Property Filter story

Ben shares the full story of the Manchester deal, how the Brighton opportunity came through Property Filter's timeline, and what he would say to investors - especially those who are not naturally comfortable with data - about building a property business around a system that works.

"We ended up getting them down from - they wanted 280. We ended up agreeing on 200,000. No one wanted it because it was too expensive for the area. It's the follow-up. It's the follow-up."

"The longer it's been on the market and the more agents it's been with, the more desperate they are to sell. That's a huge thing for us."

For investors ready to see what a platform built around following up, tracking, and reading the timeline behind every listing can do for a portfolio, watch the Property Filter demo.

Watch Ben Taylor's full Property Filter story

Frequently asked questions

How does Property Filter's notification alert help investors follow up at exactly the right moment?

How do pipeline notes in Property Filter help with persistent agent follow-up?

What search filters does Property Filter offer for HMO investors?

How does Property Filter's timeline history help identify motivated sellers?

Can Property Filter help investors who are not confident with spreadsheets or data?

Ready to find your next property deal?

Ben's story shows what happens when relentless follow-up is backed by a system that never forgets. Pipeline notes, notification alerts, and timeline history - all in one place.

See how Property Filter works and what it could do for your pipeline.

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