How Mark Burrows Used Property Filter to Spot a Motivated Commercial Seller and Buy at £55k Below Asking Price

Mark Burrows's challenge before Property Filter

Before joining Property Filter, Mark Burrows's approach to finding deals was the same one used by most investors: open Rightmove, open Rightmove Commercial, and start scrolling. For residential deals it was time-consuming. For commercial property it was worse. Without a way to filter for motivated sellers directly, Mark was wading through hundreds of listings without knowing which vendors were genuinely ready to move - and which were simply testing the market at an unrealistic price.

The problem was not just time. It was confidence. Without historical data on how long a property had been listed, how many times the price had changed, or whether it had been withdrawn and relisted, Mark had no way to know how strong a negotiating position he actually held. He was making offers without the information that would have made each offer far more precise.

Commercial property added an extra layer of complexity. Mark had been focused on residential strategies - rent-to-rent, service accommodation, buy-to-let, HMOs - before narrowing his focus to commercial acquisitions and his work rehousing vulnerable families. Switching strategies meant learning a new set of portals, a new set of signals, and a new way of reading the market.

"I was scrolling forever. I thought I was busy then, but I was even busier - and it was all good luck as far as finding deals was concerned."

How Mark Burrows uses Property Filter to find commercial deals

Mark joined Property Filter roughly two years before this interview. His first impression was one of overwhelm - there was so much data available that he described the platform as feeling like "a boy's toy." He found himself exploring deal after deal, clicking through motivation indicators, and watching price histories out of fascination rather than strategy. That changed when he sat down with the tutorial videos.

The Property Filter tutorial library walks members through how each strategy maps to the platform's filters and indicators. For Mark, this was the turning point. Once he narrowed his focus to commercial property and understood exactly which filters to apply, the platform became a precise property sourcing tool rather than a browsing tool. He set up his filters to match his target criteria and let the alerts do the searching.

His daily workflow now centres on two things: checking the Price and Status History tab on properties that catch his attention, and relying on alerts to surface new opportunities automatically. He applies the same analysis to commercial listings that he once applied to residential ones - watching for price drops, back-on-market signals, and extended time on market. He also uses Property Filter's yield and market data to validate the numbers before making any approach.

"Once you get used to it, you can go into the filters and tailor them to exactly how you want it. And then you just let the alerts bring the deals to you."