Matt Drury co-founded Venture Inside Property to focus on a niche most investors overlook: short lease flats in Southeast London. His strategy is to find motivated vendors of Victorian conversion flats, negotiate a below market purchase, refurbish, extend the lease, and either refinance and hold or sell on to another investor. Property Filter gave him the data layer and the outreach tools to make that strategy work systematically - including one Surrey deal where two months of patient follow-up led to a price lower than the offer the vendor originally rejected.

Matt's challenge before Property Filter

Before Property Filter, Matt was spending time on the same portals as every other investor - scrolling through Rightmove, opening listings one by one, and trying to read motivation from a standard listing page. The problem was that a standard listing page does not tell you much. You cannot see whether the asking price has dropped, how long the property has been sitting there, how many agents have tried and failed to shift it, or what the vendor paid for it in the first place.

For a strategy built around short lease flats - a niche where vendor motivation is often the critical variable - this information gap was a real obstacle. Matt could identify that a property had a short lease. What he could not easily do was separate the vendors who were genuinely motivated to sell from those who were simply testing the market at an optimistic price.

He was also working without a systematic way to stay in front of vendors over time. When a vendor said no to an initial approach, there was no easy mechanism to keep the relationship alive and come back at the right moment.

"Just having all that data right in front of you to see how motivated the seller really is is a game changer really."

He knew that motivated sellers existed in his market - the challenge was finding them efficiently and making the most of every contact once found. Property Filter changed both.

How Matt uses Property Filter to find short lease deals in SE London

Matt's starting point in Property Filter is the short lease filter. The platform displays remaining lease length directly, so he can surface short lease properties across his target area without opening every listing individually. He layers this with the below market average filter - set to flag properties priced at 20% or more below the average asking price for their postcode. That combination narrows the list to short lease flats where the pricing already suggests something is driving a sale.

He also tracks price reductions. When a property has had its asking price cut - once, twice, multiple times - that pattern is visible in Property Filter's sourcing data. A vendor reducing the price repeatedly is telling you something. Combined with time on market and the number of agents a property has had, Matt can build a picture of how motivated a seller is before he makes any contact.

"I feel confident that I know what's happening with this property. I know how long it's been on the market for. I know how many agents have had it. I know what it was originally purchased for."

Once he has identified a target property, Matt uses Property Filter's direct vendor letter campaign to make contact. He schedules letters to go out in advance so the outreach happens consistently without requiring manual effort each time. The campaign manager handles the sequencing - Matt sets it up, and the follow-up process runs.

He also saves every property he is tracking to his pipeline, with reminder follow-ups set at regular intervals. He checks in with vendors by text every couple of weeks, not just to push for a deal but to stay present. His view is simple: keep going until the vendor asks you to stop - and even then, perhaps carry on.

"Until they say, 'Please stop messaging me.' I'll probably carry on."

The data in Property Filter also informs how Matt approaches conversations with vendors and agents. He arrives knowing what the property was originally purchased for, how its price compares to the local average, and how long the current vendor has been trying to sell. That context gives him confidence in negotiation - he is not guessing at motivation, he can see it in the numbers.

"You've actually got to make the deal. The data is there to indicate whether a good deal could be made or not."