Invisible to Rightmove, Found on Property Filter: How Sabrina Khan Won a Wokingham Auction at £278,000

Sabrina Khan's challenge before Property Filter

Before she committed to Property Filter, Sabrina Khan's property search relied on two things: Rightmove and a collection of auction house mailing lists. Neither of them did the job well. Rightmove she describes as "very, very clunky and basic - not the right tool." And the mailing lists, while useful in theory, still required her to filter through every new listing manually, with no smart criteria, no data, and no way to automate what was or was not relevant to her strategy.

She had come across property sourcing software before - she had tried Property Filter on a trial basis a couple of years earlier. But at that point, the timing was not right. She was not yet ready to commit seriously to investing. In January 2026, she decided this was going to be the year she invested in herself. She joined a Property Filter call. She went through the demo. And within a month or two of using the platform properly, she had found the deal.

"I was using Rightmove. I was trying to kind of phone estate agents. Rightmove is very, very clunky, basic. It's not the right tool."

The challenge with finding motivated sellers and below-guide auction lots is not just about searching - it is about knowing where to search. Rightmove shows you what is listed. It does not aggregate auction house listings from smaller operators. It does not let you draw your search area precisely. And it does not put all the data you need to assess a deal in one place. That is the gap Property Filter fills for investors like Sabrina.

How Sabrina Khan uses Property Filter to find auction deals in Wokingham

After going through the Property Filter demo in January 2026 and joining a how-to-use call, Sabrina set up her lead generators and began monitoring her target area. The feature she found most immediately useful was the draw-area lead generator - the ability to draw the exact geographic boundary she wanted to search, rather than using a fixed radius from a central point.

For a localised search like Wokingham, this matters. A radius pulls in everything within a fixed distance of a central pin, which can include areas she is not targeting. Drawing the boundary directly means every property that comes up is genuinely within her search area. It also, she notes, brings up more properties than Rightmove's nearby comparables view - and shows previous listing photos, SSTC status, and completion dates all in one place, so she can do a quick assessment without having to click through multiple sources.

"I like the lead generator and that you can draw an area on a map as opposed to just kind of putting in a radius. That's really, really helpful, especially when you've got quite a small, localised search area."

The deal calculator is the other feature she returns to consistently. Property Filter's built-in finance template means she does not have to keep everything on backs of envelopes and in different notebooks. All the figures - purchase price, refurb estimate, stamp duty, legal fees, projected end value - go into one place. Crucially, the template makes sure she does not miss anything. For someone working towards their first property flip, that structure is worth as much as the data itself. For deal sourcing in a market where auction timelines move fast, having everything in one place is not just convenient - it is how you stay ready to move.