Where Deals Really Come From (And Why Most Investors Are Looking in the Wrong Place)

There’s a lot of noise in the property world about where deals come from and where you should be spending your time.

The dominant message in the training arena goes something like this:

“Don’t bother with Rightmove.

Everyone’s chasing the same deals.

You’ll never find anything on the open market.

You need to go direct to vendor.”

On the surface, that sounds logical.

And to a point, I understand where it comes from.

But my experience — backed up by real numbers over decades — tells a very different story.

The numbers don’t lie

At any given time, there are over a million properties listed on Rightmove and the other major portals.

Of those, roughly 10% have to be sold.

That’s around 100,000 properties on the open market that must transact.

They’re available today.

Not “maybe one day”.

Not “if you can convince the owner”.

Not “if your letter lands at the right moment”.

If you can’t find one or two good opportunities out of 100,000 motivated sales, then something else is going on — and it’s not the platform.

My own track record (not theory)

Around 85% of the properties I’ve bought have come from the open market — Rightmove or similar portals.

And here’s the part most people miss:

Around 80% of those properties were already sold subject to contract at some point before we bought them.

Let that sink in.

These weren’t clean, untouched listings waiting for a savvy investor.

They were messy deals.

Deals that had fallen over.

Deals with problems.

Deals where something didn’t quite stack up.

Which tells you something important:

Deals don’t disappear just because a property goes under offer.

The off-market myth (and an expensive lesson)

Yes — off-market, direct-to-vendor deals can be better quality on a percentage basis.

In my own experience, the 15% we’ve bought direct to seller have often been stronger deals.

But here’s the part that rarely gets talked about:

They are expensive and time-consuming to chase.

Back in 2016, we spent £120,000 on Google Ads, running a website specifically to attract off-market opportunities.

The return?

Around £150,000.

A £30k uplift on £120k of deployed capital.

If I’d put that £120k almost anywhere else in the business, the return would have been significantly better.

So yes — off-market deals exist.

But pretending they’re the only place deals come from is, frankly, misleading.

The real problem isn’t Rightmove

Technology today is incredible.

You’ve got:

• Property filtering software

• Portal alerts

• Bolt-ons and aggregators

• AI scraping data from multiple sources

All of it can flag:

• “Needs modernisation”

• Scruffy houses

• Price mismatches

• Obvious technical indicators

That’s fine.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth:

Without communication skills, psychology, and judgement — all of that data is a complete waste of time.

And I don’t mean that metaphorically.

I mean literally.

Property is not the problem — people are the key

Whether a property is:

• On Rightmove

• Sold subject to contract

• Under offer

• Or quietly sitting in an agent’s pipeline

The opportunity is revealed through conversation, not data.

Every single call I make to an agent includes three questions:

1. What else have you got?

2. What else have you got coming up?

3. What have you got in the pipeline that might not go through — and why?

Those three questions — asked properly, with the right intent — have produced more deals for me than any piece of software ever has.

Not because they’re clever questions.

But because they open doors most people never even knock on.

Why most investors struggle

After decades in this business, I see the same two problems again and again:

1. They can’t find deals

2. They can’t fund them

(We’re not even touching funding here — that’s another conversation.)

When it comes to finding deals, most investors are:

• Chasing the same listings

• Looking at the same data

• Reacting instead of tracking

• And missing what’s right in front of them

They’re looking, but they’re not listening.

They walk into conversations with their eyes half shut and their mind already made up.

This has nothing to do with property

And everything to do with:

• People

• Psychology

• Communication

• Timing

• Attention

The deal doesn’t appear because of Rightmove.

Or AI.

Or a mailing campaign.

It appears because someone said something they didn’t mean to say.

A throwaway comment.

A hesitation.

A slight inconsistency.

And you noticed it.

That’s the difference.

It’s difficult to explain this properly in theory, which is why I only ever show it when it’s happening live — for example, during small sessions I run like Over My Shoulder

Why I run 

Over My Shoulder

This is exactly why I run my Over My Shoulder days.

Not to teach tactics.

Not to hand out scripts.

Not to sell a fantasy.

But to show — in real time — how opportunities actually reveal themselves.

Calmly.

Patiently.

Without forcing anything.

If you want to be prolific at this game, you need:

• The right tools

• The right information

• The right skills

• And full attention

Miss any one of those, and you’ll spend your time chasing everyone else’s leftovers.

Property isn’t hard.

People are.

And once you understand that, everything changes.

If this way of thinking resonates

I occasionally write and run sessions that go deeper into how opportunities actually reveal themselves — not just in property, but in how people behave.

If this way of thinking resonates, leave your email below, and I’ll send you the next one when it’s live.