Would you pay £5,000 for the phone number of an estate agent? I sat down with Tina Walsh, CEO of NAPSA: National Association of Professional Sourcing Agents, to talk about 'deal packaging'. What she described should worry every investor considering this route. Here's how it works. A deal packager finds a property on Rightmove. They have a conversation with the estate agent. They haven't secured anything, agreed anything, or negotiated anything binding. They package that up as a "deal" and send it out to WhatsApp groups and email lists, often to hundreds of people at once. You pay the fee upfront. £3,000. £5,000. Sometimes more. In exchange, what you actually receive is contact information for the estate agent handling the property. The seller hasn't agreed to sell to you. They can take a higher offer from someone else at any point. You have no agreement. No security. Nothing that resembles what you've paid for. Tina's view, and mine: this is legal as long as the investor agrees to it. But it isn't a service. It's the disclosure of publicly available information, sold as something it isn't. There are county court cases right now where investors are trying to get that money back. This is exactly why NAPSA exists. Professionalising this sector means investors can tell the difference between someone who has actually done the work and someone who has sent them a phone number. Don't work with a 'sourcer' who calls a phone number a deal and asks for the fee upfront. Work with a Partner whose NAPSA registration means the work behind the fee is real, and verifiable. Sensible Investments, Unrivalled Support™ #TheTeacherLandlord #GoldilocksZone #PropertyInvestment

Posted by James Lovell-Smith at 2026-06-16 09:02:51 UTC