The best property deal is the one you can actually complete, says brokerage CEO
The property investment market is undergoing a quiet but significant shift. Where deal flow was once the primary challenge, brokers and investors are increasingly finding that the real problem is not finding opportunities — it is filtering them effectively.
Marie Cowgill (pictured top), chief executive of property finance brokerage Finanze Property and Finanze Strategy, argues that the traditional sequence of property investment — find the asset, negotiate, then arrange finance — is becoming an increasingly costly approach.
"This is a great deal," she observes, is a phrase heard constantly across the industry. But the asset and the investor are only part of the picture. A property can be well-priced, with a credible uplift and a strong location, and still be entirely wrong for a particular buyer if the funding route is mismatched.
Buy-to-let market data supports this view. According to Commercial Trust's Q1 2026 Quarterly Index, remortgaging accounted for 53.5% of buy-to-let applications in the first quarter, up from 46.1% a year earlier, while average bridging loan sizes increased significantly. UK Finance has separately highlighted growing remortgage activity across the sector. The figures suggest investors are less focused on pure acquisition and more on restructuring existing positions and using finance more strategically.
Cowgill traces her own evolution towards a "funding first" model to a pattern that emerged through Finanze Property, the finance and brokerage arm of her business. Clients who had completed transactions began asking a different kind of question: "Can you just find the next deal for me?"
"They were not asking us to become an estate agent," she points out. "They were saying: 'you already know my position, my capital, my lender options, my risk appetite and what I am trying to achieve. So please do not waste my time with opportunities that were never going to work for me in the first place'."
The practical implications are significant. If an investor requires a swift refinance, the exit must be credible from the point of acquisition. Bridging finance may be inappropriate for lower-risk income strategies. Where a title split is intended to generate value, the legal, valuation, and lending positions must all be understood before an offer is made.
This thinking, Cowgill shares, led to the creation of Finanze Strategy, which works with clients both bringing opportunities they have already identified and seeking help in sourcing them. In both cases, Cowgill says the starting point is the same: what is the objective, what can realistically be funded, what level of risk is appropriate, and what exit strategy is viable.
"The future will not belong to investors who see the most opportunities," she adds. "Everyone is shown opportunities now. It will belong to those who can filter quickly, act with clarity and avoid losing time on deals that were never really theirs to do."
The argument is ultimately straightforward. A transaction that cannot be funded, delivered, and exited properly is not a deal. It is, as Cowgill puts it, simply a distraction.
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