The Race To SOLD! with Tortoise Property – Tortoise Property Blog

Welcome to the Race to Sold

I’m Mike Matthews, founder of Tortoise Property. We are often described as an estate agency, but in truth we are a marketing business that sells homes.

Between 2020 and 2025, Tortoise Property has featured in the top 20% of agents in the Best Estate Agency Guide, reaching the top 5% in 2025. Also, being finalists in the 2025 Peterborough Small Business Awards in both the Innovation and Professional Small Business categories. That recognition matters, but what matters more is how homes are sold — and why so many fail to progress when the traditional route is followed without question.

Our aim has always been simple: to help buyers understand, value and commit to a home before they ever step through the front door. Modern digital marketing, combined with intelligent use of data and artificial intelligence, allows us to identify the right buyers earlier and guide decisions more clearly.

This is where the Race to Sold method sits — not as a standalone gimmick, but as the sales engine within our wider Portfolio strategy.

Portfolio by Tortoise Property determines how your home enters the market, creating multiple targeted entry points beyond a single portal listing. Race to Sold is what happens next. It is the end-to-end method that actively converts buyer engagement into momentum, viewings and offers.

The Race to Sold: The Sales Engine Within the Portfolio Strategy

Selling a home successfully is rarely about luck. It is about structure, timing and response. The Race to Sold method exists to ensure that once buyers begin engaging with a property through Portfolio’s multiple entry points, their behaviour is not left to drift.

Race to Sold is built around one principle: observe, respond, adjust.

Phase One: Ready, Set, Go

Before any marketing activity begins, preparation matters. Presentation is not about perfection; it is about clarity. Buyers need to understand how a home works, how it feels and who it suits.

Once prepared, we create the assets that allow Portfolio’s multiple entry points to exist — professional photography, video, virtual tours, floor plans and structured written content that explains not just the home, but its lifestyle context.

The launch itself is deliberate rather than explosive. Race to Sold does not rely on a single moment of attention. Instead, it ensures the home begins appearing in front of relevant buyers through targeted channels, allowing different types of buyers to encounter it in different ways.

Phase Two: The Racetrack

This is where Race to Sold truly earns its name.

As buyers begin to engage — watching videos, exploring virtual tours, reading content, asking questions — their behaviour is measured. Not just views, but depth of engagement. Not just interest, but intent.

Some buyers engage briefly and move on. Others linger, return, compare and enquire. These patterns matter. They tell us whether the issue is visibility, value perception or suitability.

Race to Sold uses this information to guide action. Marketing tools are not fixed. Targeting can be refined. Messaging can be adjusted. Presentation can be repositioned. This is not guesswork — it is response.

Phase Three: Feedback, Adjustment and Momentum

One of the greatest weaknesses of traditional estate agency is the lack of meaningful feedback. Sellers are often told what has happened, but not why.

Race to Sold replaces that uncertainty with feedback loops. Engagement data, enquiry quality, virtual tour activity and viewing behaviour are reviewed together. Where resistance appears, it is discussed openly and addressed deliberately.

We measure three core indicators:

Popularity — how buyers respond to the home before price dominates the conversation.

Value — how engagement changes once pricing is introduced and compared.

Action — whether interest converts into virtual tours, viewings and offers.

This framework allows sellers to make informed decisions rather than reactive ones. Sometimes price is the issue. Often it is not. Race to Sold ensures the difference is understood.

Where Race to Sold Fits

Portfolio by Tortoise Property creates multiple, targeted ways for buyers to enter the market. Race to Sold is the system that ensures those entry points lead somewhere meaningful.

It is the engine beneath the strategy — quietly managing momentum, responding to behaviour and guiding progress until the right buyer commits.

To Conclude

Selling a home should not feel like waiting for something to happen. It should feel managed.

The Race to Sold method exists to ensure that once a home enters the market through Portfolio’s expanded access points, buyer engagement is actively converted into action. Not through pressure, but through understanding.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

If you’d like to explore whether Portfolio — and the Race to Sold method within it — is right for your home, the links below may be a useful place to start.

If you have any questions or topics you’d like to see explored in future, please do get in touch. You can connect with Mike Matthews on Linktree here.

Thanks again — we look forward to connecting.